Three Women in a Mirror Read Online Free PDF

lay.”
    â€œAsshole! Did you ever think that you might be the one who’s average? Or even less than that?”
    â€œWell, I don’t mean to brag, but that’s not what I’ve heard . . . ”
    As far as he was concerned the conversation was over, and he walked away. Anny bit her lips: she knew that Tom had a reputation among the girls as an incomparable lover, and that was the very reason she had hit on him.
    I mustn’t sleep with David too soon. I have to hold out! Resist!
    That was all she came away with from her confrontation with Tom.
    She thought about going back to the dance floor, but worried that the energy the drug had given her might wear off if she danced. Shouldn’t she be thinking, rather, about what she was going to say to David?
    Determined to behave differently than on other days—or nights—she headed to the bar and sat quietly for an hour on her stool, drumming into her head,
Don’t sleep with him tonight, don’t sleep with him on the first night, or the second, or the third.
Convinced she’d acquired a new virtue, she knocked back one gin and tonic after the other, feeling more exalted with every passing moment.
    So by the time David came and stood in front of her, she was so wasted that she could not help but burst out laughing.
    â€œOh, David, I can’t believe it. I was thinking about you and, presto, there you are! I must have a gift, some sort of witchcraft I didn’t know I had.”
    â€œI think, mainly, it was because you told me to meet you here.”
    She gasped, as if he’d said something infinitely spiritual.
    â€œSit down and have a drink.”
    â€œDon’t mind if I do.”
    â€œYou’re so funny, David.”
    â€œDo you come here often?”
    Reminding herself of her plan—not to act like a fast girl—she replied, with aplomb: “No, it’s the second time.”
    He nodded.
    â€œWhere do you usually go?”
    â€œI stay at home. I’m not really a party girl. These places are a waste of time, don’t you think? Besides, what is there for me here?”
    â€œBoys?”
    â€œI have plenty of opportunities to meet men; you’re proof of that,” she added, a touch too cleverly.
    â€œDrugs?”
    â€œHmm. Rarely.”
    â€œAlcohol.”
    â€œYou got it.”
    Even though she was drunk, she was lucid enough not to try and hide the fact she’d been drinking. He narrowed his eyes and said, “So you don’t go out much?”
    â€œRarely.”
    He smiled; he was no fool.
    â€œThat’s not what the papers say.”
    He meant the magazines that had been reporting lavishly on Anny’s depraved pranks since she was fifteen years old—showing her at the entrance to a club looking disheveled, or detailing her arrest for possession of illegal substances, or cataloging the boys who’d dropped her because they finally had to admit they couldn’t keep up with a tireless reveler like her.
    She gave a hoarse laugh.
    â€œDon’t be naïve, David. Even if you’re new to the job, you must have learned the alphabet. Between shoots I have to provide them with gossip. Not a word of truth in any of it. It’s all staged. All those stories have me playing a role—my publicist, Johanna, dreamt them up: people have to talk about me.”
    â€œThey skin you alive—”
    â€œYes, but at least they’re talking about me!” she exclaimed, annoyed that he hadn’t believed her, when she was sure she’d been convincing. “If I had gotten a PhD in physics at the age of sixteen, or was going around distributing vaccines for lepers, or going on hunger strikes to try and get Barack Obama canonized, not a single rag would take the slightest interest in me, none of the female readers would identify with me, and the male readers wouldn’t even look at my legs! If they said nice things about me . . . it would be