"Yup. Buy them, have a crew renovate them, sell them at a profit, or live in them a while, if I'm between movies."

I felt my fingers reaching for my pen and notebook, creeping almost of their own accord. Maxi as real-estate mogul was something I hadn't read in any of the innumerable profiles I'd plowed through. It would make great copy. "Hey," I ventured. "Do you think... I mean, I know they said you were busy, but maybe... could we talk for a few minutes? So I can write my story?"

"Sure," said Maxi, shrugging, and looked around as if realizing for the first time that we were in a bathroom. "Let's get out of here. Want to?"

"Aren't you supposed to be heading to Australia? That's what April said."

Maxi looked exasperated. "I'm not leaving till tomorrow. April's a liar."

"Imagine that," I said.

"No, really... oh. Oh, I see. You're kidding." And she smiled at me. "I forget how people are."

"Well, generally, they're bigger than you."

She sighed, gazed at herself, and dragged deeply on her cigarette. "When I turn forty," she said, "I swear, I'm giving this all up, and I'm going to build a fortress on an island with a moat and electrified fences, and I'm going to let my hair go gray and eat custard until I have fourteen chins."

"That was not," I pointed out, "what you told Mirabella. You told them you wanted to appear in one quality movie a year, and raise your children in a country farmhouse."

She raised an eyebrow. "You read that?"

"I've read everything about you," I told her.

"Lies. All lies," she said, almost cheerfully. "Today, for example. I'm to go to some place called Mooma..."

"Moomba," I corrected.

"... and have drinks with Matt Damon, or Ben Affleck. Or maybe both. And we're supposed to look very secretive and lovey, and somebody's going to call Page 6, and we're to be photographed, and then we're going to go to some restaurant that probably paid April off to have dinner, except of course I can't actually have dinner, because, G.o.d forbid, I ever get photographed with something actually in my mouth, or with my mouth open, or basically in any manner that could give any suggestion that I ever do anything with my mouth besides kiss men..."

"... and smoke."

"Not that, either. The cancer lobby, you know. Which is how I got away from April. Told her I needed a cig."

"So you really want to pa.s.s up drinks and dinner with Ben... or Matt"

"Oh, it doesn't stop there. Then I'm supposed to be seen out dancing at some bar with pigs in its name..."

"Hogs and Heifers?"

"That's it. Dancing there till some unG.o.dly hour, and then, and only then, am I permitted some sleep. And that's after I take off my bra.s.siere and dance on the bar while I'm twirling it over my head."

"Wow. They really, um, arrange all that for you?"

She pulled a crumpled piece of paper out of her pocket. Sure enough: 4 P.M., Moomba; 7 P.M., Tandoor; 11?, Hogs and Heifers. She reached into another pocket and produced a very small black lace Wonderbra. She wrapped the Wonderbra around her hand and started swinging it around her head while pumping her hips in a parody of a party girl's b.u.mp and grind. "See," she said, "they even made me practice. If it was up to me I'd sleep all day..."

"Me, too. And watch Iron Chef."

Maxi looked puzzled. "What's that?"

"Spoken like someone who's never been home alone on a Friday night. It's this TV show where there's this reclusive millionaire, and he's got these three chefs..."

"The Iron Chefs," Maxi guessed.

"Right. And every week they have cooking battles with some challenger chef who comes in, and the eccentric millionaire gives them a theme ingredient that they have to cook with, and half the time it's something that starts off alive, like squid or giant eel..."

Maxi was smiling, and nodding, and looking like she couldn't wait to see the first episode. Or maybe she was just acting, I reminded myself. That was, after all, her job. Maybe she acted this excited and friendly and, well, nice, every time she met someone new, and then forgot they'd ever existed as soon as she moved on to the next movie.

"It's fun," I concluded. "Also free. Cheaper than renting a movie. I taped it last night, and I'm going to watch it when I get home."

"I'm never home on Fridays or Sat.u.r.days," she said sadly.

"Well, I almost always am. Believe me, you're not missing much."

Maxi Ryder grinned at me. "Cannie," she said, "know what I really want to do?"

And that was how I wound up in the Bliss day spa, naked on my belly, next to one of the most acclaimed young movie stars of my generation, talking about my failed love life while a man named Ricardo slathered Active Green Clay Mud all over my back.

Maxi and I had slipped out a back door of the hotel and caught a cab to the spa, where the receptionist very snippily informed us that they were booked all day, were booked for weeks, in fact, until Maxi slipped off her sungla.s.ses and made about three seconds' worth of significant eye contact and the service improved by about 3,000 percent.

"This is so great," I told her, for about the fifth time. And it really was. The bed was cushioned with about half a dozen towels, and each one of them was easily as thick as my comforter. Soothing music played so softly in the background I thought it was a CD, until I'd opened my eyes long enough to see that there was an actual woman with an actual harp in the corner, half-hidden behind a lacy billow of curtains.

Maxi nodded. "Wait until they start with the showers and the salt rub." She closed her eyes. "I'm so tired," she murmured. "All I want to do is sleep."

"I can't sleep," I told her. "I mean, I start, but then I wake up..."

"... and the bed's so empty."

"Well, I actually have a little dog, so the bed isn't empty."

"Oh, I'd love a dog! But I can't. Too much travel."

"You can come hang out with Nifkin any time," I said, knowing that it was highly unlikely that Maxi would be dropping by for an iced cappuccino and a frolic in the dog-c.r.a.p-studded South Philadelphia dog park. Then again, I reasoned, as Ricardo gently rolled me over and started smearing my front, this was pretty unlikely, too.

"So what's next?" I asked. "Are you blowing off your entire agenda?"

"I think I am," she said. "I just want one day and one night to live like a normal person."

This hardly seemed like to the time to point out that normal people did not get to drop a thousand dollars on a single trip to a spa.

"What else do you want to do?"

Maxi considered. "I don't know. It's been so long... what would you do if you had a day to kill in New York?"

"Am I me in this scenario, or am I you?"

"What's the difference?"

"Well, do I have unlimited resources and recognition issues, or am I just plain old me?"

"Let's do plain old you first."

"Hmm. Well, I'd go to the ticket outlet in Times Square and try to get a half-price ticket for a Broadway show tonight. Then I'd go to the Steve Madden store in Chelsea and see what was on sale. And I'd look in all the galleries, and I'd buy six-for-a-dollar barrettes at the flea market on Columbus, and I'd have dinner at Virgil's, and go to the show."

"That sounds fantastic! Let's do it!" Maxi sat straight up, naked, covered in mud, with something thick slicking back her hair, and pulled the cuc.u.mber slices off her eyes. "Where are my shoes?" She looked down at herself. "Where are my clothes?"

"Lie down," I said with a laugh. Maxi lay down again.

"What's Steve Madden?"

"It's a great shoe store. One time I wandered in there, and it was the No Big Feet sale. All the size tens were half-price. I think it was the happiest day of my life, footwear-wise."

"That sounds so great," Maxi said dreamily. "Now, then. What's Virgil's?"

"Barbecue," I said. "They do these great ribs and fried chicken, and biscuits with maple b.u.t.ter... but you're a vegetarian, right?"

"Only on the record," said Maxi. "I love ribs."

"Do you think we can do it? I mean, won't people recognize you? And what about April?" I looked at her shyly. "And... I mean, not to pressure you or anything, but if we could talk about your movie for a little while... so I can write my story, and my editor doesn't kill me."

"But of course," said Maxi grandly. "Ask me anything at all."

"Later," I said. "I don't want to take advantage."

"Oh, go 'head!" She giggled merrily, and started writing my article: "Maxi Ryder is naked in a downtown spa, doused in aromatic extracts, musing on her lost love."

I heaved myself onto one elbow so that I could look at her.

"Do you really want to get into the lost love thing? I mean, that was the one thing that April was a demon about. She only wanted reporters to ask you about your work."

"But the thing about being an actor is that you get to take your life- your pain- and make it work for you." She took what sounded like a deep cleansing breath. "All things serve a purpose," she said. "I know that if I'm ever called upon to play a woman scorned... say, dumped publicly on a talk show... I'll be ready."

"You think that's bad? My ex-boyfriend writes the men's s.e.x column for Moxie."

"Really?" she asked. "I was in Moxie last fall. 'Maxi on Moxie.' It was pretty stupid. Does your ex ever write about you?"

I sighed miserably. "I'm his favorite topic. It's not a lot of fun."

"What?" asked Maxi. "Did he talk about something personal?"

"Yeah," I said. "My weight, for starters."

Maxi sat straight up again. " 'Loving a Larger Woman?' That was you?"

d.a.m.n. Had everyone in the world read that stupid thing?

"That was me."

"Wow." Maxi looked at me- not, I hope, to try to figure out how much I weighed, and whether it could genuinely have been more than Bruce. "I read it on the plane," she said apologetically. "I don't read Moxie, normally, but it was a really long flight, and I got bored, so I read, like, three months' worth"

"You don't have to apologize," I said. "I'm sure a lot of people read it."

She lay down again. "Were you the one who called him the human bidet?" she asked.

Even under the mud, I was blushing again. "Never to his face," I said.

"Well, it could be worse. I got dumped on a Barbara Walters special," said Maxi.

"I know," I said. "I saw."

We lay in silence as the attendants sprayed the mud off of us with a half-dozen hoses. I felt like a very pampered, very exotic pet... that, or a particularly expensive cut of meat. Then we were covered with coa.r.s.e salt, scrubbed down, showered off again, then wrapped in warm robes and sent off for facials.

"I think you had it worse than I did," I reasoned, as we let our clay masks dry. "I mean, when Kevin talked about ending a long relationship, everyone who watched knew that he meant you. But with the article, the only people who knew that C. was me were..."

"Everyone who knew you," said Maxi.

"Yeah. Pretty much." I sighed. Between the seaweed and the salt and the New Age music and the warm and gentle almond-oiled hands of Charles the ma.s.seur, I felt like I was wrapped in some delicious cloud, miles above the world, away from telephones that didn't ring and resentful coworkers and snooty publicists. Away from my weight... so much so that I wasn't even worried what Charles & Company were thinking as they rubbed and oiled and rolled me around. There was just me and the sadness, but even that didn't feel very heavy just then. It just felt there, like my nose, like the scar over my belly b.u.t.ton I got from picking at a chicken pox scab when I was six. Just another part of me.

Maxi grabbed my hand. "We're friends, right?" she said. And I thought, for a moment, that she probably didn't mean it- that this was a version of her quickie, six-week, movie-set friendships. But I didn't care.

I squeezed back. "Yes," I said. "We're friends."

"You know what I think?" Maxi asked me. She raised a single finger-tip. Instantly, there were four more shots of tequila in front of us, each one paid for, no doubt, by a different adoring guy. She picked up a gla.s.s and looked at me. I did the same, and we gulped tequila. I set the gla.s.s down, wincing at the burn. We'd wound up at Hogs and Heifers after all. We'd had a late lunch at Virgil's, where we'd sampled ribs, barbecued chicken, banana pudding, and cheese grits. Then we'd each bought about six pairs of Steve Madden shoes, reasoning that although we might feel fat, our feet didn't. Then it was on to the Beauty Bar, where we'd bought all manner of cosmetics (I stuck mostly to sand-colored eyeshadow and concealing cream. Maxi splurged on everything with glitter). It all added up to much more than I'd planned on spending on either shoes or makeup in the next year, and possibly even the next several years, but I figured, when's the next time I'll be shopping with a movie star?

"You know what I think?" Maxi repeated.

"What's that?"

"I think that we actually have a lot in common. It's the body thing," she said.

I squinted at her. "Huh?"

"We're ruled by our bodies," she p.r.o.nounced, and sipped at a beer that someone had sent over. To me, this sounded very profound. This, perhaps, was because I was profoundly drunk. "You're stuck with a body that you think men don't want..."

"It's a little more than a theory at this point," I said, but Maxi wasn't about to have her monologue interrupted.

"And I'm afraid that if I start eating things I like, I'll stop looking the way I look, and n.o.body will want me. Worse than that," she said, glaring through the cigarette haze, "n.o.body will pay me. So I'm stuck, too. But what we're really trapped by is perceptions. You think you need to lose weight for someone to love you. I think if I gain weight, no one will love me. What we really need," she said, pounding the bar for emphasis, "is to just stop thinking of ourselves as bodies and start thinking of ourselves as people."

I stared at her admiringly. "Tha.s.s very deep."

Maxi took a deep swallow of beer. "Heard it on Oprah."

I did another shot. "Oprah's deep. But I have to say that all things considered, I'd rather be trapped in your body than mine. At least I could wear bikinis."

"But don't you see? We're both in prison. Prisons of Flesh."

I giggled. Maxi looked offended. "What, you don't agree?"

"No," I said, snorting, "I just think that Prisons of Flesh sounds like the name of a p.o.r.no movie."