Glamorama (7 page)

“Hey Dick,” I shout over the din. “I need to ask you about something, por favor.”

“Sure, Victor,” Richard says. “But I’m looking for Jenny Shimuzu and Scott Bakula.”

“Hey, Jenny lives in my building and she’s supercool and very fond of Häagen-Dazs frozen yogurt bars, preferably piña colada, not to mention a good friend. But hey, man, have you heard about a photograph that’s gonna run in like the
News
tomorrow?”

“A photograph?” he asks. “A photograph?”

“B-b-baby,” I stammer. “That sounds kind of sinister when you ask it twice. But it’s, um, do you know Alison Poole?”

“Sure, she’s Damien Nutchs Ross’s squeeze,” he says, spotting someone, giving thumbs-up, thumbs-down, then thumbs-up again. “How are things with the club? Everything nice and tidy for tomorrow night?”

“Cool, cool, cool. But it’s like an, um, embarrassing photo like maybe of me?”

Richard has turned his attention to a journalist standing by us who’s interviewing a very good-looking busboy.

“Victor, this is Byron from
Time
magazine.” Richard motions with a hand.

“Love your work, man. Peace,” I tell Byron. “Richard, about—”

“Byron’s doing an article on very good-looking busboys for
Time,”
Richard says dispassionately.

“Well,
finally,”
I tell Byron. “Wait, Richard—”

“If it’s an odious photograph the
Post
won’t run an odious photograph, blah blah blah,” Richard says, moving away.

“Hey, who said anything about
odious
?” I shout. “I said
embarrassing.”

Candy Bushnell suddenly pushes through the crowd screaming “Richard,” and then when she sees me her voice goes up eighty octaves and she screams
“Pony!”
and places an enormous kiss on my face while slipping me a half and Richard finds Jenny Shimuzu but not Scott Bakula and Chloe is surrounded by Roy Liebenthal, Eric Goode, Quentin Tarantino, Kato Kaelin and Baxter Priestly, who is sitting way too close to her in the giant aquamarine booth and I have to put a stop to this or else deal with an unbelievably painful headache. Waving over at John Cusack, who’s sharing calamari with Julien Temple, I move through the crowd toward the booth where Chloe, pretending to be engaged, is nervously smoking a Marlboro Light.

Chloe was born in 1970, a Pisces and a CAA client. Full lips, bone-thin, big breasts (implants), long muscular legs, high cheekbones, large blue eyes, flawless skin, straight nose, waistline of twenty-three inches, a smile that never becomes a smirk, a cellular-phone bill that runs $1,200 a month, hates herself but probably shouldn’t. She was discovered dancing on the beach in Miami and has been half-naked in an Aerosmith video, in
Playboy
and twice on the cover of the
Sports Illustrated
swimwear issue as well as on the cover of four hundred magazines. A calendar she shot in St. Bart’s has sold two million copies. A
book called
The Real Me
, ghostwritten with Bill Zehme, was on the
New York Times
best-seller list for something like twelve weeks. She is always on the phone listening to managers renegotiating deals and has an agent who takes fifteen percent, three publicists (though PMK basically handles
everything)
, two lawyers, numerous business managers. Right now Chloe’s on the verge of signing a multimillion-dollar contract with Lancôme, but a great many others are also in pursuit, especially after the “rumors” of a “slight” drug problem were quickly “brushed aside”: Banana Republic (no), Benetton (no), Chanel (yes), Gap (maybe), Christian Dior (hmm), French Connection (a joke), Guess? (nope), Ralph Lauren (problematic), Pepe Jeans (are we kidding?), Calvin Klein (done that), Pepsi (sinister but a possibility), et cetera. Chocolates, the only food Chloe even remotely likes, are severely rationed. No rice, potatoes, oils or bread. Only steamed vegetables, certain fruits, plain fish, boiled chicken. We haven’t had dinner together in a long time because last week she had wardrobe fittings for the fifteen shows she’s doing this week, which means each designer had about one hundred twenty outfits for her to try on, and besides the two shows tomorrow she has to shoot part of a Japanese TV commercial and meet with a video director to go over storyboards that Chloe doesn’t understand anyway. Asking price for ten days of work: $1.7 million. A contract somewhere stipulates this.

Right now she’s wearing a black Prada halter gown with black patent-leather sandals and metallic-green wraparound sunglasses she takes off as soon as she sees me approaching.

“Sorry, baby, I got lost,” I say, sliding into the booth.

“My savior,” Chloe says, smiling tightly.

Roy, Quentin, Kato and Eric split, all severely disappointed, muttering
hey man
s to me and that they’ll be at the opening tomorrow night, but Baxter Priestly stays seated—one collar point sticking in, the other sticking out, from under a Pepto-Bismol-pink vest—sucking on a peppermint. NYU film grad, rich and twenty-five, part-time model (so far only group shots in Guess?, Banana Republic and Tommy Hilfiger ads), blond with a pageboy haircut, dated Elizabeth Saltzman like I did, wow.

“Hey man,” I sigh while reaching over the table to kiss Chloe on the mouth, dreading the upcoming exchange of pleasantries.

“Hey Victor.” Baxter shakes my hand. “How’s the club going? Ready for tomorrow?”

“Do you have the time to listen to me whine?”

We sit there sort of looking out over the rest of the room, my eyes fixed on the big table in the center, beneath a chandelier made of toilet floats and recycled refrigerator wire, where Eric Bogosian, Jim Jarmusch, Larry Gagosian, Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, and oddly enough, Ricki Lake are all having salads, which touches something in me, a reminder to deal with the crouton situation before it gets totally out of hand.

Finally sensing my vibe, Baxter gets up, pockets his Audiovox MVX cell phone, which is sitting next to Chloe’s Ericsson DF, and clumsily shakes my hand again.

“I’ll see you guys tomorrow.” He lingers, removes the peppermint from full pink lips. “Until then, um, I guess.”

“Bye, Baxter,” Chloe says, tired but sweet, as usual.

“Yeah, bye, man,” I mutter, a well-practiced dismissal, and once he’s barely out of earshot I delicately ask, “What’s the story, baby? Who was that?”

She doesn’t answer, just glares at me.

Pause. “Hey, honey, you’re looking at me like I’m at a Hootie and the Blowfish concert. Chill.”

“Baxter Priestly?” she says-asks morosely, picking at a plate of cilantro.

“Who’s Baxter Priestly?” I pull out some excellent weed and a package of rolling papers. “Who the fuck is Baxter Priestly?”

“He’s in the new Darren Star show and plays bass in the band Hey That’s My Shoe,” she says, lighting another cigarette.

“Baxter Priestly? What the fuck kind of name is that?” I mutter, spotting seeds that cry out for removal.

“You
’re
complaining about someone’s name?
You
hang out with Plez and Fetish and a person whose parents actually named him Tomato—”

“They conceded it might have been a mistake.”

“—and you do business with people named Benny Benny and Damien Nutchs Ross? And you haven’t apologized for being an hour late? I had to wait upstairs in Eric’s office.”

“Oh god, I bet he loved that,” I moan, concentrating on the pot.
“Hell, baby, I thought I’d let you entertain the paparazzi.” Pause. “And that’s Kenny Kenny, honey.”

“I did that all day,” she sighs.

“Baxter Priestly? Why am I drawing a blank?” I ask earnestly, waving down Cliff the maître d’ for a drink but it’s too late: Eric has already sent over a complimentary bottle of Cristal 1985.

“I guess I’m used to your oblivion, Victor,” she says.

“Chloe.
You
do fur ads
and
donate money to Greenpeace.
You’re
what’s known as a bundle of contradictions, baby, not this guy.”

“Baxter used to date Lauren Hynde.” She stubs her cigarette out, smiles thankfully at the very good-looking busboy pouring the champagne into flutes.

“Baxter used to date Lauren Hynde?”

“Right.”

“Who’s Lauren Hynde?”

“Lauren Hynde, Victor,” she stresses as if the name means something. “You
dated
her.”

“I did? I
did?
Yeah? Hmm.”

“Good night, Victor.”

“I just don’t remember Lauren Hynde, baby. Solly Cholly.”

“Lauren Hynde?” she asks in disbelief. “You don’t remember dating her? My god, what are you going to say about me?”

“Nothing, baby,” I tell her, finally done deseeding. “We’re gonna get married and grow old together. How did the shows go? Look—there’s Scott Bakula. Hey, peace, man. Richard’s looking for you, bud.”

“Lauren Hynde, Victor.”

“That’s so cool. Hey Alfonse—great tattoo, guy.” I turn back to Chloe. “Did you know Damien wears a hairpiece? He’s some kind of demented wig addict.”

“Who told you this?”

“One of the guys at the club,” I say without pausing.

“Lauren Hynde, Victor. Lauren Hynde.”

“Who’s
dat
?” I say, making a crazy face, leaning over, kissing her neck noisily. Suddenly Patrick McMullan glides by, politely asks for a photo, complimenting Chloe on the shows today. We move in close together, look up, smile, the flash goes off. “Hey, crop the pot,” I warn as he spots Patrick Kelly and scampers off.

“Do you think he heard me?”

“Lauren Hynde’s one of my best friends, Victor.”

“I don’t know her, but hey, if she’s a friend of yours, well, need I say anything but
automatically
?” I start rolling the joint.

“Victor, you went to school with her.”

“I didn’t go to school with her, baby,” I murmur, waving over at Ross Bleckner and his new boyfriend, Mrs. Ross Bleckner, a guy who used to work at a club in Amagansett called Salamanders and was recently profiled in
Bikini
.

“Forgive me if I’m mistaken, but you went to Camden with Lauren Hynde.” She lights another cigarette, finally sips the champagne.

“Of course. I did,” I say, trying to calm her. “Oh. Yeah.”

“Did you go to college, Victor?”

“Literally or figuratively?”

“Is there a difference with you?” she asks. “How can you be so dense?”

“I don’t know, baby. It’s some kind of gene displacement.”

“I can’t listen to this. You complain about Baxter Priestly’s
name
and yet you know people named Huggy and Pidgeon and Na Na.”

“Hey,” I finally snap, “and you slept with Charlie Sheen. We all have our little faults.”

“I should’ve just had dinner with Baxter,” she mutters.

“Baby, come on, a little champagne, a little sorbet. I’m rolling a joint so we can calm down. Now, who is this Baxter?”

“You met him at a Knicks game.”

“Oh my god that’s right—the new male waif, underfed, wild-haired, major rehab victim.” I immediately shut up, glance nervously over at Chloe, then segue beautifully into: “The whole grunge aesthetic has ruined the look of the American male, baby. It makes you
long
for the ’80s.”

“Only
you
would say that, Victor.”

“Anyway, I’m always watching you flirt with John-John at Knicks games.”

“Like you wouldn’t dump me for Daryl Hannah.”

“Baby,
I’d
dump you for John-John if I really wanted the publicity.” Pause, mid-lick, looking up. “That’s not, um, a possibility … is it?”

She just stares at me.

I grab her. “Come here, baby.” I kiss her again, my cheek now damp because Chloe’s hair is always wet and slicked back with coconut oil. “Baby? Why isn’t your hair ever dry?”

Video cameras from Fashion TV sweep the room and I have to get Cliff to tell Eric to make sure they come nowhere near Chloe. M People turns into mid-period Elvis Costello which turns into new Better Than Ezra. I order a bowl of raspberry sorbet and try to cheer Chloe up by turning it into a Prince song: “She
ate a raspberry sorbet … The kind you find at the Bowery Bar
…”

Chloe just stares glumly at her plate.

“Honey, that’s a plate of cilantro. What’s the story?”

“I’ve been up since five and I want to cry.”

“Hey, how was the big lunch at Fashion Café?”

“I had to sit there and watch James Truman eat a giant truffle and it really really bothered me.”

“Because … you wanted a truffle too?”

“No, Victor. Oh god, you don’t get anything.”

“Jesus, baby, spare me. What do you want me to do? Hang around Florence for a year studying Renaissance pottery? You get your legs waxed at Elizabeth Arden ten times a month.”

“You sit around plotting seating arrangements.”

“Baby baby baby.” I light up the joint, whining. “Come on, my DJ’s missing, the club’s opening tomorrow, I have a photo shoot, a fucking show
and
lunch with my father tomorrow.” Pause. “Oh shit—band practice.”

“How is your father?” she asks disinterestedly.

“A contrivance,” I mutter. “A plot device.”

Peggy Siegal walks by in taffeta and I duck under the table with my head in Chloe’s lap, looking up into her face, grinning, while taking a deep toke. “Peggy wanted to handle the publicity,” I explain, sitting up.

Chloe just stares at me.

“So-o-o anyway,” I continue. “James Truman eating a giant truffle? The lunch? ‘Entertainment Tonight,’ yes—go on.”

“It was so hip I ate,” I hear her say.

“What did you eat?” I murmur indifferently, waving over at Frederique, who pouts her lips, eyes squinty, like she was cooing to a baby or a very large puppy.

“I ached,
ached
, Victor. Oh god, you never listen to me.”

“Joking, baby. I’m joking. I really see what you’re saying.”

She stares at me, waiting.

“Um, your hip ached and—have I got it?”

She just stares at me.

“Okay, okay, reality just zapped me .…” I take another toke, glance nervously at her. “So-o-o the video shoot tomorrow, um, what is it exactly?” Pause. “Are you, like, naked in it or anything?” Pause, another toke, then I cock my head to exhale smoke so it won’t hit her in the face. “Er … what’s the story?”