Free The After Wife by Gigi Levangie Grazer Page A

license whenever the urge to change her birthdate strikes. Usually after a bad audition. The one thing Aimee’s worked for her entire life—The Role: Nicole Kidman in Dead Calm . Jessica Lange in Frances . Julia Roberts in Mystic Pizza —has been denied. She’s put everything aside for that phone call. No boyfriend lasted more than six months, no plant more than three. There’s nothing on her walls in her studio apartment on Ocean. There’s no food in the fridge, just numbing cream and Stoli. She’s never even subscribed to a magazine.
    Aimee has been waiting to go on location for twenty years.
    “What are you thinking?” Aimee asked me.
    “We’re going to have to fit your BMW with cosmetic surgeonGPS,” I said, looking closely at her. “Did you do something with your …?” I touched my earlobes.
    “No,” she said, “Do you think I need to? They belong on an eighty-year-old named Si.”
    “Your earlobes are perfection,” I said. “You could be an earlobe model.”
    “You were so smart to stay on the kind side of the camera,” she said, looking at herself in the rearview mirror. “I look in the mirror now … it’s not the same, is it?”
    “Aim, you are more beautiful now than you ever were,” I said. “Lay off the needles. Pretty soon, I’m going to look like your mother instead of your best friend.”
    “I don’t need help,” I said, as we sat in the waiting room in kimonos and slippers surrounded by Brentwood momsters texting like drunken teens. The spa décor was “if a little Asian influence is good, a lot is money”; bamboo meet bonsai meet giant laughing Buddha head. So far, this spa experience was giving stress-inducing yoga a run for its namaste .
    “Hannah, cut the crap,” Aimee said. “You had an entire conversation with an avocado tree. What’s next? You get engaged to a ficus?”
    “Aimee, hi,” a busty, brunette attendant bounced (her hair extensions bouncing a beat behind) into the waiting room. “So good to see you! Come this way, okay?”
    “How’d your Two and a Half Men audition go?” she asked Aimee, as we followed her bouncy self.
    “You went on a Two and a Half Men audition?” I said.
    “It spoke to me,” Aimee said. “There were a lot of colors to play in the scene.”
    “Aimee, I want you to know,” the attendant said, stopping at a door, “this is my last week.”
    “Oh … are you going back to Ohio?” Aimee asked. “This town is so tough.”
    “No,” the girl said. “Hawaii! I got a part in the new Michael Bay movie. They’re saying I’m the new Megan Fox! I’m sooooo excited!”
    This is how I know Aimee’s a great actress. You couldn’t tell she wanted to eat the girl’s liver with a rusty spoon.
    “There’s an old Megan Fox?” I asked. “She’s like … twelve, right?”
    “I’m so happy for you,” Aimee said.
    “Thank you,” the girl said. “Oh, and good luck to you, too!” God bless the children , I thought. Who speak in exclamation points .
    “Your V-Steam attendant will be here in a moment. You’re going to love this! I just had one this morning. My vagina feels brand-new!” she said, then bounced off. I held Aimee’s arm back as her hand formed a fist.
    “What’s this about her … stuff?” I asked. “I’m not interested in a brand-new vagina. I like my old, pre-owned one.”
    “It’s called a V-Steam. You sit on special stools, they bring in giant bowls with Chinese herbs in hot water—and you steam your vagina.”
    “Like a clambake?”
    “Well, yes, I suppose so,” Aimee said. “A clam, or a mussel.”
    “Aimee, I love you, but I’m not steaming my vagina for you. I don’t even like to say the word ‘vagina.’ I boycotted the Vagina Monologues for ten years.” I pulled my kimono around my waist and got up to leave, stepping over the elegant older man who had taken a seat next to Aimee.
    “Excuse me,” I said. Then, I realized. He was a man, a man wearing a tailored suit and a hat. He