He promises to love you forever. You promise to obey. He carries you over the threshold of the nicest room at the Tropicana. You giggle with fake surprise when he throws you onto the bed. And now here comes the second-most-important part. You cannot be a good lay. You must disappoint. If he likes it, he’ll want to do it again. And you can’t do that. You can’t do this more than once. It will break your heart. When he tries to rip your dress off, you have to say, “Stop, Mick, Christ. Get a hold of yourself.” After you take the dress off slowly, you have to let him look at your breasts for as long as he wants to. He has to see every inch of them. He’s been waiting for so long to finally see the ending of that shot in Boute-enTrain. You have to remove all mystery, all intrigue. You make him play with your breasts so long he gets bored. And then you open your legs. You lie there, stiff as a board underneath him. And here is the one part of this you can’t quite come to terms with but you can’t quite avoid, either. He won’t use a condom. And even though women you know have gotten hold of birth control pills, you don’t have them, because you had no need for them until a few days ago when you hatched this plan. You cross your fingers behind your back. You close your eyes. You feel his heavy body fall on top of you, and you know that he is done. You want to cry, because you remember what sex used to mean to you, before. Before you realized how good it could feel, before you discovered what you liked. But you push it out of your mind. You push it all out of your mind. Mick doesn’t say anything afterward.