Hotel Living (17 page)

“Monica's a historic
figure
,” God squawks.

Is God high? Just weird? What is it about wealth and fame, or whatever she's selling, that makes it impossible to give up? Stop yakking, move to Florida, and be a grandmother, for God's sake . . .

The cell phone next to Teresa cheeps “The Killing Moon.” Teresa throws a glance at it and ignores it. “Lapsang souchong,” she says to a passing waiter. “With candied ginger. No sugar. And a drop of cream.”

“You put milk in your herbal?” Tatiana pouts.

You put cocaine in your pussy.

“She's the reason Gore distanced himself from Clinton,” God lectures us. “Which gave us Bush and Iraq, and a hundred thousand people dead.”

“Ma'am, the fatalities—”

“
Listen!
” God raises her palm, and her skull ring creates a glowing comet's tail. “Clinton was riding his bike in the Oval Office during a tight race. ‘I stand in front of you as my own man . . .' My
ass
!” God yells, coughs, and starts to shake, three feet from the pool. One of the redheads stands up, but God shrugs her off. “Look where
that
got us. And that embryo he picked to run with him, just because he had bitched about Monica.”

“Who's Gore? Who the fuck is Clinton?” Teresa murmurs.

I can't help but stare at her. She's a knockout. When I'm busted with a
thank-you-but-that's-enough
smile, I stretch back in my seat to browse the people at the bar. Surprise—Paul, my b-school mate, is doing shots with a couple of guys. I get up and slowly walk toward him.

“What about Elián González then?” someone yells, and I hear laughter coming from the harem. By the time I make it to the other side of the terrace, Paul's by himself.

“I have not seen you here before,” Paul says calmly, but he looks at me perplexed, if not alarmed.

“I am not a member, Paul. You know that. And it's good to fuck you too.”

We sort of hug.

“So, what they say is true,” Paul says.

“What do they say?” I ask.

“That you're partying hard these days.”

“I think that what I'm doing
these
days”—Paul's code for my being dumped—“is pretty boring,” I say.

“Come on . . . palling around with movie stars . . .”

“Care to join us?” I ask unenthusiastically.

“No. Not yet. I know how things work.”

“No clue what you're talking about,” I say, which is not one hundred percent bull. His father was a prime minister. Don't these people have a right of passage? A secret code that allows them to acknowledge one another within their Division One?

“But we're all glamorous now,” Paul whispers, looking behind me at Teresa and company. “Who's the model?”

“He's not a model. He's a vet,” I say.

“In Chelsea?”

“No. He is a vet from Iraq,” I explain.

“
Serious?
” Paul laughs and looks at me, excited. “Is he Teresa's new boy? Has she filed for bankruptcy yet?”

“No. I don't know her.” I look around. The deck is getting rowdy. “Where did your friends go?”

“They are colleagues,” Paul corrects me.

“Are they off to mail anthrax letters to Condé Nast, then?”

“Good one,” Paul says, but his mind is elsewhere. He stops gawking at Teresa and looks at me. “Let's have a shot of tequila,” he says, and I nod. He gestures the V sign to the bartender.

“So, how are you? Really?” Paul asks me.

I double nod.

“Right,” Paul says. “How's work?”

“Work's work.”

“That's a start,” he says.

“And an end.” I do my shot. Paul does the same.

“Stathis, mate . . .” His voice is off. “It's funny that I ran into you tonight.”

“Why?” I ask.

“'Cause I'm meeting Erik,” Paul says quickly, and I want to make sure that he's joking, but blood sprints to my stomach. “With Warren,” Paul adds.

I have to fight to keep my cool. “What? He, here? . . . Why? Warren? Who? . . .”

“Stathis, brother, I'm—”

“I'm
not
your brother.”

“Listen. I got in touch with Warren when we did that Middle East story, right after we launched AccostingDubya. He's a cable news anchor. Erik was working on something similar for
The Nation
. We only met a couple of times . . .”

Paul continues speaking, but I'm deaf. I remember seeing Erik chatting with the news guy at his brother's party the night we broke up, and my guts spin like a washing machine. I turn to look for Tatiana, but there are too many people between us.

“Are you doing a number on me?” I ask Paul.

“What?”

“You met Erik twice and you didn't tell me. Are you doing a number on me?”

“It was a work story—”

“That's
exactly
my point, Paul. There's
always
a story with you.”

“Hey!” He grabs my arm.

“
Get . . . the fuck . . . off me
,” I say under my breath. My teeth are grinding.

“Stathis!” Paul shouts, but I am already bounding back to my tinseled sense of security.

Tatiana is chatting with a sixteen-year-old girl who is sitting on Ray's lap.

“Oh my God!” the teenager screams. “At Disney our diet was sleep and watch movies. No popcorn.” She laughs. “Hi,” Minnie Mouse greets me. She looks familiar.

“I'm out of here,” I tell Tatiana.

“What happened?” Tatiana stands up. “Baby, take it easy. Let's go to the playroom downstairs for a smoke.”

Ray winks at me and pinches the Disney girl. She jumps off his lap, and the four of us walk to the roof elevator.

“I'll take the stairs,” I say, scared silly of a face-to-face with Erik. That very moment the elevator doors slide open, and I instinctively look at my BlackBerry. I have two missed calls, one from Alkis and one from my sister. People are still getting out, so I keep browsing my phone. There's a text from Gawel: “Are you stopping by tonight?”

We are inside the elevator, and the damn doors don't want to close. I get cabin fever. Someone presses the wrong button, and different floor numbers light up. What if I bump into Erik as I exit? It's only a one-floor ride, but it takes forever. “Jerk off,” I text back to Gawel.

I follow the three of them into a glass-sealed playroom that looks like a gas chamber. Somewhere in the cloud I see Paul's employees, playing pool, smoking. They check out the Disney girl. Ray starts rolling a joint and I tell Tatiana that Erik is coming. “Good!” Tatiana says, but I can't breathe right, I can't follow her. She kisses me quickly on the lips. “Good for you!” she repeats. “Don't worry, we'll make out when he shows up.”

Sweat drips down my back. I look enviously at Ray next to me, in his white T-shirt and jeans. I bet my suit makes me look like an accountant. He passes me the joint. I inhale all I can, and I'm in a Baz Luhrmann video—Paul's dogs accosting me, the Gin Blossoms screaming “Hey Jealousy,” and the buzz of Gawel calling my cell phone.

Teresa walks in with one of her reds in tow.

“Come to Bungalow with me,” the Disney girl begs, putting her hands around Teresa's waist. The movie star makes a Cleopatra pose—nose up, hand above her head—which makes the girl laugh a silent laugh and Tatiana's face turn spiteful.

“Only if my daughter lets me,” Teresa says, and after freeing herself of Disney, she walks over to Tatiana. Tatiana doesn't really acknowledge her mother, but Teresa spoons her anyway.

Paul comes out of the elevator with a group of guys behind him. Warren's pink face stands out as they charge into the lounge area. I see that sober, familiar walk next to him. I only see Erik from behind. I know that blue shirt. For a second Warren puts his hand on Erik's shoulder, leans in, and says something to him. Erik pauses and listens. And then they are gone, into the main room. Did I really see that? My mind refuses to accept it. The Gin Blossoms' yelling “'cause all I really want is to be with you” is maddening.

Ray offers Teresa the joint.

She looks at it. “I like thick fingers,” she says.

Ray laughs. “I can't even text,” he says, and places the joint between her lips.

Teresa peeks at the pool table and inhales. “Tatiana, why don't we all go to Bungalow?” she asks her daughter while studying Ray. Then Ray passes me the joint and I fucking finish it.

The panic is over; pain lunges in. It's one of those moments when you know that your life has changed, without needing to explain or admit to yourself why. But I do—I have to understand where I messed up. All the things I did and the things I didn't do, all the opportunities I had or did not have to be Warren, to be walking next to Erik in Soho House. All the times I didn't play my cards right. The years wasted. And for once I wish I were my father or Jeevan. Instead, here I am, too educated to be a fisherman, too Greek to be Warren, now throwing good time after bad, watching Tatiana being a stupid brat, alone. Suddenly all I want is to escape, to get fucked up and fuck away.

“I need a shirt,” Tatiana tells Teresa. “Give me your room key.”

“I'll come with you, sexy,” her mother says.

“
No!
” Tatiana yells at her mother. “We'll meet you at Bungalow.”

FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER RAY IS
naked next to me on Teresa's bed. There's one more whitetip between his waist and his thigh,
and coke all over his fingertips as he plays with Tatiana's pussy.

“I'm not in the vagina business,” I tell Ray.

“Yo!” He laughs. “Fuck off! For
real
?”

Tatiana gets on all fours to do a line from her mother's nightstand. I see razor cuts on her inner thighs before I shove my tongue into a bag of coke. The bitter powder races in me, next to the lines from the Gin Blossoms: “. . . you were the best I'd ever had . . .” I kneel behind Ray and push my dusty tongue into his hole right as he starts to fuck Tatiana. He groans and pounds her silly.

October 2006

T
HERE ARE FOUR OF US
around the conference-room table at Command's office in midtown Manhattan. Our squares of networked phones, our slides and laptops and flash drives are spread everywhere as we fine-tune my presentation to the CEO of a biotech company.

“I don't believe in numbers,” the senior-senior Partner who sits three feet away from Andrea tells me. “I believe in ranges,” he explains, provoking in me an urge to ask him what time it is, or in what conference room we are pitching BioProt. “I want some forward thinking, some real intellectual muscle,” the senior-senior goes on, and I feel like I am at dinner with Tatiana's godmother, or at a quantum physics lecture at Stanford. What's wrong with him? Or is my hangover making me hear things?

“Easy!” Justin blurts, and Andrea fires him a
how-
dare
-you
look.

“For Stathis . . .” Justin manages, and the two partners, slowly, their eyes still surveying him, return to their laptops.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I instant-message him.

“ICE MC—‘Easy,'” Justin types back.

“What???”

“Come on, boss . . . ‘This shows real intellectual muscle. Easy' . . . ICE MC's lyrics u were dancing to w/ Tati at Bungalow last night.”

“You should get fired!” I type, and close the window.

“Two hours till showtime,” Andrea announces after consulting her watch. “Stathis, can you project the master deck from your laptop onto the big screen for me?”

I do.

She looks at the screen with narrowed eyes. She moves her pen in and out of her mouth. “Okay, go to Segmentation.”

I do.

“Keep going, keep going . . . There! Stop. Now, can you make the colors in your boxes a bit brighter?”

“I used our color template,” I tell Andrea while nodding in the senior-senior's direction.

“I know, I know.” Andrea raises her hand, and her Rolex-bracelet combo rattles. “We may go a touch off our colors, but
trust
me, I know BioProt. They drive orange Lamborghinis in LA.”

Why are you here, then?

The senior-senior studies the slide on the wall. “As long as we stay Command about it,” he cautions.

“Easy,” I say, avoiding Justin's face.

My eyes hurt; I don't think I can see the colors on my screen
properly. I'm so hungover I don't even remember being at Bungalow last night. I go to Bookmarks and click on Accosting, a link I must have checked twenty times since yesterday, and the site's landing page comes up. I scroll down until I find a picture of Warren leaving a gym, with Erik behind him. It's hard to identify Erik, but I can. There are almost a dozen postings underneath their photo. “Who's that cute guy with Warren?” GiuseppeForever comments. Then Justin coughs artificially and I look up. He waggles his head to the big screen, which shows an almost life-size Warren in his shorts. I smash the power button on my laptop and a complaining shriek comes out.

Andrea jumps out of her seat. “What just
happened
?”

“My laptop crashed. It's very rare, really.” I try to smile, but the bitch is delirious. She is raising hell, she wants a backup. Now!

“Justin, go to IT and get a machine in here. Go!” the senior-senior orders.

He tries to calm Andrea down. “We'll be fine,” he says reassuringly, and gestures to her Zen position.

She is still upset when at last, and only hesitantly, she goes back to her typing, her face telling us that we are all incompetent and any further screwups will make her cosmetics-billionaire fiancé blacklist Command to a handful of clients.

I unplug the projector from my machine and press the Power button. I open PowerPoint, and then I go back to Accosting. I scroll down Paul's website until photos of Teresa
with Ray, in matching sweatshirts, walking, dining, and kissing in the West Village, come up. In one of them, Tatiana and Kate walk behind them. In another, I recognize my back as I hail a cab. The last one shows Ray kissing Tatiana on the cheek as she jumps in the backseat with me. “Teresa, for the boys!” someone commented.

When Teresa started dating Ray a few weeks ago, nobody was surprised. Nobody among us talked about it. Not Tatiana, not once. The fact that Teresa instantly got serious with her twenty-five-year-old trainer, who used to fuck her daughter—and me—seemed part of some pervading momentum. It was as if I was living EBS paranoia again, but now, after Erik, I browse life like a movie that I don't care how it ends.

“Yes!” the senior-senior answers his phone. “No, we are actually good,” he says, eyeballing me. “We are about to send it.” He laughs. “Oh my God! Did I just reduce myself to a brand manager?” More laughs. “Okay, okay, what will Charles think if he gets the same e-mail as Carter? For fun, tell me . . . humor me . . .” His imbecilic prattle goes on for the ten minutes it takes these Commanders to guess and second-guess who to cc on the simplest e-mail. It's a company-wide sport masked as healthy downtime: who to include or who to bcc. Questions that feed Command's paranoid culture of everyone-suspecting-everyone-else. It's so intrinsic and bankrupt—it lacks a Big Brother centralized efficiency—that it's almost Soviet. I listen to the senior-senior's petty schemes and I can't tell if his problem is stupidity, insecurity, or just fat.

“Washington is here,” he says after he hangs up. He puts on his jacket and grabs his papers and laptop. “Stathis, I know we'll have fun with this.”

“That's a great three-piece on you,” Andrea tells him.

“Mohair. Thank you. I like your necklace.”

She gives him a naughty smile as he walks out of the room. “It's
estate
,” she says, but the senior-senior is gone.

Andrea looks at me, chastened, and I look at my laptop. Gawel's instant message pops up on my screen. I right-click Unavailable, close Accosting, and go about LA-ing the colors in the segmentation boxes—Andrea loves “French, almost electric blue.” But I hear her fingernails tapping on the table. “Stathis, may I bother you for a second?” Her voice sounds strangely attentive.

I look up.

“Have you presented to a CEO before?” she asks.

“Once,” I tell her.

“That's what I thought.” She exhales. “Stathis, you're obviously a good consultant—that's why we asked you to do the presentation—but do you know how to handle people with real power? I've met CEOs on different occasions—” She stops and starts again. “I mean, what I want to say is, I should give you a few pointers for when you get up there to present.”

We are the only two left in the conference room, so I can stare at her as I try to sort her out. Too woman for Washington, too thirsty for Command, she fucks a CEO and wears jewelry to work. I'm actually quite taken by how blind she
is to all the WASPiness around us. My hangover makes me charitable, and I want to cue her that we are both Command outliers. “Thank you,” I say, and for once I mean it.

“First of all, you don't speak proper English,” Andrea says. “You are not a native English speaker, so sometimes you use an informal tone. The other day you said: ‘It's sunny in retail,' and ‘Don't spend too many calories on licensing.'” She goes on and I nod along, pretending that I am interested, that I'm listening. What she doesn't get is that my Greekness is the one thing I have going for me. Clients listen to my accent, the imperfections of my grammar, my angst about finding the right word—“Is it
affect
or
effect
?” I asked a thrilled audience in Atlanta—and they think that if this communication stretch is happening, is real, and is given some slack, then my strange, “tavern,” strategic choices just might work. They give me the benefit of the doubt as an aftermath to the colorful Greek state they are already in, while I, well, I keep sliding into darker habits.

“I need to use the bathroom,” I say, and start for the door.

“You're walking
out
on me?” Andrea asks.

“Call of nature. I'll be right back,” I yell from the hallway.

“I want to talk body language next. Stillness!” Andrea shouts over her jingling bangles.

Justin hangs over the restroom's sink. His head is tilted sideways with some kind of pot, which looks like a sake jar, up against one nostril. Water—what I hope is water—runs out the other one.

“What the hell you doing?” I ask, and Justin stands up straight.

“Nasal douching. Cleans whatever's left in there,” he says. “I know it's disgusting, but it works.”

“Fucking kidding me,” I say, and walk to the urinals. I begin to pee and the smell of formalin hits me. I close my eyes and think of nothing. When Justin blows his nose, I wake up, still peeing.

“Wanna try?” Justin asks. I see him raising his jar in the mirror above my head. “It will open up your sinuses for the presentation. You did some serious snow with Tati last night.”

“Will you shut
up
?” I yell at him while scanning the bathroom through the mirror. I piss everywhere.

“Boss, relax! No one's here. I already checked.”

“Thanks, I'll pass.”

“Suit yourself,” Justin says, and rinses his nose some more.

I get that quiver down the spine as my bladder finally empties. I shake, zip up, and flush.

“Ray gave me the nasal rinser,” Justin brags when his head is up again. “Teresa can tell if he's done blow from his sinuses.”

“What's Ray gonna do now that you got his kit?” I ask.

“Don't know,” Justin says seriously, missing my sarcasm. “I guess he had to give it up since he moved in with her at Soho House.”

“You hang out with Ray and Teresa?” I say.

“No more than you do,” he says, defensively. “Ray and I work out together. Hey, boss, I almost forgot. Alkis messaged me. He said that he'll totally stop over if we can get him backstage at Teresa's show at Madison Square Garden tomorrow. I'm sure he called you . . .”

He didn't, but I nod my head, pretending I know what Justin is talking about.

“Gawel wants to come too,” Justin adds. “Can you ask Tatiana for backstage passes? She doesn't pick up, and Ray is maxed out to his army buds.”

“Gawel?” I ask, surprised but casual.

“He called me.”

“How come?” I try not to look suspicious.

Justin shrugs.

“Gawel knows that you hang out with Teresa's daughter?”

“I may have mentioned it,” Justin says. “What's the matter, boss?” He looks at me, concerned.

“Nothing,” I say. “I'll see what I can do.”

I wash my hands and linger by the mirror, shocked at how crappy I look. My eyes are red and puffy. I don't believe they'll let me pitch to a prospective client like this.

“Hey, thanks for the projector,” I tell Justin.

“Of course. But what were you doing?”

“Oh,” I try to downplay things. “A b-school friend of mine founded Accosting. It's a stupid site, but he asked me to take a look.”

“No
shit
! That's the first thing I read every day. Has every
thing that happened downtown the night before. I'm on Accosting more than I am on
Bloomberg
.”

His frat excitement's killing me. “Of course you are,” I say, and feel the mucus in my coke-railed nostrils. I gotta move out of Tatiana's loft if I wanna make it to Christmas.

“Fuck it. Fix me up,” I say.

“Bend your head sideways,” says the kid with the toy. “Breathe from your mouth.”

“WE ARE HERE TODAY BECAUSE
you set some kick-ass goals for 2010,” I begin my presentation in the jammed conference room.

“My big fat Greek capitalist!” BioProt's CEO roars, and a tsunami of laughter sweeps the room.

“But he's so thin!” Andrea screams, and she leans her head back the Alkis way.

THREE HOURS LATER ANDREA AND
I walk into Nello on Madison Avenue. She does her phony thing: “
Fegatini
con balsamico, prosciutto e melone
. And a glass of champagne.” And I do mine: “Dirty vodka, straight up.”

“The BioProt team loved you,” she tells me after the waiter leaves. “They want you in LA for a prelaunch meeting in December. So you're officially on the beach until then.”

“I understand,” I say.

She tries to swap pleasantries, but all I offer is a mild smile here and there. After a few minutes she gives up.

“I'm flying to the Dominican Republic this weekend,” she declares. “So I'll be quick.”

“I'm going to Banana Republic this weekend,” I say.

She throws me a pitiful glance. “I am not going to accept another Stathis, Stathis. This is not going to be like Paris. Is that clear?” she asks.

“Paris?” I play dumb.

“BioProt will go Lifestyle,” she announces. “That's what we are doing. Cosmeceuticals; weight and hormone aids. Got that? Is it clear in that smart, stubborn Greek head of yours?”

I'm far from shocked.

“Maybe,” I say, blinking, wondering how much she is willing to risk to help her man take over BioProt. How far is she willing to go to trade up? “Suppose we do,” I say, hesitantly. “Why not?” I shrug. Erik did. He traded my patio for Warren's brownstone, or penthouse, or wherever TV people live. Warren, the next-generation Stathis, someone better, part of the “machine,” for Erik to fight with. Then again, Warren might be immune to criticism, falling in that blind spot within Erik's pick-and-choose portfolio of protests. Like Kevin's job, or his own indulgence in running marathons. My ex was a hypocrite whom I fell in love with. Someone who had perfected the art of signaling underperformance, in order to get noticed. A reverse snob, thus the ultimate snob, who drove me bloodied and bowed all the way to addiction.
A long-sleeping fear of
what-does-all-this-say-about-me
wakes up. “We feed on what we don't have,” Alkis once told me. There. My excuse, explanation, and failure to get what I want. Now, bitter, I'm not sure which I hate more: the fact that Erik is still so much a part of me that I act out on Andrea, or the fact that I used corporate frameworks, Andrea's world, to interpret my relationship with him.