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want to go back to the hotel? Because I was getting kind of bored anyway."
     I knew she was being polite - she was probably far from bored - but I did want to leave. I didn't want the guy to catch up with me and start talking phone numbers and first names. For the first time in my life I'd done something really and truly reckless and I didn't want it turning into something mundane.
     We went back to the hotel and ordered a room-service midnight feast - shrimp and avocado, French bread and local artisan brie and three kinds of ice cream. Sex had always made me hungry; sex like that left me ravenous. I sat and stuffed my face while Courtney pecked at an avocado and went back and forth to the balcony to smoke. "You should eat something," I said, waving the ice cream spoon at her. "Come on - it's pistachio. Your favorite."
     She sat down and took a few perfunctory nibbles. Her make-up had stayed true and the sweeps of pink shadow over her lids made her eyes look as green as the ice cream. "I guess I can afford the calories just this once."
     I didn't say anything because everything I could think of to say sounded like a nag; one of the needly things Cassandra came out with when she was trying to push someone's buttons. But the more I looked at Courtney my gaze kept lingering on her skinny little wrists and her child-size hips. "Is it really that bad?" I said.
     "Is what that bad?"
     "The diets. The weight-watching."
     She dug deep into her ice cream. "God yes," she said, rolling her eyes in a way that was so much my Courtney that I relaxed. "It's insane. Worse than it ever was. You hear of girls eating tissue paper and passing out five times a day."
     "You're kidding."
     She shook her head. "I met this Russian girl the other week. Seems to be a lot of them lately; they're all scary beautiful. She had one of the most amazing looks I'd ever seen - cheekbones like razors, big dark Bambi eyes. Only they weren't using her and I couldn't understand why. Then someone said it was because of her legs."
     "What was wrong with her legs?" I asked, unable to imagine what could be the problem. I thought it was an entry requirement to modeling that you had to have legs that went all the way up to Canada.
     "Scabs," said Courtney.
     "Scabs?"
     "Scabs. Her knees looked like mine used to when I was in elementary school and learning to ride a bike. That was how often she fainted."
     "Oh my God, Courtney - that's horrible."
     "That's nothing. There's thin and then there's Paris-thin. Someone told me that the fit-models spend most of their free time in the hospital hooked up to IVs."
     "They what?" It all sounded like madness to me. Most of the clothes I saw coming down the catwalk were nothing I could ever imagine anyone wanting to wear. "That's insane."
     "It's nuts," agreed Courtney. "And nobody says a thing. They live in a world where a size four is considered 'curvy'. Sometimes it can be difficult not to let that stuff get into your head. You start looking in the mirror and thinking you look fat."
     "You're not fat," I said. "You're not even close to fat. Don't go down that road, please."
     "I'm not," she said, with a flash of defensiveness. "I know exactly what I'm doing."
     There was an uncomfortable silence. She buried the spoon in the ice cream and left it there. "I'm sorry," she said, with a sigh. "I didn't mean to snap. It's just I've heard it so many times from my mom - you have no idea."
     "Sure," I said, squeezing her hand. "It can't be easy."
     "It's not. It's like living on Mars for weeks at a time and coming back and people asking you why you don't just take your space suit off and frolic merrily on the fucking surface, you know? They have no conception of how it works up there, or how goddamn alien it all is." She rubbed her temples. "Oh God - I should never have had that fourth martini. I need some air."
     She went off to the balcony again and I thought about telling her about what I'd done. Once upon a time I