“I could get you fifteen thousand dollars for this story,” Gina said. “Do you really want to hand him fifteen grand?”
“Well, no.”
“It’s going to come out anyway, so you might as well have control over it and compensation,” she said. “We can make a ton of money and you can have them make the check out to your daughter.”
We were running out of money and nothing had worked the way it was supposed to. And also, my feeling was Fuck you, Mike Moz. I didn’t want him profiting off my life any more than he already had.
I agreed to do an interview, which I did over the phone. I talked about Trump’s promise to get me on The Apprentice but left out his plan to help me once I was on the show. We talked for an hour to this nice girl who asked me things like “Was the sex romantic?” I know even she has been in the media echo chamber, repeatedly telling her story about me telling my story, but I wouldn’t remember her name if you put a gun to my head. When that was done, I got another call from an editor at In Touch.
“You know, this writer put this together,” said the editor, “and it seems so far-fetched. Is this real?”
“Yeah.” What seemed so far-fetched? Was it the spanking? Shark Week? That I had a brain?
“Well, you’re gonna have to take a lie detector test.”
“Are you calling me a liar?”
“We’d like to be sure.”
“Fuck, yeah,” I said, because I hate being called a liar. Later that month, I went to take a lie detector test, and a polygraph expert named Ron Slay asked me about a hundred questions. He later submitted a sworn statement that read like a report card. “Ms. Clifford presented herself well in outward appearance of credibility,” said Slay. “There were no observable indications of intent to deceive.” And then the money shot: “In the opinion of this examiner Ms. Clifford is truthful about having unprotected vaginal intercourse with Donald Trump in July 2006.” Ding, ding, ding—told ya I wasn’t a liar.
Gina called. She was cooking up a plan. “Let this In Touch thing come out,” she said, “and then you’re going to go quiet and everyone’s going to be trying to take a picture of you.”
“Oh, God, no,” I said.
“And then we can sell a photo shoot of you.”
“No photo shoots of me,” I said. “I look so bad.”
Gina wasn’t listening. She was excited about all the TV shows she was going to shop my story to. She said that after the In Touch interview, she had some British tabloid lined up to pay half a million dollars for my story.
I hung up and said to myself, This cannot happen. Mainly because I still hadn’t told Glen. I would think about it in the middle of the night, but come morning I always lost my nerve. Glen’s behavior had become so erratic that I didn’t dare add any additional stress to him. He was talking about us being better off without him, and he wasn’t just talk. One day I was driving with him when he suddenly opened the passenger-side door and made a move to jump out. I grabbed him by the belt, screaming at him as I drove with one hand and slowed down.
I didn’t know what this would do to him. I had been secretly hoping I would somehow fail the lie detector test and the whole story would go away. I’d be out the money, but fifteen thousand dollars was pennies compared to what I would be spending going forward. The only reason I was doing it was because of that “someone else” willing to tell my story.
Finally, I started easing Glen into it, doing some of the worst acting of my entire life.
“Hey, so, I met Donald Trump a long time ago,” I told him one morning while our daughter was napping. Keep going, Stormy. “I had dinner with him.”
“Did you fuck him?” he shot back.
“Nooooo,” I said, like the idea was preposterous. “I mean, he wanted to, so there might be a way that… anyway.” I dropped it. We were all hanging by a thread. I started doing some magical thinking and decided it was in the realm of possibility that Glen would never see an In Touch magazine. Yeah.
Speaking of, my “friends” at In Touch called again. They said they were excited about the story. “Even though you passed the lie detector test,” said the editor, “we have to do due diligence and see if Mr. Trump wants to comment.”
Well, that would make it real for sure. And I couldn’t very well say, “Oh, God, don’t do that.” That wouldn’t be right. I said I understood. When I hung up, I looked at my baby girl lying on the floor.
“Let’s see how this goes,” I said to her.
I was running late for my usual MamaFit class. I had been going religiously, twice a week, for months. It was in a complex of buildings with pre- and postnatal wellness programs. A one-stop shop for birthing ladyparts, with massage, prenatal yoga, mommy-and-me workout classes, and high-end boutiquey things. A lot of doulas and midwives kept offices there. I had found it on Facebook when I asked around for a workout class for new moms.
As I pulled in to the parking lot, I saw this guy walking around. My first thought was, That guy is really hot. He’s someone’s husband. He was looking around, which I took to mean that he was lost in this land of ladies and moms.
I pulled into a space that would leave the passenger side open for me to get my daughter out. I always had her in the backseat on the passenger side, in a rear-facing car seat. I was in a rush, so I got out and ran around the back of the car to get to her. It was really windy, which happens in Vegas, so my hair was blowing in my face as I leaned into the car. My daughter dropped her toy, so I grabbed it and held it in my teeth while I fiddled with her car-seat buckle. I was basically the picture of a frustrated, harried mom.
A man came up behind me. I saw his Converse shoes first. They were navy blue and someone had drawn a star on them. Like a kid, or maybe he doodled. I turned around, taking the toy out of my teeth. It was the hot guy. He was in profile, my side to his. My eyes went up from the cool Converse, and I noticed his jeans looked expensive with a nice wash. He had both hands in his gray hoodie, which also looked expensive, with an asymmetrical zipper at the collar. His hood was down, and by the time I got to the face I was sold. He looked like a cross between Kevin Bacon, Jon Bon Jovi, and Keith Urban. A sharp, angular face like my husband Glen’s, but even better built. He had a very kissable mouth. Like if you were talking to him in a bar, you would be like, “I really just want to touch your lips.”
I thought he was going to ask me how to get to his wife’s Lamaze class. Like, “I’m running late and all of these buildings look alike.” He looked like he belonged to a woman, and nobody in three-hundred-dollar jeans asks you for a dollar. I have seen Vegas crackheads coming up to me. Not this.
“Beautiful little girl you got there,” he said, leaning in to look right at my daughter.
I was readying to say, “Oh, thanks, what building are you looking for?” to save him the trouble of asking me. But he kept going.
“It’d really be a shame if something happened to her mom,” he said, still looking just at her. “Forget the story. Leave Mr. Trump alone.”
He walked away, and it took me a few seconds for his words to even register. His hands stayed in his hoodie pockets. Did he want me to think he had a weapon? I looked around and he was gone. I got my daughter out of the car and I ran inside.