Dedication (28 page)

December 26–December 31, 2005

I flip one of the black European square pillows from the floor against the headboard and prop myself up bent-kneed while Jake scans through his DVD library, retying his pajama pants. “Ready for the next one?” He queues up
Godfather III
on the flat-screen over the mantle.

Tucking the front tails of his flannel shirt between my bare legs I ask, “Shouldn’t we actually leave this room at some point today? Or at least this bed?” I look out at the flakes of snow drifting in the coral radiance of the setting sun.

“Do you have a need not being satisfied?” He lunges onto the mattress, the down duvet puffing around the impact as he bites my thigh. “What do you want?” He leans across me to pull open the mini-fridge under his night table.

“Any more Fresh Samantha?” I crawl onto his back and kiss the sweet saltiness of his neck while gazing down at the dwindling supply of blue-topped Fiji.

“Nope. No worries, I’ll do a kitchen run.” He swivels his head to kiss me, his fingers running under the shirt, mine moving over his body in turn as we start to miss yet another substantial chunk of Coppola’s opus. His cell shudders on the lacquer tabletop for the tenth time this hour.

“Don’t you need to answer that?” I ask, bracing my hands on his chest.

He pulls himself off and slides to the floor where he stands, smiling down at me, his hands resting on my feet.

“What,” I ask, self-conscious.

“Nothing. You just look so right here, all bed-headed and bedworn, beautiful.” The phone continues to rumble its way across the table. He pats my feet. “Fuck ’em.” He crosses to the door. “I haven’t had a day off in three months. They can sweat it for a few.” At the threshold he turns, cocking his head. “Aren’t you having fun?”

“I am.” I wrap my arms around the huge pillow, watching the dusk bask the walls in a lustrous sheen. “I just don’t want to get you fired.”

“Ah, but I’m the one who fires.” He taps the bookcase framing the doorway with his knuckles. “And does kitchen runs, sit tight.”

“Something crunchy!” I call after him as I get up from the tousled silks to pick some lighter holiday viewing from the cabinet. I skip over the foreign films, the Japanime and the large selection of documentaries, looking for anything comedic or maybe holiday-themed. Dispelling the image of my parents probably at this moment nestled in front of
Kind Hearts and Coronets,
I land on Jake’s name and pull the case from the shelf.

“Your concert footage,” I read from the back as he returns, bags of popcorn in his arms, bottles and glasses clamped between his fingers.

“Oh God, yeah.” He tips forward to set down the smoothies and spill the foil bags onto the bedside. “That shouldn’t be there. I try to keep all the work stuff contained in my office. It’s bad feng shui.”

“I want to see your office.”

He gives me a skeptical look as he twists off the cap and pours the lumpy banana-scented concoction into the vintage Happy Meal glasses. “Okay, why?”

“Just ’cause.”

He passes me a full glass and we clink before he chugs his down, slapping it onto the table like it was an empty beer stein, licking the thin yellow film from his upper lip. “Then I will give you the tour.” He gestures to the doorway with a concierge half-bow. “After you. Take a left.”

I set my glass down and follow the long hallway, my bare feet curling away from the cold poured cement.

“Third door on your right.”

I twist the knob and enter into what I’d mistakenly imagined Susan Sharpe would’ve turned her own house into, a shrine to Jake. Part wood-paneled office, part pillow-strewn creative nest, every surface blazens with his image and accomplishments. I cross to the teeming wall opposite the desk where his six multiplatinum albums hang above framed cover art, tour posters, and photographs with everyone from Leonard Cohen to Jay-Z. Over the curved art deco desk is the Gus Van Sant film he had the cameo in and did the soundtrack for.

“Ah, yes, that.” I shake my head at the poster.

“Yeah? What about it?”

“That was
supposed
to have been a raging fiasco. For
months
I looked forward to raging fiasco. But, of course, not so much.”

“I told you—there’s nothing interesting in here.” He takes my hand and tries to pull me out, leaving me hopping on one foot across the Tibetan rug.

“No, wait.” I right myself as I wriggle from his grasp. On one of the teak bookcases is a row of DVDs. “Let’s watch one of these,” I say, sliding out the first one, a collector’s compilation of all his music videos.

“No, God, no,” he laughs. “And watch how awful my hair was? And those mid-’nineties outfits? I am wearing leather pants in one of them. Leather pants! God, no.”

“Come on,” I plead. “It’ll be fun.” I sidle up to him in all my half-nakedness. “I’ve been studiously avoiding all this stuff for years ou can immerse me in your oeuvre.”

“I’ll show you what I want to immerse in you.” He lifts me up and tosses me onto the desk. I squeal as he slides on top, pushing more memorabilia to the floor to shimmy me across the ebonized wood. He slips inside and I ballast the soles of my feet along the scalloped edge, meeting him. Suddenly he stops and peers into my face. “Not because you didn’t like it, right?”

“What?” I ask, breathless.

“You didn’t avoid all my stuff because you don’t think it’s any good?” His face is suddenly awash in the wound I was braced to see at Christmas Eve dinner that never surfaced.

I push myself up on my elbows, with him still inside. “Jake, no, of course, I love your music.”

“You don’t have to say that,” he bites as if I’ve just lied. “It may not be your taste. Neil Strauss said my last album was reductive and atonal.”

“Who?” I ask, now so far from an orgasm.

“The
Times.
”

“Oh.” I inhale sharply, trying to catch up. “But it was a huge hit. So, who cares about him?”

Somehow he is still hard. “We’re not talking about Neil Strauss,” he sneers. “We’re talking about you and if you like what I do.”

“Oh, God,” I struggle to erase the exasperation from my voice. “I love your music. What do you want me to say? I listen to it every day? No. I don’t. You left.”

Suddenly his demeanor abruptly relaxes. His hips start to move again. “But I’m here now.”

I slowly blink awake, starting to renestle my naked frame against Jake’s, when I become aware that something woke me, aware of movement in the dark room. “Jake?” Suddenly there’s a loud crack. I whip up, clutching the covers to my chest. But the man in the jumpsuit prying the Damien Hirst off the wall opposite takes no notice.

“What the fuck?!”
Jake leaps out of bed.
“Joss!”

She appears in the doorway, silhouette backlit by the sunshine streaming down the hall. As she strides into the room and my eyes adjust I realize, that, while Joss-like in every way, down to the clanking Chanel bangles, she is, in fact, not Joss. Her diaphanous blouse billowing behind her, the woman looks down at Jake over her own leather-bound binder. “Well Eden’s certainly not missing out on much, is she?”

Unfazed, Jake plants his muscled legs. “What are you doing here?”

Jocelyn flaps through the door, looking harried. “Gwen,
what
is the fucking rush?” She strides up to her doppelgänger. “Is Eden having an antique emergency? She can’t live without her Chippendale tchotchkes for one week?”

“She is not leaving her invaluable collection in the hands of this maple syrup hick and his outlet mall strumpet.” Gwen glances over at me, gripping the cashmere throw around my bare torso with my elbows. “Wow, you
have
seen the softer side of Sears.”

“Everyone out!”
Jocelyn shouts, her taut body emanating an enormous sound.
“Now!”
She walks Gwen and her orange-suited henchmen to the door, shooting a withering glance back at Jake’s nudity. “When I call, you fucking answer. Put your pants on. This is not a performance day.”

Looking duly slapped, he pulls his jeans up and reaches for a kimono hanging on the back of the closet. “I’ll take care of this. Here.” He tosses the embroidered silk toward the bed as he follows them out, forgetting to shut the door behind him.

“Oh.” I sit for a moment contemplating my next move as the men in jumpsuits carry packing crates back and forth a few feet away. I lean forward, keeping the throw at my breasts and reach to the far corner of the mattress, grasping the tip of the belt loop with my fingernails, and drag it to me swing around to face the curtains and slip into the oversize robe in one quick motion.

“Is she fucking
kidding
?” I am beaconed by Jake’s distress down the hallway, past a parade of life-size black-and-white Meisel nudes of Eden making its way to the front of the apartment—as if the jumpsuited men were marching in protest of naked thin people.

“Jake?” I ask, lifting the long rectangular sleeves to block the rising sun reflecting off the Hudson, lighting a living room transformed into a chaotic obstacle course of crates and straw. The walls are bare, the couch is gone. A mover stomps past carrying a metal pole.

“Is that a—”

“Eden’s.” Jocelyn nods. “Want it?”

“Uh, no…thanks.”

She bellows from her diaphragm again. “GWEN, DON’T FORGET YOUR SKANK’S SKANK ROD!” She turns to Jake, who is looking increasingly panicked as his home is dismantled into bubble-wrap rolls the size of hay bales. “Jake,” her voice lowers, “I will take care of this.” She bends her knees, swiveling her face up into his sight line. “I will take care of everything.” One of her freckled hands squeezes his arm. “I will have them out of here in a few hours and I’ll get Richard McGeehan on the phone and he will have this place redesigned to perfection by the time you get back from Asia. I promise.”

At those two words Jake relaxes. “I’m sorry I went AWOL—it won’t happen again.” He bends down to rub the top of his head against her shoulder. “And make sure none of my midcentury modern
accidentally
wanders into their crates. You’re an angel.”

“Well, you’re a little devil.” She smirks, patting his hair.

All forgiven, Jake lightens. “Breakfast?” He turns and offers me his hand as Joss shouts, “HELLO?” into her headset and I trail his naked back, eager to get away from their
Manchurian Candidate
rapport—and the hordes of strangers who have infested our cloister.

But I follow him instead into a kitchen clearly designed to cater parties. Big parties. Two Viking ranges, two Sub-Zeros, three sinks—all stainless steel, all gleaming, and all populated. A man in a chef uniform is pulling a tray of steaming croissants out of the oven to the salivating coos of two women filling their coffee cups from a massive urn. At the sink a uniformed woman scours the last few days’ dishes as she carries on about the snow with a man in a tracksuit reading the paper over poached fish in a sort of postmodern breakfast nook. And it dawns that, in fact, the cloister is theirs.

“Hey, everyone, this is Kate.” I wave to a chorus of heys.

“Have a good break?” Jake greets the chef in passing. “Dude, are we out of kimchi?” he asks into the fridge before the man can answer.

“Third shelf,” he replies, as I back myself toward the large neoprene-upholstered banquette, feeling my distinct lack of panties.

“Whoa.” I spin into the face of a faux-hawked man in black jeans tight as Capezio leggings.

“Sorry.”

He reaches down to brush off the pristine white tip of his black Converse, even though I am barefoot. “Hey, Jake. Niiice move, man. You dominated Christmas. You had better ratings than Santa.”

“Thanks, dude!” Jake grins, swilling from a glass bottle. “Kate, liquified kimchi?”

I wave a no-thanks as Jocelyn does a glissade through the door, headset framing her like swan feathers. “That was Jann, calling from his holiday in the Maldives.
Rolling Stone
wants the cover—”

“Excellent.”

“With Katie.”

“Kate,” he reminds her.

“Annie Leibovitz’s gonna shoot it—she’s thinking something Byzantine to comment on contemporary iconography in American culture—maybe trick you out like Justinian and Theodora.”

“Okay, I need to step in here,” I start as Jake reaches for the pastry platter, “I don’t think, for me, professionally—”

“NO STARCHES!” shouts the man in the tracksuit.

Jake drops the criminal cruller while the chef slides some aromatic fish/seaweed concoction on the table next to the waiting rainbow fan of today’s periodicals. Jake squeezes the back of my neck before swinging around to his seat.

“Excuse me,” a woman nudges my arm to get to the
Post.

“Sorry.” I pull the robe tighter. “So, as I was saying—”

But before I can finish registering my misgivings Jake unflaps one of the napkins and blows his nose into it. I watch as he then opens the cloth like a hymnal. “Joss?”

“Yes, honey.”

“Can you get Elizabeth on the phone? Tell her there’s still a slight green cast—wait, is this green?” To my horror, Faux-hawk leans over the extended napkin and nods. “And my sweat’s had this, like, tinny smell.” She writes this all down as he speaks. In fact the entire kitchen is rapt. “Tell her I’m out of formula.”