Glamorama (40 page)

Around 12 I dress casually and rouse myself from the cabin, heading ostensibly to the midnight buffet being served in the Mauretania Room but really to any bar where I can very quickly down four vodka-and-cranberries and find Marina. Prowling along the upper starboard deck as if on a catwalk—it’s cold out and dark—I’m spying into windows at all the joyless mingling taking place at the midnight buffet. I spot the gay German holding a plate piled high with smoked salmon and even though he’s heading toward a table just a foot or two away from where I’m standing, I doubt he can see beyond his own reflection in the window, but then he begins to squint past his image and his face lights up so I whirl around and run straight into the Wallaces strolling along the deck. She’s wearing what looks like a strapless Armani gown, Stephen’s tuxedo jacket draped over her shoulders, protection from the midnight chill.

“Victor,” Lorrie cries out. “Over here.”

I bring a hand to my forehead to block out the nonexistent light that’s blinding me. “Yes? Hello?”

“Victor,” they both cry out in unison, just yards away. “Over here!”

I start limping as if in pain. “Jovially,” I hold out a hand, but then I gasp, grimacing and reaching down to massage my ankle.

“Victor, we wondered where you were for dinner,” Lorrie says. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, you were sorely missed,” Stephen adds. “Is something wrong with your leg?”

“Well, I fell asleep,” I start. “I was also, um, expecting a … phone call, but I … fell asleep.”

Pause. “Did you get your call?” Lorrie asks semi-worriedly.

“Oh yes,” I say. “So now everything’s fine.”

“But what happened to your leg?”

“Well, when I was reaching over for the phone … it, well, I accidentally fell
off
the chair I’d been sitting, er,
sleeping
in and then, well, while reaching for the phone … it actually fell and struck my”—a really long pause—“knee.”

Another really long pause. No one says anything.

“So then I tried to stand up—all this while speaking into the phone—and then I actually tripped over the chair … by the TV …” I stop to let them interrupt.

Finally Stephen says, “That must have been quite a scene.”

Picturing how ridiculous this scenario seems, I delicately reexplain: “Actually I handled it all quite suavely.”

Lorrie and Stephen both nod, assuring me they’re certain that I did. The following is just basic exposition—these lines fall easily and rapidly into place—because I can see, in the distance, Marina, her back to me, standing at the railing, gazing out over the black ocean.

“Tomorrow night, Victor?” Lorrie suggests, shivering.

“Please, Victor,” Stephen demands. “I insist you have dinner with us tomorrow night.”

“Jeez, you guys are persistent. Okay, okay, tomorrow night,” I say, staring at Marina. “Oh wait—I’m having dinner with someone else tomorrow night. How about next week?”

“But we’ll be off the boat next week.”

“We will? Thank god.”

“Please, bring your guest,” Lorrie says.

“It’s okay if I bring someone?” I ask.

“Oh good—a quartet,” Stephen says, rubbing his paws together.

“Actually she’s an American.”

“Pardon?” Stephen leans in, smiling.

“She’s an American.”

“Why … yes, of course she is,” Stephen says, confused. Lorrie tries not to stare incredulously at me and fails.

“And please,” Stephen adds, “when you’re in London you must stop by as well.”

“But I’m definitely going to Paris,” I murmur, staring off at the girl by the railing. “I’m definitely not going to England.”

The Wallaces take this in stride, seem finally to accept this info, and exit by saying “Tomorrow night, then,” like it’s some kind of big deal they conjured up. But they seem sated and don’t linger and I’m not even bothering to limp away from them. Instead I glide slowly over the deck to where Marina’s standing, wearing white slacks and a white cashmere sweater, and because of how these clothes fit on her she’s semi-virginal, semi-naughty, and my steps become more timid and I almost slink back, stunned by how beautiful she looks right now and she’s eating an ice cream cone and it’s pink and white and the decks are generally well-lit but Marina’s standing in a darkened spot, a place where it seems vaguely windier. Tapping her shoulder, I offer an inquiring look.

“Where did you get that?” I ask, pointing at the ice cream cone.

“Oh, hi,” she says, glancing casually at me. “A nice elderly man—I believe his name was Mr. Yoshomoto—made it for me, though I don’t think I asked him to.”

“Ah.” I nod and then gesture. “What are you looking at out there?”

“Oh, I know,” she says. “It’s all black.”

“And it’s cold,” I say, mock-shivering.

“It’s not so bad,” she says. “I’ve been colder.”

“I tried to find you earlier but I forgot your last name.”

“Really?” she asks. “Why did you want to find me?”

“There was a jig-dancing contest I wanted us to enter,” I say. “Hornpipes, the works.”

“It’s Gibson,” she says, smiling.

“Let’s reintroduce ourselves,” I suggest, backing away. “Hi—I’m Victor Ward.”

“Hello,” she says, playing along. “I’m Marina Gibson.”

“I hope I’m not bothering you.”

“No, no, I’m glad you came by,” she says. “You’re a … nice distraction.”

“From?”

She pauses. “From thinking about certain things.”

Inwardly I’m sighing. “So where’s Gavin now?”

She laughs, surprised. “Ah, I see you’ve memorized your lines.” She wipes her lips with a paper napkin, then leans over and tosses what’s
left of the ice cream cone into a nearby trash bin. “Gavin’s in Fiji with a certain baroness.”

“Oh, a
certain
baroness?”

“Gavin’s parents own something like—oh, I don’t know—Coca-Cola or something but he never really has any money.”

Something catches in me. “Does that matter to you?”

“No,” she says. “Not at all.”

“Don’t look back,” I’m saying. “You can never look back.”

“I’m fairly good at severing all contacts with the past.”

“I think that’s a more or less attractive quality.”

While leaning against the railing Marina just simply starts talking: the drastic hair changes, the career that semi-took off because of them, the shaky flights to Miami, getting old, how she likes to be shot with the light coming from the left to offset the tilt of a nose broken in a Rollerblading accident three years ago, a club in East Berlin called Orpheus where she met Luca Fedrizzi, the weekends they spent at Armani’s house in Brioni, the meaninglessness of time zones, her basic indifference, a few key figures, what the point is. Some of the details are small (the way she would unroll the windows in her mother’s Jaguar when racing back from parties in Connecticut so she could smoke, the horrifying bitchery between agents, books she never read, the grams of coke carried in compacts, the crying jags during shoots that would ruin two hours of carefully applied makeup), but the way she tells them makes her world seem larger. Of course during the modeling phase she was always strung out and brittle and so many friends died, lawsuits were started then abandoned, there were fights with Albert Watson, the ill-fated affair with Peter Morton, how everything fizzled out, her mother’s alcoholism and the brother who died of cardiac arrhythmia linked to the ingestion of herbal Ecstasy tablets, and all of this leading up to the designer who fell in love with her—platonically—and subsequently died of AIDS, leaving Marina a substantial sum of money so she could quit modeling. We both admit we know someone who signed a suicide note with a smiley face.

At first I’m able to look as if I’m concentrating intensely on what she’s saying and in fact some of it’s registering, but really I’ve heard it all before; then, while talking, she moves closer and there’s a quickening
and I’m relieved. Silently focusing in on her, I realize that I’ve been activated. I stare into her face for over an hour, asking the appropriate questions, guiding her to certain areas, mimic responses that I’m supposed to have, offer sympathetic nods when they’re required, sometimes there’s a sadness in my eyes that’s half-real, half-not. The only sound, besides her voice, is the sea moving below us, faraway waves lapping against the hull of the ship. I notice idly that there’s no moon.

She sums things up bitterly by saying, “The life of a model—traveling, meeting a lot of superficial people—it’s all just so—”

I don’t let her finish that sentence, because my face is so close to hers—she’s tall, we’re the same height—that I have to lean in and kiss her lips lightly and she pulls back and she’s not surprised and I kiss her lips lightly again and they taste like strawberries from the ice cream and cold.

“Don’t. Please, Victor,” she murmurs. “I can’t.”

“You’re so beautiful,” I whisper. “You’re so beautiful.”

“Victor, not … now.”

I pull back and stretch, pretending nothing happened, but finally I can’t help saying “I want to come to Paris with you” and she pretends not to hear me, folding her arms as she leans against the railing with a sad, placid expression that just makes her face seem dreamier.

“Hey, let’s go dancing,” I suggest, then check the watch I’m not wearing and casually pretend I was just inspecting a nonexistent freckle on my wrist. “We can go to the Yacht Club disco. I’m a good dancer.”

“I don’t think you’d like the Yacht Club,” she says. “Unless you’d like to dance to the disco version of ‘Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina’ for hours on end. There’s a DJ named Jamtastica too.”

“Well, what about a drink? It’s not that late.” I check the nonexistent watch again. “I’ve gotta stop doing that.”

“It actually
is
getting late,” she says. “I should get to sleep.”

“You want to come by my room? For a drink?” I ask, following her as she walks away from the railing. “I have an unopened fruit basket in my room that we can share. I’ll be on my best behavior.”

“That’s very sweet, Victor,” she says. “But I’m tired.”

“I want to come to Paris,” I say suddenly.

Marina stops walking and turns to me. “Why?”

“Can I?” I ask. “I mean, we don’t have to stay at the same place but can I like travel with you?”

“What about London?”

“London can wait.”

“You’re being impulsive,” she says apprehensively, resuming walking.

“It’s one of my many really really great qualities.”

“Listen, let’s just …” She sighs. “Let’s just see how things go.”

“Things are going fine,” I say. “Things can only get better. Look, I’m embarrassed to admit this, but I’ve just spent the last hour gazing at you and and and now I want to come to Paris.”

“What do you want me to say to that?”

“Just say yeah, cool, hip. Just say, ‘Yes, Victor, you can come to Paris with me,’” I tell her and then, mock-seriously: “You know, I don’t need an invitation, baby—I can just simply follow you.”

“So you’d be, um, like
stalking
me through Paris?”

“Just say, ‘Victor, you may come with me—I give you my permission,’ and then I’ll bow and kiss your feet and—”

“But I don’t know if I can say that yet.”

“I’m saving you the embarrassment of admitting what you really want to express.”

“You have no idea what I want to express.”

“But I know all about you now.”

“But I don’t know anything about
you.”

“Hey.” I stop walking, spread my arms out wide. “This is all you need to know.”

She stares, smiling. I stare back until I have to look away.

“Will you at least join me for dinner tomorrow night?” I ask “bashfully.”

“That would be …” She stops, considering something.

“Um, babe? I’m waiting.”

“That would be …” She pauses again, looking out past me at all that blackness.

I start chewing a nail, then check my pockets for Kleenex, a cigarette, Mentos, any prop to keep me occupied.

“That would be … nice.”

I let out a great sigh of relief and hold my hand over my heart as if
I’ve just recovered from an enormous blow. We aren’t miked anymore when we say good night and the crew’s been waved away and there’s another kiss and in that kiss I can’t help but sense some kind of pattern being revealed, and then departure.

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