Glamorama (54 page)

“Hey, watch it, Sam,” I snap. “I’ve got a very strong reputation and
no.”

“Where is he?” Sam demands. “Where’s Bobby?”

“Here,” I say, handing him the envelope. “I’m just here to give you this and—”

Sam’s not listening to me. He tears the envelope open greedily and
pulls out the key and squints while reading the note and then he starts shivering uncontrollably and hugging himself, a beatific smile softening the angles of his face, making him seem less queeny, slightly more serene, not so jumpy. In seconds he’s matured.

“Oh—my—God,” Sam’s saying, lost, holding the note against his chest. “Oh my God—he’s
essential.”

“That’s a fan talking,” I point out.

“Can I buy you a drink?” Sam asks. “Let me guess—a yuppie beer with a lime stuffed in it?”

“The name’s Victor,” I point out. “Victor Ward.”

“Victor, you’re the spitting image of a boy I always wanted to fuck in high school but never had the nerve to approach.” To calm himself down he lights a Marlboro and exhales dramatically.

“I find that hard to believe, Sam,” I sigh. “So, like, spare me, okay?”

“Are you staying with Bobby?” he asks suspiciously.

“Yeah,” I say, shrugging. “He’s a friend.”

“No—he’s a god,
you’re
the friend,” Sam corrects. “Are you in the house on Charlotte Road?”

“Er, no, we’re in Hampstead.”

“Hampstead?” Sam looks back at the note. “But it says here you’re on Charlotte Road.”

“I only stay in hotels,” I tell him. “So I’m really not sure where we are.” I pause, stub out my cigarette. “It’s just a set anyway.”

“Okay.” Sam breathes in. “Do you have a car, and please say yes because I don’t want to have to hijack a cab.”

“Actually,” I say, “I have a car and driver out back.”

“Oh, this is excellent,” Sam says. “But we have to elude someone.”

“Who?” I ask, glancing around the VIP room.

“Those guys,” Sam says, nodding his head. “Don’t look, don’t look. They’re under that gold arch—over there. They just love to play games with me.”

What looks like two bodyguards dressed in identical Armani overcoats stand close together not even conferring with each other beneath a blue light that accentuates the size of already enormous heads and they’re being cruised by various fashion victims but their arms are crossed and they don’t seem distracted. Their focus is on Sam, at the bar, leaning in to me.

“Who are they?”

“My father’s idea,” Sam says. “He’s not happy about certain elements of my life.”

“He has you followed?” I’m asking, stunned. “Jesus, and I thought my dad was a major fussbudget.”

“I’m going to tell them I need to use the rest room and then”—he raps his fingers against my chest—“ooh, nice pecs—that I’m going home with you.” He stuffs the envelope into his pocket. “They’re usually too scared to enter the men’s room with me—for the
obvious
reasons.” Sam checks his watch and takes a deep breath. “I will tell them—before I disappear into the night—that I’m coming back after a much-needed piss to take
you
home with me, my little freak. Got it?”

“I—I guess that’s, um, cool,” I say, making a face.

“What color is the car?”

“It’s a black limo,” I say, trying not to look over at the bodyguards. “A guy with red hair is driving.”

“Fabulous,” Sam gushes. “I will see you out there. And remember—
hurry
. They look bulky but they can
move.”

“Are you sure this is all right?”

“I’m twenty-six,” Sam says. “I can do what I want. Let’s
boogie.”

“Um.”

“Be careful on your way out,” Sam says. “One of them usually carries a bottle of hydrochloric acid and is basically very stern.” Sam pauses. “They used to work at the Israeli embassy.”

“Is that a club?”

Sam Ho stops smiling and relaxes and touches the side of my face tenderly. “You’re so mainstream,” he murmurs.

I’m in the middle of telling him, “Hey, I’m just a very
quiet
club-goer—but I’m very tuned in,” when he runs over to the bodyguards, points at me and says something that causes Bodyguard #1 to seriously blanch and then they both nod reluctantly as Sam scampers out of the room and Bodyguard #2 nods at #1 and follows Sam while Bodyguard #1 turns his attention to me, staring, and I turn away looking like I’m figuring out what I should be doing, hopelessly play with a Marlboro.

I glance over at the Christian Bale guy, who’s still standing just a foot away at the bar, and leaning in, I ask, “Are we in the same movie?” He just starts scowling.

On cue, a girl sitting in one of the burgundy velvet booths yells her approval when Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life” blasts out and she jumps up onto a platform, tearing off a Stussy dress and an Adidas T-shirt and in only her bra and Doc Martens starts thrashing around, twisting, doing what looks like the breaststroke, and at the precise moment Bodyguard #1 glances over at her a production assistant I didn’t notice before cues me by whispering, “Now. Go, now!” and I casually pogo out of the VIP room while all the extras cheer.

3

In the alley outside Pylos I jump over the rope and tumble into a crowd of hip-hop enthusiasts waiting in the rain to gain entrance and once I’ve pushed through them I spin around to see if either of the bodyguards has followed me but I think I lost them when I pretended to duck into a DJ booth. Sam’s already in the limo, sticking his head out the window, calling “Hey! Hey!” as I sprint over to the car and yell “Hurry!” to the driver. The limo skids out of the alley and into Charing Cross Road, horns echoing behind us, and Sam has broken into the minibar, popping open a split of champagne, drinking straight from the bottle and finishing it in less than a minute while I just stare tiredly and then he starts shouting at the driver, “Go faster go faster,
go faster!”
and keeps trying to hold my hand. In his calmer moments Sam shows me his crystals, demands LSD, hands me a pamphlet about brainwave harmonizers, sings along to “Lust for Life” as it bursts from speakers in the back of the limo and he’s drinking deeply from a bottle of Absolut and shouting “I’m a pillhead!” while sticking his head out the sunroof as the limo races through the drizzle back to the house.

“I’m seeing Bobby, I’m seeing Bobby,” he singsongs, blitzed out, bouncing up and down on the seat.

I light a cigarette, trying to perfect my scowling. “Can you
please
mellow out?”

The limousine stops in front of the darkened house and then, once the gate opens, slowly pulls into the driveway. The roof lights immediately
flash on, blinding us even through the limousine’s tinted windows, then slowly fade.

Sam Ho opens the door and jumps out drunkenly, shambling toward the darkness of the house. At an upstairs window a silhouette appears, peering from behind a blind, and then the light goes out. “Hey Sam,” I call, swinging my legs out of the limo. “There’s an alarm system—be careful.” But he’s gone. Above us the sky has cleared and there’s really nothing up there except for half a moon.

The driver waits for me to step from the limo and I’m suddenly surprised by how tired I am. I get out of the car and stretch, and then, just standing there, avoiding the house and what’s going on within it, light a cigarette.

“Were we followed?” I ask the driver.

“No.” He shakes his head curtly.

“Are you sure?” I ask.

“The second unit took care of it,” he says.

“Hmm.” I take a drag off the cigarette, flick it away.

“Is there anything else I can do for you?” he asks.

I consider the offer. “No. No, I don’t think so.”

“Well then, good night.” The driver closes the door I just stepped out of and walks around the car, back to the driver’s side.

“Hey,” I call out.

He glances up.

“Do you know a guy named Fred Palakon?”

The driver stares at me until he loses interest and looks elsewhere.

“Right,” I say tensely. “O-kay.”

I open a gate and then it closes automatically behind me and then I’m walking through the darkened garden while R.E.M.’s “How the West Was Won” plays and above me, in the house, the lights in some of the windows don’t reveal anything. The back door that leads into the kitchen is half-open and after I’ve walked in and closed it there’s that series of electronic beeps. I move uncertainly through the space—nobody’s downstairs, there’s no sign of the crew, everything’s spotless. I pull an Evian out of the fridge. A video—the end of
Die Hard
2—silently plays on the giant TV, credits roll, then the tape starts rewinding itself. I brush confetti off the giant pistachio-colored sofa and lie down, waiting for someone to appear, occasionally
glancing toward the stairs leading up to the bedrooms, listening intently, but hear only the whirring of the tape being rewound and the R.E.M. song fading. I vaguely imagine Jamie and Bobby together, maybe even with Sam Ho, in bed, and there’s a pang; but after that, nothing.

A script lies on the coffee table and absently I pick it up, open it to a random page, an odd scene, descriptions of Bobby calming someone down, feeding me a Xanax, I’m weeping, people are getting dressed for another party, a line of dialogue (“what if you became something you were not”) and my eyes are closing. “Fall asleep,” is what I imagine the director would whisper.

2

Wakened suddenly out of a brief dreamless nap by someone calling “Action” softly (though when I open my eyes and look around the living room there’s no one here), I get off the couch, noticing vacantly that the script I fell asleep reading has disappeared. I pick up the Evian bottle, take a long, deep swallow and carry it with me as I move uncertainly through the house, past spaces where someone has turned off various lights while I was sleeping. In the kitchen I’m staring into the refrigerator for what seems like days, unsure of what to do, when there’s a strange noise below me—a rapid thumping sound, followed by maybe a muffled wail, and at the same instant the lights in the kitchen dim once, then twice. I look up, quietly say “Hello” to myself. Then it happens again.

Because of the way the set is lit, a door I never noticed in a hallway adjacent to the kitchen practically glows now. A framed Calvin Klein poster covers the top half: Bobby Hughes on a beach, shirtless, white Speedos, impossibly brown and hard, not seeing a near-naked Cindy Crawford standing next to him because he’s looking directly into the camera, at you. Drawn to it, I run my hand along the glass it’s encased in and the door slowly swings open onto a staircase dotted with confetti and my breath immediately starts steaming because of how freezing it
suddenly is and then I’m moving down the stairs, gripping the icy railing, heading toward the bottom. Another thump, the strange faraway wailings, the lights dimming again.