American Outlaw - Jesse James [117]
The after-parties were even more painful. No matter how much I tried otherwise, I still felt like Jed Clampett there, stuffed into a suit, hoping no one would unmask the fraud that was me. If there was an unoccupied corner in the room, I’d quickly wedge myself into it, smiling weakly, waiting for the night to extinguish itself.
“Jesse James!” cried a drunk producer at one of these many shindigs. He looked nearly ecstatic to have found me. “How the hell are you?”
“Awesome,” I said guardedly.
“Boy, I’ve been thinking about you a lot! I’ve been talking with my wife about restoring this vintage motorcycle—you might not know it from looking at me, but I’m a total bike freak, man!”
I tried not to express my total lack of enthusiasm for Sandy’s scene, because it was always her night, and the last thing I wanted to do was throw a damper on her mood. But she was a pretty perceptive person. She could always see right through me.
“You hated it.”
“What?” I said, on the drive home. “That’s not true. I had a pretty good time.”
Sandy laughed. “Come on, be honest: you were miserable.”
“Miserable’s a strong word. More like . . . I hoped I would die?”
“I know those events can be a bit stuffy,” Sandy said, patting my leg. “I’m sorry, Jesse.”
“I just feel like . . . well, everyone’s looking at me. I’m completely out of place there.”
We looked at each other for a second, then both grinned.
“We’re such an unlikely pair,” I said.
“I love it,” Sandy said. “Wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Sometimes I wondered if she truly felt that way, though.
I mean, if I had been her, and I’d married some welder dude, I would have hoped to transform me, at least a tiny bit. My idea of a good time was to shoot guns, watch NASCAR, and babble about custom bikes. Truly, that’s what made me happy. It couldn’t have pleased Sandy all the time.
“Let’s get away together,” she proposed. “Just the two of us. I have a friend who’ll let us stay at her villa in Cabo San Lucas.”
Lounging around in a private villa in Mexico with a hot movie star wife probably sounds pretty good to the average guy on the street. And hell, I wasn’t complaining. But every flight we took had to be a total military operation, because of Sandy’s fame and the security it demanded. And then, once we’d successfully made it to our vacation house unobserved, it was hard to leave. There was peace in that villa, but sometimes I felt caged.
“Where are you headed?”
“I think I’ll go take a drive. Explore Cabo.”
“Are you going to take a map?”
“I’ll live dangerously.”
“Okay,” said Sandy, laughing. “You know what? I’ll come with you.”
We showered, changed, then headed out to our rental jeep.
“I’m just going to get my cell phone,” she said apologetically. “Just in case we get lost.”
I sat in the car, jaw clenched, trying not to be frustrated. Next she’d be telling me to wear my seat belt.
As I waited for Sandy, I popped one of the CDs I’d brought into the car stereo. Circle Jerks blasted out at full volume, abrasive and mean.
“All set,” Sandy said, opening the passenger-side door and slipping into her seat. “Hey, wow. That’s a bit much for these eardrums. Can you lower the volume, please?”
I lowered it. Of course I did. That’s what any husband would do for his high-class wife. She wasn’t some whore in the back of a Daytona nightclub: she was a lady, with gentler tastes. But in the back of my mind, I couldn’t help but feel kind of cheated. It was like I was Huckleberry Finn or something, when Widow Douglas decides to adopt him. They were “sivilizing” me, and I didn’t know how to make them stop.
In the space of a few scant years, I’d gone from the hellacious pandemonium of an ex-porn star who didn’t even know herself what her next move would be, to a calm, steady, and predictable wife, for whom a night at home watching a new-release DVD constituted