“Yes, that’s my official answer. And you are so getting laid before and after the Crüe concert.”
“You are a beautiful and mysterious woman, Portia Kane.”
“You make me believe in good men, Chuck Bass,” she says, but her voice quivers and she starts crying again. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I say, even though I’m more confused than I thought possible.
The inside of Mohegan Sun looks like a gigantic futuristic tepee in outer space—like Native Americans built the starship Enterprise and docked it on Connecticut’s Thames River.
Strolling around the slot machines and blackjack tables are many Jersey Shore–type guys with steroid-inflated muscles and Ed Hardy shirts, but there are also Crüe fans in Harley-Davidson shirts and old concert T-shirts—the band on motorcycles for the Girls, Girls, Girls album is what I see most, but I also spot some Theatre of Pain tragedy and comedy masks and good old upside-down pentagrams on shirts too, with the band’s teased-out hair making them look like they were the inspiration for the costumes in the musical Cats. The original look, the Mötley Crüe I loved best.
“Look at the moons on the carpet,” Portia says, pointing down at our feet as we pass a poker pit. “This one is the Moon of Strawberries.”
I look down at a ten-foot-wide circle with three strawberries in it.
“There are thirteen moons in the Indian year,” she says.
“How do you know that?”
“I read it on the wall back there,” she says. “Look, there’s a robotic coyote up on that fake mountain. Its ears are twitching!”
“Weird!”
“Kind of awesome,” she says, and loops her arm through mine, pulling herself real close to me. “Let’s go fuck, Chuck.”
“If you insist,” I say, playing the role, because she’s smiling and seems to be enjoying herself again.
The whole time we check in, I keep wondering if her putting the ring on her chain is weird. But I keep telling myself not to go down rabbit holes.
She’s with you.
Smart women like Portia don’t live with men they don’t love.
Portia said that she would put the ring on her finger in the future, when she is ready.
Trust her.
She lived with her first husband and she HATED him, genius.
Stop it.
Don’t fuck this up.
“Where are you?” Portia says.
I look around. “I’m in the elevator with you.”
She kisses me, looks up into my eyes, and says, “You ready to get lucky?”
“Always,” I say. “We have good seats. About fifteen feet off the corner of the stage. I hear they throw fake blood on the people in the front row, so I decided to go with—”
“Everything is perfect,” she says, and then kisses me again. “Exactly as I want it. You thought of everything. Everything.”
The room overlooks the river, and it’s not bad, but a little average for what I paid, although I’m no expert on hotel rooms.
“You’ve probably stayed in better with your husband, right?” I say.
Why the hell did you just say that?
“He never made me this happy—ever,” she says, and when I look into her eyes I know she’s telling the truth, but it doesn’t make me feel any better, knowing that I will never be able to give her what her husband did. I mean, first-grade teachers aren’t ever going to be multimillionaires.
She’s taking off my clothes now, and then I’m on the bed naked and she’s running her mane of hair up and down my body, which tickles in all the right ways. Portia is way better at sex than I am, which makes me feel rather uncomfortable, because she had to learn all the sex stuff somewhere.
Don’t think about that.
Don’t fuck this up.
It’s already fucked up, I think as the ring around her neck sweeps up and down my abdomen along with her hair and the nun’s little silver Jesus Christ on the cross.
Just be here.
Just be happy.
You’ve made it this far.
My cell phone starts to ring.
I ignore it at first, but then I realize it must be my nephew. “I have to make sure it’s not Tommy,” I say. “I promised I’d pick up if he called.”
She gives me a disappointed look, but nods.
“Tommy?” I say into the phone. He tells me he’s okay, and I confirm that we are indeed at the hotel.
Portia is doing a very titillating striptease over by the window, the afternoon sun dancing up and down her naked skin.
Tommy lets me know that Johnny Rotten is there, and that his mom sent him to his room. “They’re kissing again.”
“Yuck,” I say.
He asks if Portia is his aunt yet, and I say, “Still working on it,” before I hang up.
When I return my attention to Portia, she says, “Nothing turns me on more than an uncle who breaks away from hot steamy sex to make sure his nephew is emotionally taken care of.”
“I’m sorry, but—”
“I’m serious,” she says, and then she takes a wild leap and lands on top of me.
“You pounce like a puma.”
“Watched a lot of metal videos when I was a little girl,” she says, and before long I’m inside her, and she’s moving on top of me, and I feel hot, overwhelmed, in love, like I don’t deserve this, like I’d do anything to keep it going—and I realize that I haven’t loved anything or anyone like this since I was on junk, that Portia is my new fix, and not just the sex, which is amazing, but just spending time with her, seeing her smile, talking with her.