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Gracie thought. Thank God I’m married. I don’t have to worry about a little extra tummy.
    “Where are you going this Christmas?” the ex-stripper asked, jamming an ice pick through the fragile surface of Gracie’s reverie.
    It was March.
    Gracie smiled.The margarita was working its magic.
    G RACIE HAD TURNED LEFT from Sunset onto Rockingham when her cell phone rang, the recorded voice of her daughter repeating itself:
Mommy, your cell phone is ringing. Mommy, your cell phone is ringing.
    The caller ID flashed Kenny’s car phone number.
    “Hello?” Gracie said. “Hello?” she repeated. She cursed; the reception in Brentwood was always bad.
    “Kenny?” All Gracie heard was the maddening staccato hiccups of a broken phone connection.
    “Kenny? I’m losing you,” Gracie said. She wondered why he didn’t wait to talk to her until they were both home. Shehung up and tossed the phone in the passenger seat. And then she worried:
What if he’d been in an accident?
    She was pulling into her driveway when the phone rang again. Three bars showed up on the cell phone. The reception would be clear.
    “Kenny?” Gracie asked. “Is everything all right?”
    “I said”—Kenny’s voice was finally clear—“I want a divorce.”
    The execution of their marriage was performed via Cingular Wireless.

2
 
THE SEVEN STAGES OF A HOLLYWOOD MARRIAGE
     
    K ENNY HAD PROPOSED, as expected, on Valentine’s Day. After all, they were almost three years into his five-year plan, and Gracie knew he wanted to be married before he was thirty-two. They were staying at the Auberge du Soleil in Napa. Gracie knew that something was afoot because Kenny seldom took a day off from work. Even on weekends, he would read ten scripts to be ready with notes on Monday, and watch as many demo reels and videotapes to be up on the talent pool. Kenny and Gracie were living together in his small house in the Palisades, the miniaturized ultimate in
Woman’s Day
suburban living. Kenny hated the little house; Gracie thought it glorious. Kenny had his social (read: work-related social) routine: the business dinners during the week, followed by a breakfast meeting on Saturday, either at the Peninsula in Beverly Hills or Shutters in Santa Monica—there were stringentrules on where to hold breakfast or lunch meetings. Or since he’d taken up golf (“Eisner golfs!”), he’d be up and out early at the Riviera.
    But Sunday morning—that was their time alone. They would make love early in the morning, barely awake, dreamily groping for each other’s body under the covers. Time would evaporate. Troubles were shunted aside. All that existed were lips and skin and Kenny’s boyish scent. Gracie could have lived for days on Kenny’s scent.
    The sex was phenomenal. Gracie knew that she was unlike any other girl Kenny had ever dated. She saw the old pictures, the slender, dynamic blondes clutching a beer can and cigarette in one hand with troublesome ease, the tennis wrinkles already forming around their startling blue eyes. Kenny approached Gracie as though she were the northern tip of Africa, and he the Great White Hunter. She knew he’d never experienced ample thighs, her tangle of hair, her pale, giving skin. Kenny would fall asleep on top of Gracie’s stomach, purring into the well of flesh around her belly button.
    Gracie would run her fingers through his jock-cut hair as he slept. She would stare at the high Spanish ceiling with the watermarks and pass his locks through her fingers like a mantra. She found whole worlds in those moments.
    Hours later, they would rise and jog, unsteady, giddy, down to the beach. If they were very ambitious, they could make it all the way to Venice. But Gracie was not nearly as eager to exercise as Kenny, so often they’d just stop for coffee along the bike path, taking in the sights—overly tan girls in bikinis on roller skates, chubby men in Lycra shorts on blades, babies bouncing uncomfortably in jogging strollers