“Don't read that shit,” Zoe said, furious at what they'd done to her. And then she couldn't help asking. “Did you really buy him a ranch? It's probably bullshit, but I wondered.”
“No, I bought me one. But he's going to help me. I think I've gotten smart enough not to try and drag him into my life. He's happy here. I don't want to spoil that, so I want to spend some time here.”
“That's fair,” Zoe said. “I just wondered. And Tan, I'm sorry.”
“Me too,” Tanya said miserably. “I used to wonder who talks, but I guess they all do. The cops, the press, the nurses, the ambulance drivers, the hairdressers of the world, and the tourists, the realtors, even friends sometimes. It's hopeless. Everyone supplies a tiny little piece of information and then they weave it into a knife and stab you with it, right through the heart.” She wondered how Gordon was feeling. Rotten probably. How could he not? They managed to make everything good look sleazy. She had stayed with him the night before, and cooked dinner for him, and she hadn't even left him till daylight. It wasn't much of a secret now that she was with him. And when she'd gone back to her own cabin, she'd seen the papers. The others were thinking about hiding them, but they knew there was no point. She'd find out eventually, and it was better to face it.
“I can't believe those bastards,” Mary Stuart said in fury to Hartley. He'd experienced it too, though never to that extent. And his success was different from Tanya's. Writers weren't usually devoured by tabloids, except for a few select ones. But Tanya was fair game, as far as they were concerned. And they loved to hate her.
She took the paper with her when she walked back to Gordon's cabin later that morning. The others had gone out for a last ride, and John Kroner had come over to go with them. He was riding with Zoe. Tanya was sorry not to go, but she wanted to be with Gordon. And now she wanted to talk to him about the papers. But the moment she walked in, she knew he'd seen it. There was something pained in his eyes, a kind of embarrassment, and she wondered if it was over between them. She looked at him long and hard. He was sitting on the couch, watching TV and drinking coffee. It had been on the news too, with a picture of him, and the slasher story, but she didn't know that. He couldn't believe how they could distort the truth that way. And as he looked at her, he wondered what she was feeling.
“How's the arm?” she asked, and he moved it a little bit to show her he could. But it wasn't the arm she was worried about now. It was how he felt about her after the story in the paper.
“You paid too much for the ranch,” he said matter-of-factly, and she looked at him as she sat down. He had read the story.
“How do you like making headlines?” she asked, watching his eyes. He hadn't reached out his arm to her yet, or told her he loved her. He was digesting what had happened.
“I can think of better ways to do it, like shooting a reporter. I'd like to.”
“Get used to it,” she said, with a hard edge to her voice. They had done this to her before, but never quite as viciously, or as cruelly. They had demeaned him, they had made her look ridiculous and cheap and like a slut. It was typical of what they did. Life as an object at its finest. “This is what they do all the time, Gordon. They do it constantly. They take everything you do and turn it to shit. They make you look cheap and stupid and they misconstrue everything and misquote you. There is nothing sacred. Can you live with that?”
“No,” he said simply, looking her right in the eye, and her heart stopped. “And I don't want you to either. If that's how they treat you, then I want you to stay here.”
“But they do it here too. Who do you think gave them the story? Everyone. The realtor, the nurses last night, the paramedics, the cops, the grand marshal at the Rodeo. Everyone wants to feel important, and in order to do that they sell my ass out.”
“They can't. I own it,” he said with a glimmer in his eye, and she looked at him ruefully.
“As a matter of fact you do,” she said, wishing it hadn't happened, that they hadn't been dragged through the papers, “but I want you to face the fact that everything we do or I touch is going to end up like this. If I have a baby, they're going to claim it's someone else's because I'm too old to have one, or they'll say I screwed the mailman, if we hire a cleaning woman they're going to say you're fucking her because I'm in L.A., if I buy you a present sometime, they're going to say how much it costs before I even give it to you, and then make you look like a gigolo because you accepted it in the first place. They're going to beat on us every day, in every way they can, and if we have kids, they're going to torture them too. It doesn't matter if I live here, or there, or in Venezuela, that's what my life is, and I want you to see that now, or you're going to hate me later. And even if you look at it and think it won't bother you, understand that after it has happened and happened and every dentist you go to, or dry cleaner, or hooker, God forbid, because I'd kill you,” she added, and he grinned, “but every single person you do business with, with only one or two exceptions, will sell you out and make you look like garbage. And maybe the ninety-third time it happens to you, you'll start to hate me. It's happened to me before. I know what happens. I know how it feels. It erodes your life like cancer. I've lost two husbands to it, and the third one was so corrupt he sold my ass out to the tabloids more than anyone else did.” It was her second husband, the manager, who had done that.
“Sounds like you've had a great life,” he said, she had never told him that much about it, but he suspected it was painful.
“What are you expecting, Tanny?” he asked her sadly, but he could see it in her eyes now. “Are you expecting me to leave now? If you are, you'll be disappointed. I don't scare that easy. And I know what your life is like. I see the tabloids. I know the kind of crap they write. And you're right, it feels different when they write about you. I opened the paper this morning and I wanted to kill someone. But you're not the one who did it. You're the victim, not the asshole.”
“People forget that,” she said unhappily, “and they can't take it out on them. There's nothing you can do to them. It's not even worth suing them, no matter how much they lie, you just sell their papers for them. So in the end, you'll end up hating me because they hurt you.”
“I love you,” he said clearly, as he stood up and looked at her. “I love you. I don't want this to happen to you. And yeah, I'm going to hate it when they say this stuff about me, and there's plenty to say. I'm just a dumb cowboy from Texas, they'll all think I'm after your money. They're going to say you picked me up here. So what? You're real. I'm real. It just means I can't sit on my ass in Wyoming all the time, like I thought. I'll have to spend more time in L.A. protecting you, because I'm sure as hell not going to let you take this crap without me. Maybe we'll both have to commute for a while, until you get tired of it and decide to breed horses with me.”