Page 80 of Just Not That Into Billionaires

I tuck a stray bit of hair behind her ear. “I won’t play.”

“What do you mean?”

“Its only purpose is to get people talking,” I say. “I don’t want to play.”

“I so want you to, though,” she says. “Do you think it was a helicopter? They’re saying this isn’t a proper helipad for that.”

“All the better,” I say. “What a bore it would be if this was a proper helipad.”

“You are so obstinate!” She tugs on the lapels of my suitcoat. “Tell me.”

I smile like I know. Which I do. It drives her a little bit crazy and she begs some more. I love the sound of her begging. It’s a drug that I’m quickly getting addicted to.

I should tell. Then again, I should do a lot of things. Like let Francine go. I need to do it. I’ve been in denial of that fact, but what the hell? She’s in the most difficult rehearsals of her life. She needs to relax when she’s not rehearsing, to baby that hurt knee.

I’m starting to suspect that I really am the asshole here.

“Please?”

I lean in. “Heavy-lifting drone.”

Her eyes widen. “You think so?”

I nod.

“Hah!” She links her arm into mine, pleased, and it does something to me. “Nobody guessed that. But then, a drone is just a big robot, isn’t it?”

“Entirely,” I say.

She beams at me.

“What?”

“Helicopter. Whatevs!” She pulls my arm in more tightly, pleased and proud—of me, of us as a team in the world.

Here I am, her captor. If I were her, I wouldn’t show me anything, but Francine shows her emotions, sparkling with feeling, sensitive to the vibrations of the world, all brightness and flow and beauty.

I spent so much of my life trying to contain my emotions—unsuccessfully. I get so full of curiosity, so consumed with the drive to make a thing work, that my world can sometimes collapse to a single point. I’d go at things with too much intensity. I fall in love too desperately.

A few people come over; it’s more of James’s network that adopted me, the sullen nerd that James inexplicably elevated to best friend. Like everyone, they’re curious about my long-lost wife.

We tell our origin story for about the fifth time that night. People have a hard time believing that I was ever even peripherally in the theater. She’s describing elements of the show in humorous terms—the swans, the gunfight expressed in acrobatic ballet. I remind her of other details, and she takes them up and spins them. The show really was ridiculous. Nobody knew that better than us cast members.

She hooks her arm into mine. “If you get him drunk enough he’ll sing ‘Alejandro.’”

“You never give up, do you?” I say to her.

“No way does Benny sing ‘Alejandro,’” somebody says.

“He totally does,” she says, smiling.

She was happy when I sang it. She’d be delighted if I sang it again. It’s such a little thing. What would it cost me to sing it? Nothing. The mechanical action is simple—the mouth forms consonants and vowels.

The problem is that it feels like more than just a song. I’ve resisted singing it for the same reason I’ve resisted saying so many things. The vocal cords vibrate. You string words into one honest sentence. You follow it up with another honest sentence. It should be so easy, but it feels like moving mountains.

Telling her about James was hard like that, though it did feel good after.

People are arguing about what ‘Alejandro’ was really about. Some say it was about Lady Gaga’s old boyfriends. Others say it’s about her gay friends. Still others claim it’s about the civil war in Spain. The talk flows as freely as the champagne fountain, another topiary-involved creation.

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