Glamorama (47 page)

I’m also being followed by a guy wearing wraparound black sunglasses who looks like he should be in a soap opera—handsome, with a too-chiseled chin and thick swept-up black hair—and resembles maybe a moddish Christian Bale, suspiciously blasé in a long black Prada overcoat, seemingly up to no good and vaguely plasticine.

Regrets: I never should have turned down that Scotch ad.

Mental note: eyeliner on men seems fairly cool this season.

At Masako I’m slumped in a velvet booth in back picking at sushi that tastes like ham, and the Christian Bale guy sits at a table for four up front in the deserted restaurant, grinning distantly, a camcorder sitting on an empty chair next to him, and doom music piped in through the stereo system fails to cheer anybody up.

When I walk up to him holding a San Pellegrino bottle, he pays his check and takes a final sip of cold sake, smiling arrogantly at me.

“You want my autograph? Is that it?” I’m asking and then my voice gets babyish. “Stop following me. Just leave me the fuck alone, okay?” A pause, during which he gets up and I back away. “Or else I’ll pour this San Pellegrino all over your head—got it?”

He just answers silently with a so-what? expression.

I watch as he glides confidently outside to where a boxy blue Jeep Commando waits at the curb in front of Masako, its windows tinted black, blocking out the face of the driver. Outside, I take note of various Tex-Mex restaurants, the postapocalyptic mood, my pseudoreality, then head back to the Four Seasons, where all I really want to do is take my shirt off.

12

Outside the Four Seasons obligatory paparazzi share cigarettes, glance idly at me as I stand there pretending to ruffle through my pockets for my room key while they wait for the occasional Town Car or limousine to roll up and dispense anyone snapworthy, which today does not include me. Inside: Ralph Fiennes is shaking hands with a twenty-year-old movie producer who I’m
sure
someone I know has boned and Gabriel Byrne is simultaneously talking on a cell phone, being interviewed by
People
magazine and sipping a large cup of tea. In other words: it’s all happening, it’s all familiar. The only void: no message from Palakon, which doesn’t relieve me in the way I imagined it would. I push the door to my suite open, turn on MTV—and with a ping, Everything But the Girl floats through the room, which right now is totally arctic. Shivering uncontrollably I push a bunch of Japanese fashion magazines scattered across the bed into a pile and then I’m flopping down, pulling the covers over me, dialing the kitchen for a protein shake and to see what time the hotel’s gym closes.

Movement across the room causes me to whirl around.

Jamie Fields: legs slung over a floral-patterned swivel chair, wearing an ultrafashionable Prada camisole top, shimmery black disco pants, black stiletto shoes, black Armani sunglasses, and her face is masklike, but after my initial shock I’m projecting something vaguely apologetic onto it and she confirms this by removing the sunglasses, stoplight-red Hard Candy polish on her nails.

Jamie notices how distracting they are. “I know—it’s ugly,” she sighs, lighting a cigarette. “It’s for the movie.”

“Which one?” I’m asking.

She shrugs, exhaling. “Both?”

“How did you get in here?” I ask.

“I’m well acquainted with certain key staff members at the Four Seasons,” she says casually. “They know me. They let me do whatever I want. It’s a perk. Let’s leave it at that.”

I pause before asking, “Are you going to start flailing around again?”

“No. I’m sorry about all of that.”

Another pause. “What happened back there?”

“Oh, I just thought you were someone else,” she mutters. “Forget about it. Anywa-a-a-ay …”

“You thought
I
was someone else?” I ask. “Baby, that hurts.”

“I know.” Jamie reaches into a Gucci leather clutch envelope and pulls out a small gift-wrapped box. “So I thought this might ease your pain.”

I reach out and hesitantly take the box. “What is it?”

“Cigars. Montecristos,” she says, standing up, stretching. “I mean, I’m assuming you’re still as trendy as you used to be.” She takes a drag off the cigarette, makes a face, stubs it out in an ashtray. “I really don’t think times have changed
that
much.” She starts moving around the suite, not impressed but not unimpressed, just bizarrely neutral, fingering the curtains, studying various knickknacks of mine taking up space on a desk.

The phone suddenly rings. When I pick it up no one’s there. I slowly place the phone back down.

“That keeps happening,” I mutter.

Jamie continues to move around the room, runs her hands beneath desktops, inspects a lamp, then another, opens an armoire, gazes at the space behind the TV—Beck on a donkey, a Spice Girl swinging a lasso—then she lifts a remote control and seems on the verge of taking it apart when I interrupt.

“Baby, why don’t you sit down?” I ask.

“I’ve been lounging around all day.” She stretches again, resumes a more casual pose. “I can’t stay still.”

“Um, baby?” I begin awkwardly. “How did you find me?”

“Hey—” She looks back at me. “How did
you
find me?”

Pause. “You go first.”

“I had my assistant call all the places I thought you’d be staying at.”

She sighs, continues. “The Connaught, the Stafford, Claridge’s, the Dorchester, the Berkeley, the Halcyon, then—boom—the Four Seasons.”

A long pause, during which I just stare at her, dumbfounded.

“What?” she asks. “What is it?”

“How about the fucking Hempel? Why didn’t you check the fucking Hempel? Jesus, baby.”

A smile creeps up but she stops it when she realizes something and this causes her to groan, flopping back into the swivel chair.

“Don’t make me put my sunglasses back on, Victor,” she warns.

The phone rings again. I sigh, reach over to the nightstand, pick the phone up, listen. Silence, a series of beeps unevenly spaced, two clicks, a patch of far-off static, another beep, then silence. I look back at Jamie in the swivel chair, playing thoughtfully with her sunglasses, legs dangling over an armrest, before I slowly place the phone back down.

“I asked for Victor Johnson’s room but then I remembered—or read somewhere—that you changed your name. To Victor Ward.” She pauses, smiles playfully. “Why?”

“Various committees assumed it was a smart PR move to jump-start my career.” I shrug. “It made me semi-famous.”

“A misconception made you semi-famous,” she corrects.

“I’ve traveled quite well on that misconception.”

“It was a suit that got you the gig.”

“It was also an inordinate amount of sheer cool.”

“Why do I have the feeling your father made you change the name?” She smiles playfully again. “Huh? Did Daddy make a request?”

“I don’t talk about my father—”

“Oh god,
whatever.”
She stands up again, then flops down in the chair again, sighs a number of times. “Listen, I’m just here to tell you I’m sorry about freaking out and, y’know, have a good time in London and all that and, um, I’ll see you in another eight years.”

“So are you gonna freak out again?” I ask, playing it cool, moving across the bed so that I’m closer to her.

“I’m feeling, um, reformed.”

“Oh, that’s good.”

Pause. “That depends on your definition of good,” she says.

“What’s the story, baby?” I sigh mock-wearily. “What are you doing? Where are you going?”

“Today was the last day of the shoot,” she says. “We finished the interiors last week in Pinewood.” Pause. “So I’m basically free, free, free.”

“Well, then I’m glad I caught you.”

“Caught me?” she asks, stiffening, vaguely annoyed. “Why are you glad you
caught me
, Victor?”

Suddenly her cell phone rings. She pulls it out of a Lulu Guinness handbag I hadn’t noticed before and answers it. While staring directly at me, she says, “Yes? … It’s fine .… Right .… No, I’m at the Four Seasons .… Is that the buzzword for the day? … Let’s see a show of hands .… Yes …. Sounds delicious .… Right …. Later.” She clicks off, stares blankly at me.

“Who was that?” I ask, shivering, my breath steaming.

“No one you know,” she murmurs, and then, barely audible, “yet.”

I’m lying on my side now, running my hands slinkily across the floral print of the comforter, drawing attention to my hands because of the way they’re moving, and my shirt’s become untucked in a not-too-suggestive way and when I look down “sheepishly,” then back up with a seductive smile, Jamie is glaring at me with a noxious expression. When I revert to not being so studly, she relaxes, stretches, groans.

“I’ve
got
to get something to eat,” she says.

“Baby, are you famished?”

“Beyond famished.”

“Hey, I saw that movie.” I grin, faux-mischievously. “What about room service?” I suggest, my voice deepening.

She stands there, contemplating something, glances back at the TV, then her eyes carefully scan the ceiling. Finally she murmurs, “Let’s get out of here.”

“Where to?”

“Let’s go out for dinner.”

“Now? It’s only five,” I point out. “Is anything open yet?”

“I know a place,” she murmurs. Something on the ceiling, in the corner, dominates Jamie’s attention and she moves toward it, reaching up, then—realizing something—stops herself. She turns around, tries to smile, but apparently she can’t help it: the room seems to worry her in some way.

“Baby, it’s just a set,” I’m saying. “Forget about it.”

11

Though the restaurant doesn’t serve until 6 Jamie gets us into Le Caprice at 5:30 with a cryptic phone call she makes in the cab on the way to Arlington Square.

“I was supposed to have dinner with Amanda Harlech but I think this will be much more, er, interesting,” she says, tucking the cell phone back into her handbag.

“That’s me,” I say. “A blast from the past.”

While sitting across the table from her in Le Caprice I’m aware that Jamie Fields is so beautiful that she’s starting to blow away whatever residual memories of Lauren Hynde I might have held on to and after knocking back a martini and some white wine we order crab-and-corn chowder and a plate of chargrilled squid and the two of us start relaxing into the moment, only briefly interrupted on Jamie’s part by a few giant yawns and a slightly deadened look behind those very cool blue eyes. I order another martini, momentarily thinking, This is gonna be
so
easy.