The Greatest Lie Part 18

The blowjobs on the stern of the Lake Cuomo tour boat, and the fucks on the veranda of our lake front room must have addicted him to me as much as I was addicted to his life style. The next morning, Ronaldo called his agent and declared that he would not report to the Galaxy unless the team also hired his personal assistant, Alessandra. With millions of Euros in agent fees hanging on my fate, it was no surprise that I got a Bordeaux-red biometric Passaporto and H-2B visa. My international criminal career was safely behind me. As the Italian Alessandra, I could safely return home and plot my strategy regain my reputation, and my child.

But I was not his mistress. I was an employee, and he was my boss. He could, of course, make love to me whenever he wanted. But since he had Rafaela, I too could have whomever I chose, as along as it didn't exclude him. And indeed, some of my athletic trysts included not only Ronaldo, but his teammates. But, he insisted, I must take a hiatus from commercial sex while I worked for him. Although the meager salary that the Galaxy offered was hardly compensatory, I agreed.

I needed a career change. I had been working so hard that I had gotten to the point of regarding men as ATM machines with penises attached. With Ronaldo, the pay and the perks came with regularity. And I had an agenda to accomplish in America that was incompatible with whoring. I wanted to become a mother.

The older Thomas Wolfe wrote a brilliantly titled but overrated novel called You Can't Go Home Again. Wolfe was wrong. You can always come back to LA, where the orange grove becomes a parking lot becomes a strip mall becomes a luxury condo hotel in a movie montage of demolition and construction. LA becomes a different town with every passing season, if there actually were seasons in LA. I could come home because, like LA, I had been reborn.

Alessandra Fiumi's doppelgänger, Alexandra Rios, was on a watch list for terrorists because of her suspected role in the assassination of a Thai military intelligence officer on the Burmese border.