reasonably confident that once I find a worthy prospect, I’ll be able to keep him. In the meantime, I’ll protect my heart from any further damage.
“Not all men are Jims, Holly. They’re not perfect, God knows, but they don’t have to be. Because neither are we.”
“How perfect is your professor?”
“Let’s just watch the damn movie,” she grumbles.
“Fine,” I say and press Play. “What is it, anyway?”
“How to Marry a Millionaire. It’s with Marilyn. And I don’t care if you hate it.”
“Wasn’t there anything with Brad Pitt?”
“I don’t know. Who cares? This is so much better… God, Holly. You’re, like, totally boy-crazy these days.”
George loves Marilyn Monroe because she was sexy and powerful and vulnerable all at once, and also because she was a size 12 and the whole world loved her for it. She’s seen all of her movies a thousand times. For me, though, Marilyn’s sadness fills every frame of every film she made. I imagine I would have liked her better before, when she was just Norma Jean Baker. Plain and simple.
“There must have been something with Brad Pitt…”
“There wasn’t.”
“Not even an old one?”
“Just shut up and watch.”
Purple moonlight filters through the gauze panels covering the open window, giving my bedroom an almost fluorescent glow. I glance at the clock—4:15 a.m. Everything is perfectly still.
Since insomnia is one of the few anxiety-related problems I don’t normally suffer from, I’m a bit confused. After thinking for a while, the image of Marilyn Monroe sneaking her glasses onto her face playing on a constant loop, a memory of Dr. Zukowski surfaces from among the usual places my mind goes when it wanders. She’s a behavioral therapist who once berated me ferociously in the middle of Pearl Street during an exercise to get me to step on sidewalk cracks. Something she said, lost on me then, flashes into my mind.
“Life isn’t really about luck or coincidence, Holly. Nor is it about destiny or kismet or any of that other stuff. You won’t win a Pulitzer just by sitting around collecting good karma and then waiting for your fingers to accidentally strike the right keys. And if your mother ever breaks her back—”
“Bite your tongue!” I’d interrupted.
She ignored me and went on. “…and if your mother ever breaks her back, it’ll probably be because she tripped over something. Not because you walked down the sidewalk like a healthy, well-adjusted person. The world just doesn’t work that way.”
“Doesn’t every action have a reaction?”
“No.”
“But I’ve always thought that life is like the game of pool…”
“It isn’t.”
“Pinball?”
“Nope… Well, maybe. But only if you think of yourself as the flippers and not the ball, see? Remember, Holly—you were the one who told me you want to be an actor, and not a re-actor.”
“Look,” I sighed. “I know you’re right. I want to be the flippers. And I know that my mom’s probably going be okay if I step on that crack, and that her health isn’t something I have any control over—but it feels wrong to do it. It seems so… I don’t know…reckless. Like, why take the chance?” It was lunchtime, a weekday, and pedestrians swarmed around us, irritated by our lack of motion.
Zukowski shook her head. “It only feels that way because you’ve been avoiding the cracks for so long. This problem isn’t something I can just turn off inside your head. To overcome it you’re going to have to actually do it. Over and over again until it doesn’t feel wrong. Until it just feels normal. And soon it won’t feel like anything at all. Okay?”
I nodded.
“So let’s start with our deep breathing…good…good…and now we can try visualizing it, just like we did upstairs in my office…”
Bravely, brazenly, I took a step in my mind. And another. And then another, letting my feet fall where they might. It wasn’t so hard.
“Now do it,” she prodded.
I raised my foot and started to move forward, but an image of my mother in traction weaseled its way into my brain. My chest tightened and my palms began to sweat. I retreated.
“Holly,” she sighed. “How do you expect to move forward if you can’t take one simple step?”
She could barely conceal her exasperation, even though my insurance company was paying her $115 an hour.
“I’ve been getting along fine for years,” I informed her. “You were the one who seized on this whole thing. I just mentioned it in passing, and jeez, look at us now.”
“Let me put it in perspective for you. I have patients who can’t leave their houses. Patients who can’t work or eat or sleep. People who are so paralyzed with fear that their lives are barely lives at all. I can help you through this, Holly, but you have to be willing to move.”
“I’m pretty happy, you know,” I said. “I just want to be more happy. I want to be able to write my book.”
And this is what she said: “The difference between a dream and reality is the difference between a goal and a plan. If you want to write a book, then commit yourself to doing whatever it takes to make that happen, because things will never change unless you change them.”
Now, two years later, Zukowski’s words resonate within my very empty bedroom as loudly as if someone had struck a gong. If I ever want my dreams to become reality, I know what has to be done.
The goal? To free myself from the bonds of serfdom and write my book, the subject of which was now also plainly evident.
The plan? To marry a millionaire. Or at least date one seriously.
chapter 4
A Room of One’s Own
The cursor blinks hopefully. Chapter One, I type. Finding a Mark. How hard can it be?
I dial George’s number at work. “Can you get out early?”
“I guess so.”
“Meet me at Taylor’s at six.”
“Why? That place sucks.”
Taylor’s is an upscale-ish piano bar in the business district. The only reason I even know about it is because it happens to be next door to the only place in town to get decent Chinese takeout after 11:00 p.m., probably thanks to all the late-working lawyers and financial types in the neighborhood.
“I know, G.” I tell her. “Just indulge me.”
It’s
