Sleeping Beauties by Susanna Moore Page A

silly, but I was. And now she just pulls a box off the shelf every morning and puts it on the counter. I’m not embarrassed anymore. I’ve learned something in this job. I could ask for anything now.”
    Clio told Tommy that she wanted to move into town.
    “You must be joking, hon. What’s wrong with here?”
    “I mean by myself.”
    He exhaled in exasperation and rested a barbell heavily across his chest. He was lying on the blue carpet, a towel around his waist, working with a new set of weights. Clio noticed for the first time that the carpet was the same color as his eyes. She wondered if he had picked the carpet to match his eyes.
    He grunted as he lifted the barbell from his chest. “This isn’t like you, babe.”
    “I wish you wouldn’t call me that.”
    “Call you what?” He did ten quick sit-ups.
    “It wouldn’t make any difference to you whether I were here or not.”
    “Come here.” He gestured to her to come to him.
    “I don’t mind not making a difference,” she said. “I just don’t want to not make a difference with you.”
    “You been smoking dope again with Mimi?”
    “No.”
    “Come here.” He pulled off the towel and threw it onto the bed. He was naked, his legs bent at the knee. He took his penis in his hand.
    “How long have we been married?” he asked. “Look, I’m insulated enough as it is. It’s one of the drawbacks of this business, but it’s a trade I’m happy to make. I can’t leave the fucking house. I get mobbed. My home is everything to me.”
    “Don’t you mean isolated?”
    He frowned.
    “Not insulated. Walls are insulated,” she said.
    “This an English class?”
    “I am trying to understand exactly what you mean.” She looked away, ashamed by her lie. She realized for the first time that she was afraid of him.
    “Look, I like having you with me. I actually can be around you. I knew it the first time we were together and I don’t know things very often.”
    She smiled.
    “I haven’t been around women too much,” he said, encouraged by her smile. He moved his penis idly in his hand. “You’re like a buddy, except not.”
    “Perhaps I’ll go away for a little while,” she said quietly. “Not to Los Angeles. Would you mind that?”
    He sighed loudly. “You don’t get it, do you? You’re coming with me to Morocco. It’s all arranged.” He put his arms over his head and stretched, showing her his erection.“A deal is a deal.” He winked at her. “By the way, we’ve been married six months, babe.”
    “Or, as you would say, a deal is sort of a deal.” She walked to the door.
    “Whatever.” He stretched again and reached for the barbell.
    For a moment, she wondered if he were going to lift it with his penis. She imagined the bar falling across him, falling against his throat and killing him. She was ashamed of her cowardice—not the cowardice of wishing his death, but the inability to say what it was that she meant, what it was that she wanted.
    Mimi was very jealous. She had hoped to go on location, too, but Billy Michael had promised his wife a trip to Africa. “It isn’t even Africa,” Mimi said bitterly to Clio. “She thinks she’s going to see elephants and stuff. Lions. She’s not going to be very fucking happy when she realizes it’s not Africa.”
    They were sitting by the pool. There had been brush fires in the hills and the air was heavy with smoke. Clio was reading a guidebook to Morocco and she held it up so that Mimi could see the continent on the cover.
    “I mean not Africa-Africa!” Mimi said irritably. She was eating a taco. “You’ve never been, so you don’t know! Location is this really sexy summer camp, except there are no rules. You’re treated like a king. Sorry,” she said, “like kings and queens. It’s better than that other thing. You know, Nirvana.”
    It was not only unlikely that new friends would continue to see each other once the movie was finished, Mimi explained, or that lovers would