You’re smoking a cigar, I sip an espresso martini, even though you don’t smoke and I don’t drink. I’m in a pink marabou robe and red lipstick. Blue eyeshadow. My hair waterfalls down my shoulders so the ends just cover my nipples, like a mermaid. In this motel, the motel with the heart-shaped bed, I’m a blonde. You wear black satin shorts and baby oil. My eyelashes are so heavy they slow my blinking. A bowl of maraschino cherries on ice sits on the nightstand. Everything is carpeted. Velvet and shag. Everything smells like roses. The telephone is a pair of plastic lips. There’s a porno playing on the TV where a fully clothed man is pulling a woman’s thong over her hips and feeling her pubic hair. She moans a little. “I love you,” you say to me. “You do?” I ask. But of course you do—we’re at the motel with the heart-shaped bed. That’s the rule. That’s why we’re here, why I’ve brought you. We make love. I trace my long acrylics down your chest. You weep from the tenderness. After, on the balcony that looks out over the pool, we watch the stars and a coyote howls. You finish your cigar and I smoke one of those long, skinny things from a brass stem. You tell me how soft I am. The audience starts applauding. I can always hear them before you can. They’re begging for an encore, a delay to final curtain call. We are good at playing our parts—that’s why they keep coming back. When you say you love me again I almost believe it.