“A lot more than that,” he said. “On and off for four years. It went on after his marriage to Julia.”

So he had lied to Maddy even after she confronted him with Alex’s name. Of course it had been an affair. He had used Alex’s book, Alex’s quotation, to propose to her, and then lied about how serious it was. If he had told her, after the marriage, that he had been with a man on and off for four years, she would have . . .

“He was so confused,” the professor continued. “He fell hard for her and wanted to believe that it meant, that he could . . . She found out. They had a fight and he told her. They split up. We got back together, but he was torn up by the divorce. It made him feel like a failure. Broken. Instead of asking himself why it didn’t work, he just wanted to be ‘normal’ all the more.”

“I married a man who loves men,” she said. Her face was hot. It was crazy to have tracked down this man on the Internet, like an amateur private detective. But now she was here with him, with a stranger, Steven the glue between them.

“I know I loved him,” Alex said slowly. “Did he love me? He wasn’t sure. We were so young. I can’t tell you who he is. Why would I presume to know? I’m not Gay Yoda.”

“But you knew him. You knew Steven Woyceck. You have to help me. We have a son, he’s still an infant, and I have to—Steven says he’s not gay. But there’s a man in his life now and . . . I think he’s been deceiving me. Do you think I made a mistake?”

“Are you happy in bed with him?”

“Mostly. Yes.”

Alex drummed his fingers on the desk and looked out the window. “It seems your problem is the same one we all have. You don’t know if you are truly loved. But does anyone? Do I know the secret thoughts and dreams of my partner, whom he sees in his mind when he closes his eyes in bed? Does he know how much it disgusts me to find the cap of the toothpaste off yet again, even though I have told him hundreds of times? To hear the clanging of his fork against his teeth as he eats his fusilli? We are all a little bit despised. Aren’t we? Alongside the need to be coupled is an equally compelling need to be left utterly alone.”

“Did I make a mistake?”

“Love is filled with mistakes, just varying degrees.” He rose to his feet. “I hope you find some answers. Whether that’s the same as being happy, I don’t know. Is that Gay Yoda enough for you?”


When she returned, Steven’s Mustang still wasn’t there. She could hear the Rolling Stones blasting from the guesthouse. She opened the door and heard the shower running. She waited on the edge of the bed, imagining that they had made love in it, while she was sleeping, before they got in the pool and had their spat.

The room was a mess; Ryan had books, clothes, and scripts strewn everywhere. She glanced at the titles: up-and-coming action films, all in the Steven Weller/Tommy Hall oeuvre. One day Ryan would be as successful as Steven.

The bathroom door opened. Ryan was naked and rubbing his head with a towel. His penis was long and white, and it looked like he trimmed the hair around his balls.

When he saw her, he jumped and covered himself. “What the fuck?” His torso had the familiar overdeveloped pectorals of many Hollywood stars. Had Steven touched this torso, had Steven kissed Ryan’s neck the way he had kissed hers? Did Ryan turn him on in a way she didn’t? Had Steven been repulsed by her breasts, her softness, everything about her that made her a woman?

Ryan went to the galley kitchen and started making a pot of coffee. “Does he love you?” she asked.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said dully.

She hadn’t realized until now how exhausted she was. The deceiver wasn’t the only one who had to split in two. The deceived did, too.

“Were you guys having sex the night Jake was born?” He stared at the coffeemaker. “Ryan. Steven’s not here. It’s you and me now. Please. Just tell me.”

“Why should I?” he said, pivoting around. “What do I owe you?” With his lip curled out, he reminded her of Steven. The sneer. He had no interest in another person, in imagining what it might be like to be on the other side.

“I know he was with a man when he was younger. And I think there have been others. A lot of them. Please just tell me to my face what’s going on between you.”

The coffee made bubbling noises, and he poured the brown brew into a modernist mug by Eva Zeisel. Steven had picked all the stoneware for the guesthouse. Steven picked everything.

Ryan held the mug between his hands, blew into the cup, and leaned against the cabinets, sipping. He looked like an ad in an interiors magazine. “Of course we were. It was why he wanted the radio off.”

“And that’s why he left his phone. So no one could bother him.”

“He’s crazy when it comes to the phones. Always has to check the bag, the pockets. Like I would take a photo and sell it to a magazine. Like I would do that to myself.”

“When did it start? In Wilmington?”

He hesitated and looked down into his mug. “It was weird at first. He thought I was straight. He was cautious. Then one night at the house, we got drunk. It was so easy. My house, his house. Two men. Practical jokers. He felt safe with me because we were doing a movie together and because of my reputation. Sometimes I crashed with him. The paparazzi don’t go to Wilmington to stake out homes. Not with all the cutbacks to the tabloid-magazine industry.”

She slid down the edge of the bed so she was sitting on the floor, clasping her knees to her chest. “And after Wilmington?” she asked hollowly.

“On and off. There was a period where he was angry, we didn’t speak.”

“Where did you do it?”

“Always the boat. It was the only place he felt safe. Even after the thing with Christian.” Maddy’s throat began to close, and she opened her mouth to get more air.

“The thing with Christian.”

“You didn’t think it was a lie, did you? He made the mistake of getting involved with someone outside of the industry. I told him he was crazy to keep the boat after that, but he said he could trust the guys at the new club. He had them taking even more money than the ones before. He loved that I wanted discretion, too. He would say to me, ‘We’re the same. That’s why this works. We both need privacy. I don’t have to explain it to you.’ ”

He adjusted the towel around his waist. This half-clothed male body in their guesthouse, using their water, their shower, drinking their coffee. He wouldn’t put on a shirt for her even as he was assassinating her marriage. “Does he want to be with you?” she asked hollowly.

“He doesn’t know what he wants. Sometimes he liked to fantasize that things could be different. He said he wanted to divorce you and be out in the open with me.” She didn’t believe that he would speak that way about her, that he would denigrate her to Ryan. She wondered if he was making it up. “But then he would get worried about the Tommy movies. He’ll never come out, but he likes to play with the idea that he could. He won’t change. Only someone really afraid would go to the lengths he does.”

“What do you mean, the lengths he does?”

“To get married, to throw the scent off.”

“Is that how he speaks of our marriage? Throwing the scent off? Is that something he said?”

Ryan turned his back and ran his finger down the edge of the countertop. “I don’t think we should talk anymore.”

“I can handle it. Keep going.”

His back still turned, he said, “Sometimes he said he loved you, but sex with you . . . disgusted him.”

He had to be lying. Steven wouldn’t say that about her, no matter how confused he was, no matter how angry.

“You’re a liar,” she said.

“Whatever,” Ryan said.

He went to the Roman shades and rolled them up. It had taken Maddy a long time to figure out how to raise Roman shades, but he already knew. She had no interest in window treatments and decor. She had wanted to put her stamp on this house, but in the end, it wasn’t about aesthetics. It was about wanting Steven to hear her. She had never cared about couture or designer furniture or modern art. But Steven did, he loved decorating the home, it was part of his identity. She imagined the two men snuggling on the bed in the main cabin and fingering the collars of each other’s shirt.

“Why were you two fighting last night?” she asked.

“He asked if there was someone else. I said yes, because I started seeing someone. I never lied to him about other guys before, but last night he just went crazy. I said it was ludicrous to expect me to be faithful when he was married to you. He said, ‘What if I left Maddy? Would that change anything?’ I said no. And he lost it and drove off.”

She stood up. Her legs were weak, like after the C-section, after the spinal wore off. She pushed open the door. “I’m going for a drive,” she said. “I’ll be back in an hour, and when I come in, I don’t want any trace of you.”

She got in the Prius and took the streets to the 101 headed northwest, not sure where she was going. Just wanting to drive fast. She had loved Steven. She didn’t want to believe it was all a lie. There was a chance that Ryan was making up the story. Maybe he was in love with Steven, and the things he said about Steven wanting a divorce—lies, revenge.

But when he spoke, it felt like the truth. And more upsetting than this affair, even, which seemed an affair of the heart, was that Ryan had probably been only one of many. Maddy and Steven had been separated physically almost half of the four years they had been married. Opportunity abounded. So easy. There could be dozens of lovers. Hundreds. Paid and not. And Ryan had said the Christian Bernard story was true. Her appearances, her testimonials, all a farce. Of course he had paid off Bernard to retract, maybe paid others over the years, others she didn’t know about because Steven had told her never to search their names.

She had been shocked and offended when Kira brought up a contract, but they did have a contract. It wasn’t written, and there was no salary, but it was a kind of agreement, in that she had let him do what he did.

She had ignored everyone’s warnings because in loving and being loved by Steven, she had been part of something huge and important. The charisma, the charm, the stories. He was like Tennessee Williams, shooting three bull’s-eyes in a row, all with his blind eye.

She wanted to believe he loved her once. Maybe he had, at the very beginning. The first year. But even after that, he kept making love to her. How was it possible? Always on, never off. In Venice, the time she conceived . . . the way he had kissed her and held her . . . It hadn’t felt like he was performing. It felt genuine. He had made love to her and put his mouth all over her, caressed her breasts, buried his nose in her, his tongue, until she came. Even if they hadn’t had sex since the baby. Was it so easy to act, to trick her into believing she was desired? There must have been pills, though she had never seen any in his cabinet; maybe he hid them, as she had hid hers. Or maybe he used his mind. Did what gay men had been doing for centuries: closed his eyes and thought of England.

She had married someone with two selves. And like a political wife, she had looked the other way. When the gay men whispered at parties. When he went on the boat, on the trips with Terry, and alone. That time after the Husbandry reviews, he had asked her to come, and she had been berating herself for years for saying no, but he’d known she was working. Maybe he’d known she would decline, and had only asked so as to mislead her into trusting him.

She got off the freeway at Mulholland and headed west toward the Santa Monica Mountains. A little past Laurel Canyon, she passed an overlook. She parked the car and got out, staring down at the San Fernando Valley and the trees. She remembered the flash of the cameras in her eyes that night in Berlin, the beautiful blinding light that left spots. The feeling of being on the arm of Steven Weller . . . It wasn’t undignified. It was thrilling. As he had risen, she had risen, too. She had seen her marriage transactionally, whether or not she had known it. When Steven took her hand on that press line, she told herself it was an act of generosity, and to some extent it was. But he had been claiming her, announcing that they were together, before she got a chance to decide. And she had let him. She had wanted to be claimed.

She remembered glancing at Bridget and seeing the look she’d shared with Steven. It was some kind of signal. The ever so slight nod of approval. Maddy had read it as a nod about her career, her future stardom. But perhaps it had been something else.