Manwhore (Manwhore #1)(24)

“It really bothers me, seeing all these pictures, because a lot of these girls go to him, he doesn’t ask them to come cling to him,” I tell Gina.

“Dude, Saint is big on whoring around. Must be all the attention he never got as a kid.”

“More like he’s a healthy male and women just throw themselves at him. I’ve seen YouTube videos dedicated to him, of women stripping or washing their cars, offering to come wash his. In fact, look at this. . . .”

We watch a video of a woman with no bra wetting her T-shirt and smiling. “Saint, I’ll wash your cars any day, and clean your pipes, too.”

We burst out laughing.

“He’s got a huge car collection, apparently. There’s a picture, see? There are like thirty cars here. Very rare ones. He’s got a thousand and one toys. Doesn’t that say something?”

“What?” Gina asks.

“When you have everything and nothing is ever enough?”

“How should we know? We barely made rent this month.”

“Come on, be serious. When nothing is ever enough, on some hidden level of his psyche there’s something about this man’s life that’s absolutely empty. I see him work, Gina; it’s like he . . . is obsessed with it. Like it helps him block out something else.”

“What?”

“Forget it.”

She laughs. “You’re so deep, Rachel. Such a philosopher. Send him the bill and save him the therapist.”

I continue with my links and end up viewing a video of him next to his father taken when his father refused his mother’s last wish to give Saint a seat on the board of his father’s company.

“The only good thing he has going for him is his name,” his father says to a reporter who asked why Malcolm had not been allowed into the family business. Malcolm doesn’t flinch. He smiles ironically, says nothing, just keeps himself in check. This video only made everyone cheer on Malcolm rather than his dad. Still, did it damage his psyche in some way?

“What an *,” Gina says late that afternoon when I watch the video one more time, this time watching only Saint’s expression, revealing nothing—like he expected the blow and was braced for it.

“No wonder Saint’s an *—he was bred like that.”

“He’s not an *.”

“Excuse me?”

“He’s not an *,” I say casually.

“Who’s touchy?!”

“I’m not touchy. I’m just stating a fact.”

“Okay. You don’t like what we have in the fridge, when it was your turn to stock us for the week; you’re obsessed with that computer; you have circles under your eyes; you’re wearing an E for exposé on your forehead and an X on your ass screaming at Saint to f*ck you right there. You’re crushing on him, aren’t you?”

“No.”

“Well good, ’cause you’ve wanted this your whole life. Look up all the pictures of women all over him. Hell, with their tits almost in his face. That is the guy you like?”

I stare at the YouTube video. “I like this one,” I mumble as she leaves, then I scowl at myself. No, you don’t like him, Rachel. You want to be fair—you want to be truthful.

I go grab my sleeping bag for the End the Violence campout.

My friends think that a campout won’t achieve much on its own, really, but I feel good every time I do it, so I do it often, and when my life is unsteady, I do it even more because I feel safer doing it. Focusing on someone else is the only way I know of to forget about your own little pains—but I didn’t have a lot of those pains. I had a great life. Have.

My upbringing was different than his. I wasn’t told, “You’re reckless; the only good thing you’ve got going for you is your name.” My mother gave me so much love that here I am, taking on projects that might be a little too big for me, just because I’m crazy enough to think that I can handle them.

I’m so worried about doing justice to the piece, I need to touch base with her right now. “Hey, Momma.”

“Oh, hey, sweetheart. What are you up to? Are you on your way to the campout?”

“Yes, I just wanted to see what you were up to. Do you need anything?”

I can always tell when my mother is feeling all right or when she’s faking it. I’m relieved that she sounds genuinely happy today.

“I’m quite all right, Rachel. Last I checked, I was still the mother in this relationship,” she even teases me. “But how is my girl?”

“I’m good.” I can hear her favorite Cat Stevens CD playing in the background. “I’ll text you from work tomorrow. Take your insulin, okay?” I wait for her to say okay, and then I whisper softly, “I love you, Mom.”

“Rachel! Wait. Is something wrong?”

I hesitate. “What do you mean?” Oh wow, so now my voice is affected? I always tell her that I love her, so that can’t have caused her concern.

“Nothing is wrong, I’m fabulous. I’m writing a new piece, I’ll tell you all about it soon.”

A silence. “Are you sure?”

Shit, she suspects something.

It’s futile to tell her, not to worry about me, because then she’ll tell me not to worry about her, and I love her too much to do that. But I loathe having her worry over nothing.