Deeper Illusions Read online

  I sighed. It really didn’t matter. The damage was done. So we win millions against them – so what? We had millions in the bank, more than we could ever hope to spend in our lifetime. What was a few million more? The point was that everybody now knew all of my deep, dark secrets. Plus, everyone now knew all the dirt in mine and Ryan’s relationship.

  He looked at me. “There is something else.” I nodded. Of course there was something else. There was always something else, it seemed.

  “Rochelle is out on bail.”

  My breath quickened, and I felt my legs buckle as I collapsed on the floor. I realized that I was hyperventilating, and Ryan was rushing to my side. He picked me up, and laid me gently on the couch.

  I finally found my voice. “How is she out? She was a flight risk because of her private jet and her house in Monaco. How could the judge let her out?”

  “They don’t call Schultz the miracle worker for nothing.”

  “I bet money changed hands. Who is the judge?” I hadn’t asked that question before, surprisingly.

  “Judge Reingold.”

  “He has a stellar reputation. I can’t imagine him taking a bribe. So, how did Schultz convince a judge to let her out, I wonder. Also, how is Schultz taking this job? He isn’t licensed in Missouri, I don’t think.”

  Ryan raised his brow. “You know, the pro hac vice thing.”

  I nodded. Out of state attorneys can practice anywhere they wish, as long as they have local counsel overseeing them. I wondered which of my cohorts was willing to do that. Probably any one of them, if the money was right.

  “Let me call Sheldon again. He might be able to fill in more of the details.” At that, he went into the other room to call Sheldon. I could hear him talking through the door.

  After about 45 minutes, he came out. “Ok, here's the deal. Rochelle has an electronic monitoring device. Sheldon thinks that she got bail because she now has a plausible story for what happened. That wasn’t true before.”

  “And? Isn’t it funny that she's now changing her story?

  “One would think. She's spinning, though. Get this – she says that she didn’t tell her story before, because she wanted to protect me, because she loves me. Then, when I got married to you, she made the decision not to protect me anymore.”

  “Geez. Who's going to buy that?”

  “That’s the reason for the PR blitz. This story was buried before she got Schultz involved. Now it's exploded because of all the surrogates out there telling the story.”

  “And the tales grow taller on down the line.”

  “Right.”

  “And this story has all the elements of a juicy tale. The socialite, the son of a prominent billionaire, obsession, jealousy, drugs, suicide attempts, self-mutilation, child molestation. No wonder it's blown up.”

  “About that.” Ryan looked at me expectantly.

  “I don’t want to talk about that right now.”

  He put his hand on my face, and tenderly stroked my cheek. “You can talk to me. You know all about my past. It sounds like you've had similar experiences.”

  “Maybe later. Right now, all I can think of is that woman is on the loose.” I shivered. “I know that we're thousands of miles away from her right now, but her Monaco house isn’t that far away from here.”

  “She has on a monitoring device. I don’t see her coming this way.”

  I looked out the window. Press people with cameras and microphones were hanging around outside, just beyond the gate. “Whatever. Everybody knows that we're here, now, so Rochelle knows, too.”

  Ryan joined me at the window. “Looks like we'll be camping out here for awhile.” He didn’t look entirely unhappy. “Well, we might as well make the best of it, Mrs.Gallagher.”

  “Dude, not now. I'm sorry, but sex is the very last thing on my mind.” At that, I ran into the bathroom and heaved my breakfast into the toilet. Ryan was kneeling on the floor next to me, stroking my back.

  “It's going to be okay,” Ryan said soothingly, stroking my back and playing with my hair. This was usually such a loving, comforting gesture to me, but, right now, his hands just felt like thorns on my back. Scraping my skin. I didn’t want him near me.

  “How can you say that? How're we going to get out of here? What am I going to tell people? God, all those people who know me, and nobody ever knew about my cutting and suicide attempt. Including you.” The tears were burning in my eyes now. I couldn’t look at him. I was so ashamed of him now knowing my secrets.

  Now he was sitting next to me, still naked, his hands on his knees, his knees curled up to his chest. Still meltingly handsome, and I felt more inferior to him than ever. It was bad enough feeling that I didn’t measure up to him when he didn’t know these awful things about me. Now that he knew them, he had to think that I was some sort of a nut. He probably wanted an annulment, I thought, miserably.

  He just watched me, silently, my head still in the toilet. Nothing was coming out anymore, and I knew that nothing else would. But I still couldn’t face him. I hoped that if I stared at the toilet long enough that he eventually would get up and just leave me alone. That was all that I wanted at that point, was to be left alone. But, still, he remained, watching me without a word coming out of his mouth.

  I wondered why he wasn’t getting the hint.

  Finally, I spoke. “Hon, why don’t you go and get dressed. Get me some clothes, too, please.” And take your time about it. I am in no hurry for you to come back.

  He got up without a word, and returned not five minutes later wearing a pair of shorts and a button down. He wordlessly handed me a pair of shorts and a tank top, along with some underwear. I looked up at his pained eyes, then immediately looked away. I couldn’t take those eyes, not now. I felt myself hating him for loving me so much.

  At the same time, I wondered if he did still love me. His eyes said that he did, but how could he? I did awful things to myself, and now the whole world knew about it. Everybody. And it would be a matter of time before all the sordid secrets of our life together was out for public consumption – Ryan’s affair with Nick, all those sex parties where he was the guest of honor, his dad…his mother, for that matter. On and on and on, it was all going to come out, and how would I ever face anyone ever again? These kinds of things were fine behind closed doors, men having oral sex with men, but what happened when everyone I know thought that I married a gay guy? I suddenly hated the world for being so judgmental about it all, just assuming that there were no bisexual men. They were all going to think that I was some sort of beard, because Ryan would never want to be with somebody like me otherwise.

  Nobody was going to understand it.

  Why did I care? I guess because I thought that I had finally attained respectability in the world. I had finally, after all my years of wanting and not having, found somebody who validated me as a special person. And everybody assuming that it was all a lie was more than I could bear.

  And, at the same time, the whole world would now know that I was some kind of a nut, a person who did things to herself to escape the mental anguish of being an outcast, a nobody, a misfit in society. The emotional pain of being invisible was always more than I could ever bear, so I cut myself to feel the physical pain, because the physical pain was so better than the emotional pain. So much better - when I sliced myself, the emotional pain went away. Even for just that short period of time, then it became like an addiction. I felt embarrassed for doing all of that to myself for my piddly little shitty problems, when there were people like Ryan in the world dealing with real shit. Yet he didn’t hate himself nearly as much as I hated myself. He had the emotional resiliency that I could only dream about. People loved him. Everybody loved him. He was the golden boy that I never thought would be attainable.

  And there was another problem – there was something else that I had never told him about, and it was something for which I still felt a deep well of shame. It occurred to me that my cutting problems and suicide attempt we
re mainly due to this incident, even more than the invisibility issue. But I couldn’t tell him about this. I prayed that the media never picked up on it and ran with it. I would be absolutely devastated if it got out.

  But I tamped down my feelings and decided not to bring it up.

  He was still staring at me. I finally got up the courage to look at him right in the eye, and not look away. I knew what he was thinking, without him even saying a word. He wasn’t thinking about the horror that had befallen us – the paparazzi and reporters outside on the street, the world knowing his secrets at last, the fact that Rochelle was on the loose. He was thinking about me, about why I would never tell him how much I really hated myself. All that time, when he confessed one horrible thing after another, and I never said a word.

  I simply stared back at him, willing him to speak.

  Finally I spoke. “How're we going to get out of here?”

  “I called John. He has a helicopter, and he's going to take us from the roof.”

  “To where?”

  “To the plane. Then onto…somewhere. We could stay with Nate for a few days. Nick wouldn’t be safe. I talked to him, and the pap are swarming him as well. They are being very careful not to be on his property, but are on the public street, waiting for him every day.” He stared at the ceiling. “Whatta mess.”

  “The plane. You don’t think that the pap and reporters are going to be there as well?”

  “Yeah, I thought about that. I'm going to have to call Giovanni, a friend from Harvard, to see if he doesn’t mind taking us the next time he heads to New York. He makes business trips there all the time. That would probably be our best bet.” He looked at me. “In the meantime, we have plenty of food and drinks here. But it looks like the honeymoon is literally over.”

  I nodded. “In the meantime, let’s not watch any of those stupid news channels, huh?”

  That night, I woke up in a start. Was it all a bad dream? I nudged Ryan awake. We had gone to bed that night without making love, wearing pajamas. Neither of us reached for the other in bed. I was on one side of the enormous, king-sized bed, he on the other. The distance between us was engulfing me. We were so close before.

  Ryan awoke with a start after I nudged him.

  “I can’t sleep,” I told him. I was shaking.

  He immediately put his arms around me, and I felt comforted. I hoped that we could fight this together, and not let it tear us apart. We were, after all, in this mess together – both of us were going to be humiliated, so we might as well lean on each other. If we could get through this, we could get through anything.

  It was then, when I finally accepted his touch, his affection, that I was able to let loose with the tears that were threatening all day. I cried for hours in his arms, and he held me silently. We were at the point in our relationship when each knew instinctively what the other needed at any given moment. And he knew that, right now, I just needed to be held, so this is what he did.

  Chapter Six

  The next day, we both knew that it was time to act. We had wasted the previous day with our shock and grief of what had intruded into our world. There would be plenty of time for crying when we figured out how to get out of this house and into a place that was safe for us. So, Ryan called Nate that morning to ask if we could stay with him for a little while. Nate agreed, so the plans were set, as soon as Giovanni would be heading to New York. Giovanni agreed to take us there, so that end was set as well.

  I sighed. “So what's the long-term plan? We're just going to be trapped at Nate’s indefinitely?” And Nat’s. Nat, who was in love with Ryan and didn’t even try to hide that fact. Nat, with her perfect body and face, and sweet demeanor. I suddenly felt insecure, which was an odd feeling for me in our relationship. I always felt insecure about myself, but I never felt insecure about how he felt about me. But that was changing with yesterday’s devastating revelation.

  “No, obviously that is not a viable plan. But I hope that we can think more clearly once we get to safety. I don’t think that either of us is going to think clearly with those wolves outside the door.”

  Taking a deep breath, I said “Well, I might as well turn on my phone. God, I dread this.” And I turned on the phone to see that it had, indeed, blown up. 166 missed calls in one day, 25 of them from my mother alone. I looked at the voice mails, and saw increasingly frantic messages from her. Also messages from my friends. But mainly the calls were from various news stations around the globe, and people calling for comments for the tabloids.

  What was I going to tell everybody?

  I called my mother. “Hey. Listen, and don’t talk. I just wanted to let you know that I'm ok. I don’t want to talk about it¸ so please don’t ask me to.”

  “Well, I'm glad that you are alright. That’s all I really wanted to know.”

  “Thanks. Ryan and I are going to New York for an indefinite period of time.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Well, we won’t be there too long. We're staying with one of Ryan’s best friends, who’s a Goldman banker. So, obviously we can’t move in there. We just need to stay there to figure out what to do.”

  “What is all this talk about you hurting yourself? I never knew about that.”

  “Nobody did. Listen, I don’t want to talk about it, please.”

  She persisted in asking. She was always like that, can never leave well enough alone. I finally ended up hanging up on her.

  I didn’t call anybody else back who called me. I was drained enough talking to her.

  Meanwhile, Giovanni contacted Ryan. He would be heading to New York in a week. A week! A week here, with them outside the door like hungry wolves. That seemed unbearable. And I could not avoid Ryan’s eyes. Imploring me to open up to him. That has always been the problem in our relationship – I was always so guarded with him, and it took a long time for me to trust and break down the walls. Now, I was expected to bare my soul to him, something that I had, thus far, not been willing to do. But I knew that it was going to come out while we were here in this beautiful home, which had become our prison, because there was no escaping it.

  We headed to the kitchen, and Ryan opened up a bottle of his wine. Pouring me a glass, he said “let’s build a fire and drink this wine.”

  I nodded. The implication was clear – he wanted answers from me, although he didn’t want to come right out and ask me for them.

  We took our wine in front of the fire, and Ryan laid down on the blanket. I fingered my glass lightly, then gulped down the wine. I gave him the glass to refill, and he did so. I sipped this.

  Taking a huge breath, I started. “Well, I guess you want answers.”

  “Only as much as you're willing to tell.”

  “Uh. Well, I have always had an issue with myself,” I started. Then I thought better of it. “This is so embarrassing. I mean, you – you had real problems. Me, I don’t have anything like that in my past. No sexual abuse, no schizophrenic mother, none of that.”

  “So, what does that mean? Just because you didn’t have tragic circumstances doesn't mean that you don’t have a reason to have issues.” He stroked my arm lightly. “So, please, stop being embarrassed. I'm your husband. I love you more than I've ever loved anybody. Nothing that you can say to me will make me think any less of you.”

  I looked at my red diamond, and felt reassured. The red diamond was symbolic of how deeply this man felt for me. The very rarest diamond in the world, and Ryan made sure that this was the stone that was set in the ring that he gave to me.

  I knew that he loved me, so why was this so hard?

  I gulped down the rest of the wine, and held out the glass expectantly. Ryan was still on his first glass.

  I sighed. “Well, there really wasn’t that much to it. I was pretty much invisible my whole life to just about everybody. No, that wasn’t true. I was invisible to most everybody, yet was bullied as well. I just never fit in.” Ryan was still looking at me, still stroking my arm lovingly, so I
felt encouraged to go on.

  “I never fit in,” I repeated. “And the hard thing was, I wanted to fit in. I tried out for cheerleader, but was humiliated. The school play - humiliated. Always the last to be picked in gym class, the last to be asked to dance in gym class. God, on the day that everybody was finding dance partners in gym class, I made sure that I looked as good as I could. I'll never forget the look on the face of the guy who was stuck with me – he was stuck with me, because I was literally the last one picked. His look of revulsion…” I took a deep breath. “Never got invited to a party, never got invited to a dance, never had a date, missed my prom because nobody ever asked. A social zero.” I smiled at Ryan. “Somebody like you, in high school, I could only dream about.”

  He was looking at me, his eyes penetrating. I still saw vast reservoirs of love in those eyes. He didn’t seem revolted or horrified that he had ended up with such a misfit. So, I decided to keep going. “I got to college, and things changed. I had freedom, and I took it. I drank myself into a stupor every night, and slept with way too many men. That's the way that it was – the alcohol gave me courage and self-esteem, which I didn’t have sober. And it made me way too easy. I was always craving love, always wanting somebody to validate me, to make me feel that I existed, that I was not invisible. But all these men ever wanted was an easy lay. So, you see, there was a bit of cross-purposes there.” I smiled ruefully. Then I suddenly remembered that this was, ironically, how I met Ryan – I went up and talked to him, liquid courage guiding the way, and we ended up in bed together that night.

  So, the drunken one-night stand strategy finally paid off.

  Ryan sipped his wine, then put his hand in my hair, smoothing back my bangs. He kissed me lightly on the forehead.

  I continued. “So, I got depressed. I felt hopeless, and my depression became this deep well. The only thing that brought me out of it was cutting myself.” I looked at my hand, which was shaking violently. “Uh, maybe we should switch to white wine. I'm afraid I’m going to spill this wine on the rug.” At that, Ryan nodded, and was on his feet. He appeared in a few minutes, a bottle of Pinot Grigio in his hand. He poured me a glass and laid back down.