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cancer when his secretary interrupted to tell him there was a process server outside. Monica’s mother told her that the reason she’d filed for divorce was that her father was having an affair with a nurse at the office.
    She was often in tears. She spent whole days alone at the movies. She gained more than fifty pounds in her freshman year at Beverly Hills High. Her nicknames had followed her. “Big Mac!” The kids laughed. “Pig Mac!” While she was skipping her classes at Beverly Hills High, she was spending a lot of time in the drama department. She sewed costumes for the school plays. She got a tiny part in
The Music Man
. The drama department was her sanctuary. Often she’d eat lunch by herself there.
    Her mother transferred her from Beverly Hills High to Bel Air Prep, where there was less emphasis on physical perfection. She fell in love with poetry, especially that of Walt Whitman and T. S. Eliot. She wrote a poem that began:
    I crouch in a corner all by myself fighting the war of emotions,
    Battling against FEAR, ENVY, DEPRESSION, and REJECTION
,
    I struggle.
    Although no longer a student there, she still went back to the drama department at Beverly Hills High. She made a little money now sewing costumes. That’s where she met Andy Bleiler, the school’s new drama technician. He was twenty-five, eight years older, involved in a relationship with a divorcée eight years older than he. She knew he had a reputation as a lothario. He walked her back to her car one night after a play. He kissed her good night and he touched her breasts. Andy was good-looking and slim.
    When she graduated from Bel Air Prep, she applied to Boston University. Dr. No said no. It was too expensive. She enrolled at Santa Monica College instead. She got a job at the Knot Shop, a place that sold neckties. She loved working with the ties, dazzled by the fabrics and colors. But she was putting weight on again.
    Her mother sent her to a psychotherapist. Dr. Irene Kassorla was known as “the psychologist to the stars.” In 1980, Dr. Kassorla had written a book called
Nice Girls Do
. The book advised women to get in touch with their “magical push muscles.” Dr. Kassorla advised women to go to the bathroom, sit on the toilet, and begin to urinate. Then to stop in midstream. Then to hold it for a few seconds. Then to start urinating again. Stopping and starting this way, Dr. Kassorla said, would enable women to find their “magical push muscles.” Her book talked about “plunging into a passionate ride,” “turbulent, fleshy moments,” “sensual storms,” “romantic electricity.” “Your body swells with expectation,” Dr. Kassorla wrote, “your flesh is rosy with excitement and warmth . . . soon the hot juices will flow through you.”
    As she was seeing Dr. Kassorla, Andy Bleiler, the drama technician at Beverly Hills High, now married to the divorcée Kate Nason, started hitting on her again. He told her she was sexy. He told her she was beautiful. He asked her to give her panties to him. They started spending afternoons together at local motels. She wouldn’t have intercourse with him at first. She felt guilty he was married. But she went down on him. She felt she was in love with him.
    She told Dr. Kassorla she was sleeping with Andy. Dr. Kassorla warned her about having an affair with a married man, but the author of
Nice Girls Do
didn’t tell her to break it off. On the other hand, Dr. No said no. Her father told her to stop seeing Andy immediately. Her mother was furious. She thought Bleiler “a piece of garbage” for hitting on a woman so much younger.
    When Andy’s wife was four months pregnant, Monica told Andy she felt bad about what she was doing, and she ended the affair. Two weeks later, when he made another pass at her, she started having sex with him again. She was
s-o-o-o
in love with him. She got