Glamorama (32 page)

“Just let go,” I say uselessly.

“Hold on. What happened to your head?” JD asks calmly, handing me a napkin. “Why is there blood on your tux?”

“Nothing. I slipped,” I mutter, looking down. “That’s not blood—it’s an AIDS ribbon.”

JD flinches. “Victor, we all know Hurley Thompson just pulverized you, so you don’t need to—”

“Where’s Chloe?” I keep craning my neck, looking out across the room. “Where’s Chloe, JD?”

JD breathes in. “That is, however, a problem.”

“JD—don’t fuck with me!” I’m shouting.

“All I saw was Hurley Thompson dropping a newspaper into Chloe’s lap. He leaned into her while he placed his hand in an ice bucket and whispered into her ear until her face—which was staring down at the paper Hurley Thompson dropped into her lap—fell, um, apart.”

I’m just staring at JD wide-eyed, wondering at what point in the last ten seconds my hands started gripping his shoulders.

“And?” I’m panting, my entire body goes clammy.

“And she ran out and Hurley lit a cigar, very pleased with himself, and then Baxter Priestly ran after her.”

I’m so alarmed by this that I must look really bashed-up, because JD looks into my face and whispers, “Jesus, Victor.”

“Everything’s still sketchy, JD,” I’m saying while clutching the side of my stomach Hurley did the most damage to.

“No,” he says. “It’s all clear to us.” He pauses. “It’s only sketchy to you.”

“JD, Cindy Crawford always says—”

“Who gives a shit what Cindy Crawford says right now?” JD yells. “What are you talking about?”

I stare at him for a long time, confused, before I push him away and then I turn and race down the staircase, people rotating around me everywhere, cameras flashing, causing me to keep tripping into people who keep propping me up, until I’m finally on the first level, where there’s so much cigar and pot and cigarette smoke the air’s not breathable and I’m shoving people out of the way, constantly adjusting my focus, music booming out way too loud, minor chords crashing down around me, the Steadicam operator unable to keep up.

Bursting out the door, I’m confronted by a crowd so enormous that everyone in it is hidden and when I appear everything grows calm and then, slowly at first, they start shouting my name and seconds later they’re screaming to be allowed in and I dive into the throng, pushing through it, constantly turning around, saying “Hello” and “Excuse me” and “You look great” and “It’s cool, baby,” and once I’m through the maze of bodies I spot the two of them down the block: Baxter trailing after Chloe, trying to subdue her, and she keeps breaking away,
rocking the cars parked along the curb, hysterical, setting off their alarms each time she falls against one, and I’m taking in air in great gulps, panic-stricken but laughing too.

I try to run past Baxter to get to Chloe but he whirls around when he hears me approaching and grabs my jacket, wrestling me against the wall of a building, shouting into my face while I’m helplessly staring at Chloe, “Get out of here, Victor, just leave her the fuck alone,” and Baxter’s smiling as he’s shouting this, traffic pulsing behind him, and when Chloe turns to glare at me, Baxter—who’s stronger than I ever could have imagined—seems secretly pleased. Over his shoulder Chloe’s face is ravaged, tears keep pouring from her eyes.

“Baby,” I’m shouting. “That wasn’t me—”

“Victor,” Baxter shouts, warning me. “Let it go.”

“It’s a hoax,” I’m shouting.

Chloe just stares at me until I go limp and finally Baxter relaxes too and a cab behind Chloe slows down and Baxter quickly breaks into a jog and when he reaches Chloe he takes her arm and eases her into the waiting cab but she looks at me before she falls into it, softening, slipping away, deflated, unreachable, and then she’s gone and a smirking Baxter nods at me, casually amused. Then total silence.

Girls hanging out the window of a passing limousine making catcalls knock my legs back into motion and I run toward the club where security guards stand behind the barricades barking orders into walkie-talkies and I’m panting as I climb through the crowd and then I’m pulled by the doormen back onto the stairs leading up to the entrance, cries of grief billowing up behind me, steam from the klieg lights rising up into the sky and filling the space above the crowd, and I’m moving through the metal detectors again and running up one flight of stairs and then another, heading up to Damien’s office, when suddenly I slam into a column on the third floor.

Damien’s escorting Lauren to a private staircase that will lead them down a back exit onto the street and Lauren looks like she’s breathing too hard—she actually seems thinner—as Damien talks rapidly into her ear even though her face is so twisted up it doesn’t seem like she can comprehend anything Damien’s saying as he closes the door behind them.

I rush downstairs to the first floor again, alarmingly fast, struggling
through the crowd, too many people passing by, indistinct faces, just profiles, people handing me flowers, people on cellular phones, everyone moving together in a drunken mass, and I’m pushing through the darkness totally awake and people just keep dimly rolling past, constantly moving on to someplace else.

Outside again I push through the crowd avoiding anyone who calls my name and Lauren and Damien seem miles away as they vanish into a limousine and I shout “Wait” and I’m staring too long at the car as it disappears into the mist surrounding Union Square and I keep staring until some tiny thing in me collapses and my head starts clearing.

Everything looks washed out and it’s cold and the night suddenly stops accelerating: the sky is locked in place, fuzzy and unmoving, and I’m stumbling down the block, then stopping to search my jacket for a cigarette, when I hear someone call my name and I look across the street at a limousine and Alison standing beside it, her face expressionless, and at her feet, on leashes, are Mr. and Mrs. Chow. When they see me their heads snap up and they start leaping, straining at their leashes excitedly, teeth bared, yapping, and I’m just standing there dumbly, touching my swollen lip, a bruised cheek.

Smiling, Alison drops the leashes.

6

Florent: a narrow, bleak 24-hour diner in the meat-packing district and I’m feeling grimy, slumped at a table near the front, finishing the coke I picked up at a bar in the East Village sometime in the middle of the night where I lost my tie, and a copy of the
News
is spread out in front of me, open to the Buddy Seagull column I’ve been studying for hours, uselessly since it reveals nothing, and behind me something’s being filmed, a camera crew’s setting up lights. I had gone by my place at around 4 but someone suspiciously well coiffed—a handsome guy, twenty-five, maybe twenty-six—was hanging out in front of the building, smoking a cigarette like he’d been waiting there a very long time, and another guy—someone in the cast I hadn’t met yet—sat in a black
Jeep talking into a cell phone, so I split. Bailey brings me another decaf frappuccino and it’s freezing in Florent and I keep blowing confetti off my table but whenever I’m not paying attention it reappears and I glare over at the set designer and continuity girl who stare back and restaurant music’s playing and each minute seems like an hour.

“How’s it hanging, Victor?” Bailey’s asking.

“Hey baby, what’s the story?” I mutter tiredly.

“You doing okay?” he asks. “You look busted up.”

I ponder this before asking, “Have you ever been chased by a chow, man?”

“What’s a chow man?”

“A chow, a chow-chow. It’s like a big fluffy dog,” I try to explain. “They’re mean as shit and they were used to guard palaces in like China and shit.”

“Have I ever been chased by a chow?” Bailey asks, confused. “Like the last time I was … trying to … break into a palace?” His face is all scrunched up.

Pause. “I just want some muesli and juice right now, ’kay?”

“You look busted up, man.”

“I’m thinking … Miami,” I croak, squinting up at him.

“Great! Sunshine, deco, seashells, Bacardi, crashing waves”—Bailey makes surfing motions with his arms—“fashion shoots, and Victor making a new splash. Right on, man.”

I’m watching the early-morning traffic cruise by on 14th Street and then I clear my throat. “Er … maybe Detroit.”

“I’m telling you, baby,” he says. “The world is a jungle. Wherever you go it’s still the same.”

“I just want some muesli and juice right now, okay, man?”

“You need to utilize your potential, man.”

“There’s a snag in your advice, man,” I point out.

“Yeah?”

“You’re—a—waiter.”

I finish reading an article about new mascaras (Shattered and Roach are the season’s most popular) and hip lipsticks (Frostbite, Asphyxia, Bruise) and glam nail polish (Plaque, Mildew) and I’m thinking, genuinely, Wow, progress, and some girl behind me with a floppy beach hat on and a bandeau bra top and saucer eyes is listening
to a guy wearing a suit made of sixteenth-century armor saying “um um um” while snapping his fingers until he remembers—“Ewan McGregor!”—and then they both fall silent and the director leans in to me and warns, “You’re not looking worried enough,” which is my cue to leave Florent.

Outside, more light, some of it artificial, opens up the city, and the sidewalks on 14th Street are empty, devoid of extras, and above the sounds of faraway jackhammers I can hear someone singing “The Sunny Side of the Street” softly to himself and when I feel someone touch my shoulder I turn around but no one’s there. A dog races by going haywire. I call out to it. It stops, looks at me, runs on. “Disarm” by the Smashing Pumpkins starts playing on the sound track and the music overlaps a shot of the club I was going to open in TriBeCa and I walk into that frame, not noticing the black limousine parked across the street, four buildings down, that the cameraman pans to.

5

A door slams shut behind me, two pairs of hands grab my shoulders and I’m shoved into a chair, and under the fuzzy haze of a black light, silhouettes and shadows come into focus: Damien’s goons (Duke but not Digby, who was recast after we shot yesterday’s breakfast) and Juan, the afternoon doorman at Alison’s building on the Upper East Side, and as the lights get brighter Damien appears and he’s smoking a Partagas Perfecto cigar and wearing skintight jeans, a vest with bold optical patterns, a shirt with starburst designs, a long Armani overcoat, motorcycle boots, and his hands—grabbing my sore face, squeezing it—are like ice and kind of soothing until he pushes my head back trying to snap my neck, but one of the goons—maybe Duke—pulls him away and Damien’s making noises that sound like chanting and one of the mirror balls that used to hang above the dance floor lies shattered in a corner, confetti scattered around it in tall piles.