Glamorama (92 page)

It’s an episode of “60 Minutes” but without the sound.

Dan Rather introduces a segment. Behind him a mock-up of a magazine story. My father’s face. And below that, half in shadow, is my face.

Azaleas. At the home of Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman. A dinner party for Samuel Johnson. A fund-raiser for his presidential bid. The guests: Ruth Hotte and Ed Huling and Deborah Gore
Dean and Barbara Raskin and Deborah Tannen and Donna Shalala and Hillary Clinton and Muffy Jeepson Stout. There’s Ben Bradlee and Bill Seidman and Malcolm Endicott Peabody. There’s Clayton Fritcheys and Brice Clagett and Ed Burling and Sam Nunn. There’s Marisa Tomei and Kara Kennedy and Warren Christopher and Katharine Graham and Esther Coopersmith.

And Dad’s standing with a woman in her mid-forties wearing a Bill Blass cocktail dress. I glimpse her only briefly.

Now Dan Rather’s interviewing my father in his office.

Dad has obviously had a face-lift and his upper-lip-to-nose area has been shortened, droopy lids have been lifted and his teeth are bleached. He’s laughing, relaxed.

Then a series of photos flash by. Dad with Mort Zuckerman. Dad with Shelby Bryan. Dad with Strom Thurmond. Dad with Andrea Mitchell.

Suddenly: file footage. An interview with my mother from the mid-1980s. A clip of my father and mother at the White House, standing with Ronald and Nancy Reagan.

Dan Rather interviewing my father again.

A montage: Brooks Brothers, Ann Taylor, Tommy Hilfiger.

And then I’m walking along Dupont Circle being interviewed by Dan Rather.

This is suddenly intercut with footage that the “Entertainment Tonight” crew shot last fall of me working out with Reed at his gym.

Various shots from my portfolio: Versace, CK One, an outtake from Madonna’s Sex. Paparazzi shots of me leaving a nightclub called Crush. A shot of me leaving the Jockey Club.

I’m being interviewed by Dan Rather downstairs at Red Sage.

I’m laughing, relaxed, wearing wire-rimmed glasses. I’m dressed preppily in a Brooks Brothers suit. I’m nodding at everything that is being asked of me.

Dan Rather shows me a photo from a
Vogue
layout where I’m wearing Calvin Klein boxer-briefs and painting Christy Turlington’s toe-nails. Dan Rather is gesturing, making comments about my physical attractiveness.

I keep nodding my head as if ashamed.

And then: a photo of Chloe Byrnes, followed by various magazine covers.

A shot of Hôtel Costes in Paris.

A montage of her funeral in New York.

I’m sitting in the front row, crying, Alison Poole and Baxter Priestly both offering comfort.

Interviews with Fred Thompson and then Grover Norquist and then Peter Mandelson.

Shots of me walking through Washington Square Park.

Dad again. He’s walking out of the Palm with that woman in her mid-forties, dark hair, pretty but also plain enough not to be intimidating. They’re holding hands.

Outside the Bombay Club she’s there again, kissing him lightly on the cheek.

I recognize this woman.

This woman is Lorrie Wallace.

The Englishwoman who ran into me on the
QE2
.

The woman married to Stephen Wallace.

The woman who wanted me to go to England.

The woman who recognized Marina.

I lunge for the TV, trying to turn up the volume while Lorrie Wallace is being interviewed. But there’s no sound, just static.

Finally Dad and Lorrie Wallace at Carol Laxalt’s annual Christmas party. Dad’s standing by a poinsettia. He’s shaking John Warner’s hand.

And in the background, sipping punch from a tiny glass cup, is F. Fred Palakon, a giant Christmas tree twinkling behind him.

I hold a hand over my mouth to stop the screaming.

9

I’m calling my sister again. It rings three, four, five times.

She picks up.

“Sally?” I’m breathing hard, my voice tight.

“Who is this?” she asks suspiciously.

“It’s me,” I gasp. “It’s Victor.”

“Uh-huh,” she says dubiously. “I’d really prefer it—whoever this is—if you would stop calling.”

“Sally, it’s really me, please—” I gasp.

“It’s for you,” I hear her say.

The sound of the phone being passed to someone else.

“Hello?” a voice asks.

I don’t say anything, just listen intently.

“Hello?” the voice asks again. “This is Victor Johnson,” the voice says. “Who is this?”

Silence.

“It’d be really cool if you stopped bothering my sister,” the voice says. “Okay?”

Silence.

“Goodbye,” the voice says.

A click.

I’m disconnected.

10

Davide wants some privacy. He hands me a sweater, suggesting I go for another walk. The girl is smoking a cigarette, sitting naked on a plush tan couch. She glances over at me, waiting. Numb, I comply.

At the door, standing in the hallway, I ask Davide, “How do you know I’ll come back?”

“I trust you,” he says, smiling, urging me out.

“Why?” I ask.

“Because,” he says, gesturing, still smiling, “you have no place to go.”

The way he says this is so charming I just nod and actually thank him.

“Thank you,” I say to Davide.

Behind him the girl walks toward the bed. She stops, twisting her muscular body, and whispers something urgently in Italian to Davide. Davide closes the door. I hear him lock it.

11

I take the service elevator down to the lobby and outside it’s night and the streets are wet and water drips down the facades of the buildings I pass but it’s not raining. A taxi cruises by. I step out of the way of fast-skating Rollerbladers. And I’m still feeling filmed. How many warnings had I ignored?

12

Back at the hotel, an hour later. I take the service elevator up to my floor. I move slowly down the empty hallway. At my room, I pull out a key, knocking first.

There’s no answer.

The key slips into the lock.

I push the door open.

Davide lies naked in a pile in the bathroom. No specific visible wound, but his skin is broken in so many places I can’t tell what happened to him. The floor beneath Davide is washed over with blood, dotted with smashed hotel china. Dramatic lightning from outside. There’s no sign of the girl. Blaming myself, I walk downstairs to the bar.