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He was everything I wasn't. A New Yorker from a wealthy family, a film producer who moved easily among famous people, called them by their first names and went to Nobu with them for dinners that cost almost as much as the monthly rent for my rent-controlled apartment.
His home in Pacific Palisades included a pool and guesthouse. His full-time maid adored him. He ordered breakfast in from Cafe Vida as routinely as I might put a letter out for the mailman. He kept horses in Burbank, where he rode the hills of Griffith Park. Trips to New York were frequent. At John F. Kennedy International Airport, a driver met him with a sign bearing his name. In the city, his hometown, he could have navigated the streets and avenues with his eyes closed.
I thought I wanted a piece of all that, not so much the affluence, but the ease with which he moved through the world with money and social strata no deterrence.
Meanwhile I, a minister's daughter from small-town Mississippi, was one of the few people I knew who had moved farther west than Memphis or Dallas. I dreamed of becoming a successful writer but didn't know quite how to get there. When meeting celebrities, I felt timid and awkward. To me, New York was the epitome of sophistication, but I had rarely been there.
Our first meeting, at Starbucks, went smoothly. He drove up in a late-model Lexus SUV, wearing a sport coat and jeans with a T-shirt and clogs and carrying a large shoulder bag. He was short and balding, with beady brown...