Gone Read Online Free PDF Page A

telling the truth about being clumsy.
    “It’s a suck life,” she said.
    “Being an actor.”
    “Being any kind of artist. Everyone loves artists but they also hate them!”
    Grabbing her hair with both hands, she yanked, stretching her beautiful face into something reptilian.
    “Do you have any idea how hard it is?” she said through elongated lips.
    “What?”
    She released the hair. Looked down on me as if I was thick.
    “To. Get. Anyone. To. Pay.
Attention!
”
     
CHAPTER 5
     
    I saw Michaela for three more sessions. She spent most of the time drifting back to a childhood tainted by neglect and loneliness. Her mother’s promiscuity and various pathologies enlarged with each appointment. She recalled year after year of academic failure, adolescent slights, chronic isolation brought on by “looking like a giraffe with zits.”
    Psychometric testing revealed her to be of average intelligence with poor impulse control and a tendency to manipulate. No sign of learning disability or attention deficit, and her MMPI Lie Scale was elevated, meaning that she’d never stopped acting.
    Despite that, she seemed a sad, scared, vulnerable young woman. That didn’t stop me from asking what needed to be asked.
    “Michaela, the doctor found some bruising around your vagina.”
    “If you say so.”
    “The doctor who examined you said so.”
    “Maybe
he
bruised me when he was checking me out.”
    “Was he rough?”
    “He had rough fingers. This Asian guy. I could tell he didn’t like me.”
    “Why wouldn’t he like you?”
    “You’d have to ask him.” She glanced at her watch.
    I said, “Is that the story you want to stick with?”
    She stretched. Blue jeans, today, riding low on her hips, midriff-baring white lace V-top. Her nipples were faint gray dots.
    “Do I need a story?”
    “It could come up.”
    “It could if you mention it.”
    “It has nothing to do with me, Michaela. It’s in the case file.”
    “Case file,” she said. “Like I did some big crime.”
    I didn’t answer.
    She plucked at lace. “Who cares about any of that? Why do
you
care?”
    “I’d like to understand what happened up in Latigo Canyon.”
    “What happened was Dylan getting crazy,” she said.
    “Crazy physically?”
    “He got all passionate and bruised me.”
    “What happened?” I said.
    “What usually happened.”
    “Meaning…”
    “It’s what we
did.
” She wiggled the fingers of one hand. “Touching each other. The few times.”
    “The few times you were intimate.”
    “We were never
intimate.
Once in a while we got horny and touched each other. Of
course
he wanted more, but I never let him.” She stuck out her tongue. “A few times I let him go down on me but mostly it was finger time because I didn’t want to get close to him.”
    “What happened in Latigo Canyon?”
    “I don’t see what that has to do with… what happened.”
    “Your relationship with Dylan is bound to—”
    “Fine, fine,” she said. “In the canyon it was all fingers and he got too rough. When I complained he said he was doing it on purpose. For realism.”
    “For when you were discovered.”
    “I guess,” she said.
    She looked away.
    I waited.
    She said, “It was the first night. What else was there to do? It was so boring, just sitting up there, getting talked out.”
    “How soon did you get talked out?” I said.
    “Real soon. ’Cause he was into this whole Zen
silence
thing. Preparing for the second night. He said we needed to cook images in our heads. Heat up our
emotions
by not crowding our heads with words.”
    Her laughter was harsh. “Big Zen silence thing. Until he got horny. Then he had no trouble telling me what he wanted. He thought being up there would make things different. Like I’d do him. As if.”
    Her eyes got hard. “I pretty much hate him now.”
     
     
    I took a day before writing an outline of my report.
    Her story boiled down to diminished capacity combined with that time-honored tactic, the