Dani Shapiro

I don't in fact think of my life as my life, but rather as a series of random events that have no logical connection.

I am no longer a student.

I dropped out of Sarah Lawrence after my junior year, supposedly to pursue acting.

And I'm actually doing a pretty good imitation of an actress.

But I'm doing an even better imitation of a mistress.

Lenny's been busy buying me things.

I don't particularly want these things, but they seem to be what Lenny is offering in lieu of himself.

So quite suddenly, overnight really, I find myself driving a black Mercedes convertible.

And just in case I might be mistaken for anything other than a kept woman, I wear a mink coat, a Cartier watch, a Bulgari necklace with an ancient coin at its center.

The Mercedes is a step down from the first car Lenny gave me when we had been going out for a month, a leased Ferrari.

I don't know how to drive a stick shift, so the Ferrari was a bit of a problem.

What I must have looked like, a 20-year-old blonde dressed like Ivana Trump, stalled in traffic, grinding gears, trying to find the point on the clutch to hold that ridiculous car in place.

Lenny rented an apartment on a pretty little street in Greenwich Village, a furnished triplex with a garden, a fireplace, and a bedroom with a four-poster bed.

He called it Our House, as if he didn't have another home with a whole family in it an hour north of the city.

He kept half a dozen suits in the bedroom closet, and a brand-new silk robe hung behind the bathroom door.

There was an entire floor we didn't use, a large, airy children's nursery.

My parents knew that something was up.

They knew I was going out with somebody, but they had no idea who.

I was drifting away from them, and they were letting me go.

One night I invited them over for dinner.