Glamorama (24 page)

Backstage: “Entertainment Tonight,” MTV News, AJ Hammer from VH1, “The McLaughlin Group,” “Fashion File” and dozens of other TV crews push through the tents, which are so clogged no one can really move, overhead microphones towering over the crowd on long poles. It’s freezing backstage even with all the lights from the video crews, and huge clouds of secondhand smoke are billowing over the crowd. A long table is covered with white roses and Skyy martinis and bottles of Moët and shrimp and cheese straws and hot dogs and bowls of jumbo strawberries. Old B-52 records blare, followed by Happy Mondays and then Pet Shop Boys, and Boris Beynet and Mickey Hardt are dancing. Hairstylists, makeup artists, mid-level transvestites, department store presidents, florists, buyers from London or Asia or Europe, are all running around, being chased by Susan Sarandon’s kids. Spike Lee shows up along with Julian Schnabel, Yasmeen Ghauri Nadege, LL Cool J, Isabella Rossellini and Richard Tyler.

I’m trying to meet the vice president of casting and talent at Sony but too many retailers and armies of associates and various editors with what seems like hundreds of cameras and microphones hunched over them keep pushing through the tents, relegating me to the boyfriends-and-male-models-sitting-around-slack-jawed corner, some of them already lacing up their Rollerblades, but then I’m introduced to Blaine Trump’s cook, Deke Haylon, by David Arquette and Billy Baldwin. A small enclave consisting of Michael Gross, Linda Wachner, Douglas Keeve, Oribe and Jeanne Beker is talking about wanting to go to the club’s opening tonight but everyone’s weighing the consequences of skipping the
Vogue
dinner. I bum a Marlboro from Drew Barrymore.

Then Jason Kanner and David, the owner of Boss Model, both tell me they had a wild time hanging with me at Pravda the other night and I just shrug “whatever” and struggle over to Chloe’s makeup table, passing Damien, who has a cigar in one hand and Alison Poole in the other, her sunglasses still on, angling for photo ops. I open Chloe’s bag
while she’s being interviewed by Mike Wallace and search her date-book for Lauren Hynde’s address, which I find and then take $150 and when Tabitha Soren asks me what I think about the upcoming elections I just offer the peace sign and say “Every day my confusion grows” and head for Chloe, who looks really sweaty, holding a champagne flute to her forehead, and I kiss her on the cheek and tell her I’ll swing by her place at eight. I head for the exit where all the bodyguards are hanging out and pass someone’s bichon frise sluggishly lifting its head and even though there are hundreds of photo ops to take advantage of it’s just too jammed to make any of them. Someone mentions that Mica might be at Canyon Ranch, Todd’s engulfed by groovy well-wishers and my feelings are basically: see, people aren’t so bad.

12

I pull up to Lauren’s apartment at the Silk Building right above Tower Records where I saw her earlier this afternoon and as I roll the Vespa up to the lobby the teenage doorman with the cool shirt picks up a phone hesitantly, nodding as Russell Simmons walks past me and out onto Fourth Street.

“Hey.” I wave. “Damien to see Lauren Hynde.”

“Er … Damien who?”

“Damien … Hirst.”

Pause. “Damien Hirst?”

“But actually it’s just Damien.” Pause. “Lauren knows me as just Damien.”

The doorman stares at me blankly.

“Damien,” I say, urging him on a little. “Just … Damien.”

The doorman buzzes Lauren’s apartment. “Damien’s here?”

I reach out to feel the collar of his shirt, wondering where he got it. “What is this?” I’m asking. “Geek chic?”

He waves my hand away, taking a karate stance. A pause, during which I just stare at him.

“Okay,” the doorman says, hanging up the phone. “She says the door’s open. Go on up.”

“Can I leave the moped here, man?”

“It might not be here when you get back.”

I pause. “Whoa, dude.” I wheel the bike into an elevator. “Hakuna matata.”

I check my nails, thinking about the
Details
reporter, the crouton situation, a conversation I had on a chairlift in a ski resort somewhere that was so inane I can’t even remember what was said. The elevator doors slide open and I lean the bike in the hallway just outside Lauren’s apartment. Inside: all white, an Eames folding screen, an Eames surfboard table, the roses I saw in Damien’s office lie on a giant Saarinen pedestal surrounded by six tulip chairs. MTV with the sound off on a giant screen in the living room: replays of today’s shows, Chloe on a runway, Chandra North, other models, ABBA’s “Knowing Me, Knowing You” coming from somewhere.

Lauren walks out of her bedroom wearing a long white robe, a towel wrapped around her hair, and when she looks up to see me standing in the middle of the room asking “What’s the story, baby?” she lets out a little yelp and falls back a few steps but then composes herself and just glares, eyes frozen, arms crossed, mouth set hard—a woman’s stance I’m familiar with.

“Aren’t you going to bother to hide your annoyance?” I finally ask. “Aren’t you gonna like offer me a Snapple?”

“What are you doing here?”

“Don’t freak.”

She moves over to a desk piled high with fashion magazines, flicks on a crystal chandelier, rummages through a Prada handbag and lights a Marlboro Medium. “You’ve got to get out of here.”

“Hey, can’t we just talk for a minute, baby?”

“Victor,
leave,”
she warns impatiently and then scrunches her face up. “
Talk
?”

“I’ll vacate only after we chat.”

She considers this and, grimacing, forces herself to ask quickly, “Okay—how was the Oldham show?”

“Very major,” I say, slouching around the room. “Chatted with Elsa Klensch. The usual.”

“How
is
Elsa?” she asks, still glaring.

“Elsa and I are both Capricorns so we get along very nicely,” I say. “Is it cold in here or is it just me?”

“And otherwise?” she asks, waiting.

“It was, er, very, very—oh yeah—important.”

“Important?” Lauren asks semi-dubiously.

“Clothes are important, baby.”

“They eventually clean furniture, Victor.”

“Hey,” I exclaim. “Lighten up, baby.”

“Victor, you’ve
got
to get out of here.”

“What were you doing?” I ask, moving around the room, taking the whole apartment in. “Why weren’t you at the show?”

“I had a photo shoot promoting a terrible movie I’m in with Ben Chaplin and Rufus Sewell,” she hisses, barely able to contain herself. “Then I took a bubble bath and read an article on the impossibility of real emotion on the Upper East Side in
New York
magazine.” She stubs out the cigarette. “This was a draining conversation, yet one I’m glad we had. The door’s over there in case you’ve forgotten.”

She walks past me, down a hallway covered with a Berber-style woven carpet and Moroccan embroidered pillows stacked against the walls and then I’m in her bedroom, where I flop on the bed, leaning back on my elbows, my feet barely touching the floor, watching as Lauren stalks into the bathroom and begins toweling her hair dry. Behind her a poster for some indie film starring Steve Buscemi hangs above the toilet. She’s so annoyed—but maybe in a fake way—that I have to say, “Oh come off it, I’m not so bad. I bet you hang out with guys who say things like ‘But what if I want a new Maserati’ all the time. I bet your life is filled with that.” I stop, then add, “Too.”

She picks up a half-empty glass of champagne by the sink, downs it.

“Hey,” I say, pointing at the framed poster. “You were in that movie?”

“Unfortunately,” she mutters. “Notice where it’s hanging?”

She closes her eyes, touches her forehead.

“You just finished a new movie?” I ask softly.

“Yes.” Suddenly she searches through an array of Estée Lauder jars, Lancôme products, picks up a L’Occitane butter massage balm that Chloe also uses, reads the ingredients, puts it down, finally gives up and just looks at herself in the mirror.

“What’s it about?” I ask as if it matters.

“It’s kind of like
Footloose,”
she says, then pauses and delicately whispers, “But set on Mars.” She waits for my reaction.

I just stare at her from the bed. A longish silence. “That’s so cool, baby.”

“I wept on the set every day.”

“Did you just break up with someone?”

“You—are—a—dunce.”

“I’m waiting to see if I’m getting a role in
Flatliners II,”
I mention casually, stretching.

“So we’re in the same boat?” she asks. “Is that it?”

“Alison Poole told me you were doing pretty well.”

She swigs from a nearby bottle of Evian. “Let’s just say it’s been lucratively tedious.”

“Baby, I’m sensing that you’re a star.”

“Have you seen any of my movies?”

Pause. “Alison Poole told me you were doing—”

“Don’t mention that cunt’s name in this apartment,” she screams, throwing a brush at me.

“Hey baby,” I say, ducking. “Come here, baby, chill out.”

“What?” she asks, irritably. “Come where?”

“Come
here,”
I murmur, staring straight at her. “Come here,” I say, patting the comforter.

She just stares at me lying on the bed, my shirt pulled up a little, showing off my lower abs, my legs slightly spread. Sometime during all of this my jacket came off.

“Victor?”

“Yeah?” I whisper.

“What does Chloe mean to you?”

“Come here,” I whisper.

“Just because you’re a gorgeous guy doesn’t give you any more rights than … ,” she falters, picks up: “ … anyone else.”

“I know, baby. It’s cool.” I sit up, gazing at her, never breaking eye contact. She moves toward me.

“Come on,” I say. “That’s it.”

“What do you want, Victor?”

“I want you to come over here.”

“What are you?” she asks, suddenly pulling back. “One of the fringe benefits of being a pretty girl?”

“Hey, I’m a stud muffin.” I shrug. “Take a bite.”

A flicker of a smile that tells you she will probably do anything. It’s
time to relax and play it differently. I reach into my jeans, lifting up my shirt a little more so that she can see the rest of my stomach and spreading my legs even wider so she can spot the bulge in my jeans. I offer her a Mentos.

“You really look like you work out,” I say. “How do you keep in such buff shape, doll?”

“Not eating helps,” she mutters.

“So you’re refusing the Mentos?”

She smiles, barely, and nods.

“Are you coming to the club tonight?” I ask.

“To the Copa? The Copacabana? The hottest spot north of Havana?” she asks, clapping her hands together, eyes wide with fake delight.

“Hey, don’t be dissing me, sistah.”

“Where’s Chloe now, Victor?” she asks, moving closer.

“Who was
your
last significant other, baby?”

“An ex-rogue trader I met at a screenplay-writing seminar, then Gavin Rossdale,” she says. “Oh, and Adam Sandler for three days.”

“Oh shit.” I smack my forehead.
“Now
I know who you are.
Now
I remember.”

She smiles a little, warming up. “Who are you dating now, Victor?” She pauses. “Besides Alison Poole?”

“Hey, I thought that name wasn’t allowed in this apartment.”

“Only someone who owns a voodoo doll of her with five hundred pins stuck in its head and an extra-large Snickers bar strapped to its ass can,” she says. “Now, who are you dating, Victor? Just say it. Just let me hear you say a name.”

“Four that wanna own me, two that wanna stone me, one that says she’s a friend of mine.”

She smiles now, standing over the bed.

“Can I ask you something?” I ask.

“Can you?”

“You won’t freak out?”

“It depends.”

“Okay. Just promise me you’ll take this within a certain context.”

“What?”

“It’s just that …” I stop, breathe in, laugh a little.

“It’s just what?”

Now, playing it very seriously, I say, “It’s just that I really want to stick my tongue up your pussy right now.” I’m squeezing my dick through my jeans, staring straight at her. “I promise I won’t do anything else. I just have this urge to lick your pussy right now.” I pause, shyly. “Can I?”