Sleeping Beauties by Susanna Moore Page B

continue their luxuriant deceptions when they returned home, it was unappealing. Being on location was thrilling just because it was temporary.It was a return to an imagined adolescence, except that you had money. There were no parents. Often, if you were lucky, there were no wives or husbands.
    “Don’t tell Tommy that I’ve been seeing Billy Michael. Promise not to tell. On Tommy’s mother’s grave.”
    Mimi had asked Tommy to take her to Morocco as his assistant and he had refused, so she especially did not want him to know about Billy. “Of course, he’s so fucking dim, he still wouldn’t figure it out,” she said to Clio. “He thinks I actually wanted to work for him.”
    “This isn’t like you,” Clio said. “To care what Tommy thinks.” She sneezed.
    “Well, it’s to protect you, so don’t complain.” Pieces of cheese and lettuce fell from the taco onto Mimi’s knees and she brushed the food onto the AstroTurf.
    Clio was distracted for a moment by the beauty of color, the bright orange cheese on the plastic grass, and the pale green of a piece of lettuce lying across Mimi’s big toe, the nail painted fire-engine red. “Me? Well, thank you very much.”
    “Haven’t you ever noticed what happens when your man discovers that your best girlfriend has a lover? He freaks. If you knew that Billy Michael was sleeping with someone, you wouldn’t assume that Tommy was going to rush out and find someone to fuck, right? But Tommy would start suspecting you if he knew that I was fucking Billy.”
    “That makes sense.”
    Mimi put down the taco. “How can you be so dumb? This is why they get nervous when women have lunch together.” She lowered her voice. “They’re convinced we’re talking about their dicks. They
wish
we were talking about their dicks.”
    She put her legs in the pool. “See, I’m like Tommy. No family, thank you very much. Oh, I have a sister somewhere. Alaska, I think. My father was one of thosemerchant-seaman Communists. He was in Malaysia or some fucking place and he was walking down this deserted beach and he heard someone calling from way up on a bluff. It was a man’s voice. ‘Do you speak English?’ the voice shouted and my father shouted back yes. Then the voice yelled, ‘Do you play bridge?’ My father stayed eight years. Meanwhile, I was sleeping on a pullout couch at my bad aunt’s in Detroit.”
    “Do
you
play bridge?” Clio asked. “I’ve been looking for a fourth. Actually, for a second and third as well.”
    Mimi kicked water at her. “You look like the type who would play bridge. How many times do I have to tell you? You have to be tough with men. My father had no one to boss him. You have to give them rules. You know, ‘Home by eleven.’ ‘Don’t desert your kids.’ It’s actually kind of amazing when you think of it, but ball-breaking works.”
    “My brother, Dix, says that rules are meant to be broken. That’s why they’re called rules.”
    “You sure he doesn’t mean balls? Look, you don’t know how to handle a man, Clio. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about this.” Mimi wiggled her fingers in the direction of her margarita and Clio handed it to her. “You don’t even try to do it and that’s a big mistake.”
    “Do what?”
    “Look, I say to Billy when we’re in bed that he can only touch my legs. My legs and my ass and that’s it. And then I just lie there naked with my back to him and it drives him completely nuts.”
    “Of course it would.”
    “Clio! He likes it.”
    Clio shook her head. “We have to deduce a general principle from Billy Michael’s behavior?”
    “You ask Tommy. I give you permission. Only don’t say it’s me,” she quickly added. “Pretend you have this friend who told you. You’ll see.”
    “I don’t want to ask Tommy.”
    “You’re wrong, Clio. I know about these things. This is not your area.” She turned toward the house and yelled, “Is Tommy home?” She looked back at Clio. “They