Sex in the Title (45 page)

“This is Evan Cheson,” she would say. “He’s a brilliant New York novelist and he’s writing the screenplay for my next project. It’s a wonderful story and I’ve never been so excited about a script!”

“That’s fabulous, Evan! Congratulations!” the person would say. “What have you published?”

“Nothing…Yet,” he would answer reluctantly.

“Oh, OK. And how’s the script coming along?”

To which Evan would have to reply, with a stiff throat, “Very well, thanks. It’s definitely a work in progress, but I’m hoping to finish it in a few weeks.”

“Wow. That’s impressive,” they would add, before moving right back to Delilah. And as the conversation turned to a possible movie deal, a big charity dinner, a great newspaper review, a potential TV interview, or any number of other items of interest in the life of a movie star still in college, Evan’s thoughts soon focused on how the only reason that anyone thought anything of him was the fact that Delilah Nakova was waiting for him to finish a screenplay that he had no idea how to write.

Chapter 35
The Porn Star and Relationship Expert

During the four days that Delilah was in LA, Evan called each member of the posse for advice. Everyone was wowed that Evan was practically dating Delilah Nakova, and reassured him that things would work themselves out in time. But Evan realized that these discussions were more for venting and sharing than getting any useful advice, since no member of the posse had ever been in a similar situation. Evan did, however, cling to the faint hope that Narc might have some helpful tips, since he was the most sexually uninhibited member of the posse and he had some understanding of what it was like to be a film personality.

Narc had even been hit on recently by a Japanese expatriate in New York who had recognized him after watching one of his porno films with her underperforming boyfriend. Narc’s popularity would only increase during his hair-growing production break. His six porn titles, each released in late March, were already winning a substantial audience among Tokyo couples, where his films were first introduced in English with Japanese subtitles. Narc’s catchy, pseudonymous actor name “Tiger Dong” sat well with Japanese viewers and his most popular film was “Sushi Love.” Specifically targeted to the Japanese market, the film featured Narc’s exploits at a sushi bar, where he played a straight-laced employee who takes sporadic breaks from preparing sushi rolls to commit a bewildering variety of sexual acts with every colleague and customer, all of whom are, naturally, comely women happy to spread their legs next to raw fish.

On several Japanese porn sites, Tiger Dong is hailed as “the new, stunningly handsome, American hope for Asian porn stars” and his films are reviewed as “excellent arousal material for couples with troubles.” But one man’s website review warned fans that if their wives watched Tiger Dong’s movies with them, they risked being made to feel inadequate by comparison to the images of the long lasting and well-endowed Tiger Dong. To Narc’s delighted surprise, female college students from Tokyo and Hong Kong began sending him fan mail with naked pictures of themselves attached.

So it was no surprise that Narc, who was beginning to feel like something of a celebrity himself, couldn’t exactly understand what was holding Evan back when it came to Delilah Nakova. “Why don’t you just bone her and get it over with, yo?” he asked.

“Please, Narc. Don’t use the term ‘bone’ when you’re referring to her.”

“What’s the big deal? She’s a honey like any other. A smokin’ hot honey, but a honey no less.”

“Narc, this is Delilah Nakova we’re talking about. She’s not a smokin’ hot honey. She’s heaven on earth. A living angel.”

“You need to chill out on that, bro. ‘Fer-real. Just get it over with and you’ll see that she’s human like the rest of ‘em.”

“But I can’t. I can’t just do that. Sleeping with her would somehow put her in the same class as the scores of women before her.”

“Yeah, it would mean that you liked her enough to sleep with her, just like with the others. Whasso bad about that?”

“But that’s just the point…I like her infinitely more than that…To the point that she’s no longer within my sexual reach.”

“You are buggin’ out, Evan.”

“I know…I know…I’ve got problems,” Evan said, pacing wildly in his apartment with his cordless phone.

“Why don’t you try smokin’ some herbalz with her? That’ll chill you two out some.”

“I can’t do that, Narc. And what if I didn’t perform up to her expectations? It would be a disaster for our relationship, and for me. I mean, what if the sex is bad?”

“Just plug in one of my videos bro. It seems to be working for a lot of other couples, so I don’t see why it couldn’t work for the two of you.”

“Narc, you’re completely fucking warped. How the hell did we stay friends all of these years?”

“Basketball and booty.”

“All right, but can you just try to understand my situation here?”

“I’m tryin’. I think the bottom line is that you’ve got this girl on a mile-high pedestal.”

“No, I don’t, Narc. This has nothing to do with what I think of her. It all really stems from the indisputable fact that she’s the most beautiful, kind, charming, and intelligent woman walking the earth right now.”

“She’s just a honey, Evan. Like all the others you’ve been with.”

“No she’s not, Narc. And that fact is constantly staring at me in small, everyday ways.”

“Like how?”

“Like the fact that we take her limousine everywhere and are always ditching the paparazzi.”

“What else?”

“Like the fact that she’ll call me up from some major film meeting at some snooty ass restaurant like Lotus, inviting me to join her for dinner. I mean, I never dated anyone who even ate regularly at a place like Lotus for God’s sake. And then I can’t even fuckin’ get in because there’s a twenty-minute line monitored by doormen with more attitude than a room full of fashion editors. And then her cell phone doesn’t get reception inside so that she doesn’t know that I’ve been waiting for her outside for fifteen minutes, while some big producer tries to cap her upfront acting fee at five million dollars for her next blockbuster.”

“I hear you, bro. And, now that I’m thinking about it a bit more, with all of that context you just gave me, I think you should just dump her.”

“What do you mean?” Evan asked in alarm.

“You know these celebrity relationships almost never work out. And given that she’s the celebrity in this relationship, she’s gonna be the one dumping you. So I suggest you take the initiative and be the dumper. Before you become the dumpee.”

“You’re suggesting that I dump Delilah Nakova?”

“And look at how impressive it sounds! Doesn’t it sound so much better to be the guy who dumped Delilah Nakova than the guy who got dumped by her?”

“This is crazy.”

“But I still think you should bone her first. I mean, talk about bragging rights! You’d deserve a PhD yo’.”

Evan’s voice grew angry and insulted. “What did I tell you? Don’t ever use the word ‘bone’ again when Delilah is involved. Understand?”

“Yo, I got a lil’ loose with the language. Sorry, bro’. But chill out a little. Have a joint.”

“You’re high right now, aren’t you?” Evan asked, still annoyed but more forgiving, after realizing that Narc had been stoned throughout their call.

“A little puff or three, nothing major. Bro, you could really use some too. With her. It’s the only way to make it happen with all of this baggage you’ve got. Just trust me on this and smoke up some herbalz together, and it’ll be all good. Who knows? Maybe you won’t need to dump her after all, although I really think that’s your best long-term move, given her celebrity status.”

“Thanks, Narc. You’ve been really helpful,” Evan said, as he rolled his eyes and hung up the phone.

Chapter 36
Lost…

The seventeen days that followed Delilah’s return from LA were a torturous and depressing hell for Evan.

He had become convinced that the only way he could possibly be worthy of Delilah Nakova was if he wrote her a screenplay that she absolutely admired. So he wrote feverishly and incessantly, sixteen hours a day, for all seventeen days, trying to produce just the right draft for her to read. Each morning, at 9 a.m., he would quickly review the screenplay that he had finished at 3 a.m. the prior night, and conclude that it was garbage and not true to his novel or what Delilah wanted. And then he would proceed to crank out an entirely new version of the same screenplay so that Evan effectively wrote seventeen versions of the same screenplay in seventeen days. He slept only six hours per day, leaving only two hours per day of “quality time” with Delilah.

When Evan joined Delilah for a private meal, a ride in her limousine, or, on rare occasions, a more public activity, he reassured her that he was making good progress and didn’t need any help working through anything. He did his best to conceal his chronic distress, fearing that she might conclude that he wasn’t up to the task. On the seventh day, when he snapped at her for asking to see his work, she gently offered to have a friend of hers, who was a top Hollywood screenwriter, help him out, or even join the project as a co-writer, if it would help Evan’s progress at all. But that suggestion went to the very root of his insecurity: the fear that he just didn’t have the necessary talent to be truly worthy of Delilah.

And the more he labored under this conviction, the more impossible the challenge seemed, and the less worthy he felt of her. Meanwhile, Delilah was gradually willing to risk being seen with him in public, as she grew into the idea that he was her boyfriend. After all, she reasoned, she really did like him, she had no other male interest at the moment, he was effectively living with her and working intensely on her passion project, and they did occasionally hold hands or kiss lightly. This, she assumed, qualified him as her boyfriend. Evan, on the other hand, was terrified of being seen with her in public, fearing such exposure would prompt people to question why she was with a “nobody” like him, which would, he assumed, cause her to second-guess her decision to be with him.

After Evan’s tenth day of work on the screenplay, Delilah again asked to read what he had written so far. He managed to convince her that he couldn’t let anyone read a work of his that was still in progress. “It just completely stifles my imagination,” he explained. “I get into this self-censoring mode, because then I start anticipating everything the reader might say to me…Just trust me. I can’t show it now. But I promise. I absolutely promise to have a first draft for you in one week.”

“OK, honey. Whatever you’re comfortable with,” she replied, somewhat concerned but unsure how to deal with the unpredictably complicated psychology of a writer at work.

The night before his promised delivery of a first draft, Evan stayed up all night, downing coffee like water and cranking out the seventeenth version of the screenplay. But by 7 a.m., he was only on page fifty-five, and had serious doubts that it was any better than the previous sixteen drafts.

At 7:45 a.m., when Delilah was still soundly asleep, Evan finally printed out a single page for Delilah to read when she woke up: “Dearest Delilah, I can’t be with you anymore. Please don’t call me. I’m sorry.”

He signed his name at the bottom of the note, left it on his pillow, took his belongings, and quietly crept out of her loft.

Chapter 37
…And Found

Every human relationship begins with a coincidence. Even the most fundamental relationship – that of parent and child – begins entirely with a coincidence. The child is produced by whatever serendipity brought its parents together, and the fact that the child was born to its particular parents instead of to another couple is pure happenstance. Thus, children have no choice over the relationship of greatest concern to their existence.

By contrast, friends and lovers choose each other, but even these choices are reactions to whatever random coincidence made the resulting relationship possible. And despite the undeniable fact that all human relations are partly or wholly created by chance, the initial meeting of two lovers always seems more magically coincidental than all other relationships. This feeling may be nothing more than the relief that two lovers share at the fact that they acted wisely when they could have just easily failed to transform luck into love.

And so it was on May 10, 2001, at 8:15 a.m., when Heeb met Hila.

It was a typically cramped subway commute to work that morning. Sammy was wearing his best suit and tie and needed to exit at the Fulton Street stop (rather than his usual Grand Central stop) for an important presentation at his Wall Street client’s corporate headquarters.

From the time Heeb boarded the five train at Eighty-sixth Street until the moment it stopped at Grand Central, he intensely skimmed over fifty pages of notes and summary charts for his presentation, while leaning against a train pole. He made some additional notes to himself in the margin, using his awkwardly large briefcase as a hard surface for writing. At Grand Central station, Heeb almost got off the train by sheer force of habit, but caught himself and remained on the train. He noticed a petite, young woman, five feet two inches tall, with dark curls flowing down to her girlish shoulders. She was standing sideways relative to him, so that he could see only her left side, which had the poise and smoothness of a porcelain ballet doll. She weighed no more than 110 pounds and wore dark sunglasses and a light, cotton pastel green dress.

Heeb looked at her for about twenty seconds before remembering, when the train started to move again, that he had to use every available commute moment to prepare for his presentation.

A few minutes later, as the train was leaving the Fourteenth Street station, a loud, garbled, and largely indecipherable message blasted over the train’s intercom. Heeb looked up, annoyed at the distraction.

The petite woman next to him turned towards Heeb with a confused frown and said, in a light, quasi-French sounding accent, “Do you know what they just said?” Now that her face was turned towards Heeb’s, he could admire her full lips, delicate chin, and ruddy cheeks. He couldn’t resist flirting with her for a moment.