If Wil S. Hylton were to write a postscript to his twin articles on Charlize Theron that appeared in Esquire, one of which was the cover story in November 1999, and one of which appears in the current, May 2001, issue, it might, we imagine, sound something like this:

It's almost over now, the article, and Charlize Theron is happy. As she sits and considers the second of my two profiles, cradling a Rolling Rock, flipping through the pages, she points her clear grey eyes at what it is that she is looking at, as she so often does with her clear, grey eyes. And what it is that she is looking at is an article, my article, the second article I've written about her. In the first article, we hardly knew each other, and had never met before, but now we are fast friends, me, the writer, and her, the starlet, inescapable, ripe, in my apartment, her laugh dancing on the air like the bells of a wind chime on the terrace of a Hollywood Hills mansion with the most exquisite view of Los Angeles that anyone has ever seen. A view, of course, that has to include Charlize Theron.

When I first interviewed her, Charlize, I noted that her haircut was "that particular tousled, spiky, messy sort of haircut that creates the illusion that you and she, very recently, have had passionate sex." She has a new haircut now, longer, curlier, the kind of longer, curlier, bouncy sort of haircut that creates the illusion that you and she, very recently, have had passionate sex. But she is tired now. After enduring two grueling photo shoots for two Esquire covers within two years, and having starred in no fewer than 145 movies in the last twenty-four months, 138 of which happened only in my mind, playing only for me, she is ready for a break. She knew all this would happen. The stardom. The fame. The money. She saw it all as clearly as a man might see a thing that is in front of him, assuming that he is not blind. And she laughs. It is her laugh, this laugh she laughs, the one she usually uses when laughing, for it belongs to her. "Look at how long my tongue is in this shot," she squeals, a squeal that sounds like tires on pavement intertwined with the first cry of a newborn baby welcoming the world. A world that includes Charlize Theron.

"My tongue is so long!" she says again, her lips parting to release the words, lips that shimmer and quiver as though they are the lips of someone who has just given you the best blowjob you have ever received in your life. These are the lips that speak the words that are heard in the movies that star Charlize Theron, movies that recall the best work of Katharine Hepburn and Ingrid Bergman and Rita Hayworth, yet surpass them as easily as a man on a motorcycle would surpass a child on a tricycle. Lips that have said "yes" to project after project after project in the last three years, projects that have included The Cider House Rules. She has said yes, yes, yes, yes so many times that she has mastered the word, mastered its pronunciation, mastered the saying of it, despite the fact that her first language is Afrikaans.

But now it is time for her to say no. Or, rather, goodbye. For she's leaving now, leaving, leaving to walk out to her car on her pendular legs, legs that swing like swings on a swing set, and soon she is gone out of my apartment and into the parking lot, where she inserts her key into her black Mercedes, but not before deactivating the car alarm, which makes a sort of "boop-boop" sound, the same sort of sound that your heart would make if it were hooked to a monitoring machine and you were in the hospital and Charlize Theron walked in and gave you the best blowjob you have ever received in your life. And there, with cars whining by on the L.A. freeways, whispering the name "Charlize Theron" as their tires rub the road, the dwindling California sun hanging bloated and orange and rust-colored in the sky, trembling overhead and backlighting her so that her hair shines like a nimbus of heavenly light, she turns to you and says, in her voice, that voice she uses to say things: "Thanks for not mentioning The Astronaut's Wife."

No, Charlize. Thank you. Thank you, Charlize. Thank you.