Jeremy Thrane (17 page)

“I just did.”

“Really?” she said skeptically but with immense relief.

We went into Dizzy Izzy’s and stood in line behind a devastatingly skinny guy in skin-tight peg-leg jeans, a leather vest, shiny pointy-toed
lizard-skin boots, and a blue skull tattoo on his moth-white biceps. Amanda looked him up and down and flicked a sideways laughing glance at me. We ordered the same thing, toasted everything bagels with a scallion schmear, and a few minutes later were handed twin hot mini-bundles wrapped in wax paper. We took them outside and stood under a blank marquee down the street, watching a parade of cabs jouncing their way to the West Side Highway, their chassis sparking blue as they hit the same deep pothole, one after another.

“You’d think there’d be a collective evolutionary development among cabs,” I said, “sort of like the hundredth monkey.”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

She swallowed her bite and held her bagel poised, ready to take another bite the instant she stopped talking. “Maybe they’re more like dogs marking trees, squirting brake fluid into the same potholes.”

“Maybe,” I said.

“You’re surprised I knew what you were talking about. You think you’re the only one in the family who’s ever read a book? I went to college, you know.”

“Sorry,” I said.

She sniffed.

“Amanda, why are you always sniffing?”

“Hey, that’s Sebastian Philpott, isn’t it?”

“Where? I just ran into him the other day. I can’t believe it.”

“Across the street. Oh my God, look at him, he looks exactly the same as he did in high school.”

“Some people might take that as a compliment.”

She laughed. “Hey, Sebastian!” she called, and waved him over.

He came bustling toward us, his doughy face alight. “Hello!” he called. “Jeremy, good to see you again! Amanda!” He was dressed like a film noir private detective or a vintage flasher: trench coat, fedora with a dripping brim. His glasses were fogged with his pleasure at seeing us, as if he generated his own personal weather system.

“How’s the porn industry treating you?” I said.

“Like a king,” said Sebastian joyfully.

“He made a fortune off his own magazine,” I told Amanda.
“Boytoy.”

“Fascinating,” said Amanda. She sniffed.

I hoped Amanda wouldn’t say something snide to him; I didn’t want his feelings to be hurt. I wasn’t sure why, but I felt protective of him.

“And how have you been, Amanda?” he asked in his stiff, courtly way, as if he’d been mocked so many times, he was impervious to it, but perennially hopeful that someday it would stop.

“I’m okay,” she said breezily. “My band played tonight. We blew.”

“You have a band? Let me know next time you play. I’ll be sure to come.” He produced a business card from his hat brim, which he handed to her with a slight inclination of his oversized head. “You must be following me around, Jeremy,” he said to me.

“I was going to say the same thing to you.”

“Call it serendipity, maybe; I’m still desperate for writers. So call
me
, Jeremy, as soon as you can.” Sebastian extracted another card from the brim of his hat and handed it to me. It was damp from the rain, or perhaps from the cloud of precipitation he generated.

“Okay,” I said, taking it. “But I think I have the first one you gave me somewhere.”

“I’ve got to be on my way now, I have an appointment.” He winked at us. “An assignation, as they used to say. It’s extremely good to see you both. What an unexpected pleasure. Good night, and please be in touch.” And off he trundled along Fourteenth Street.

“He’s just going home to abuse himself,” said Amanda, dropping the card into the gutter. “He doesn’t have a date. No way. Who’d go out with him?”

“Why are you so mean to him?”

She gave me a look. “Are you sticking up for Sebastian Philpott? Jeremy, that guy is such a weird loser, I can’t believe he’s still alive, I can’t believe no one’s pulverized him into a bloody pulp.”

“He’s nice,” I said weakly.

“Man.” She shook her head so her earrings caught the glare of the streetlamp and glittered like miniature disco balls. “You need to get out more. You’re going to rot in that attic.”

“I don’t live in that attic anymore, you may recall,” I said. “I’m
homeless and broke now. Actually, in a way I live with you.” I was scrutinizing his card, which said, “Sebastian Philpott,
Boytoy
, Editor in Chief and Impresario.”

“You’re not really going to
call
him, are you?”

“I need a job,” I said, sliding the card into my pocket.

“I need a drink,” she said with a sigh. “Come on, Liam probably thinks I ditched him. Let’s go burst his little bubble.”

“What did you think of the movie?”

“What I want to know is, who is her trainer? I do a hundred doggie kicks a day and my butt doesn’t look like that.”

“She probably got implants.”

“Or lipo.”

“Or both.”

I turned around to behold two women exchanging sharklike smiles. One had a cap of wet-looking short dark red hair. The other’s hair, jet-black, equally sleek, was worn twisted and pinned to the back of her head. Large shawls draped below their bony, bare, ballerinalike clavicles, the ends tucked into the crooks of their arms. They glistened with a well-tended and voluntary malnourishment that probably allowed them to feel as if they deserved so much more than whatever they already had, and therefore justified all their draconian bitchiness. When the redhead caught my eye with a laserlike, hunting-dog inquiry, I helpfully projected as much faggotry as I could at such short notice; without any visible reaction she flicked her eyes past me, scanning for more viable prey. Her friend, whose gaydar was clearly more technologically advanced, hadn’t even bothered to glance my way.

When their nostrils flared in tandem, a look across the room in the same direction gave me an unobstructed view of Ted and Giselle, making their entrance. I was plunged back into my gangly, hormonal freshman body, gazing hot-eyed at the prom king.

“I’m back,” said Felicia, appearing beside me. She had gone to “powder her nose” fifteen minutes before; I had almost forgotten about her.

“Hello,” I said, staring blindly into my drink as a flurry of pain
swirled through me like microscopic shards of burning ice. None of my decisions and epiphanies over the last few days had done anything to diminish this reaction to his proximity, a burning intensity at the cellular level no rational thought could block or control.

“You’re going to be all right,” murmured Felicia, watching me closely. I’d had a friend like her in high school too, a beautiful, fucked-up rich girl who’d used me to shield her from the very straight, unattainable boys I lusted after. Back then, she’d been named Pamela, Ted was Brian, and Giselle was Diane, but it didn’t matter that I was almost twenty years older now and the cast had changed.

“I’m not going to be all right,” I said.

“Buck up, buccaneer,” she said, sliding her cold hand onto the back of my neck. My spine immediately lengthened in response, and I stood very straight and tall in spite of myself.

“I don’t think Giselle’s butt is so great,” I said.

“Of course it isn’t,” said Felicia soothingly without missing a beat. She had gone into full-out Florence Nightingale mode. She patted my own tuxedoed butt. This “event” (a word I could no longer use without quotation marks, even mentally, given its smarmy catchall overuse in corporate lingo, car commercials, weather reports, and culture-vulture slang) was black tie, so I’d borrowed Max’s tux, which was a passably okay cut and fit, but by no standards a dashing or imposing one. However, Felicia had recently enjoyed an artificial mood elevator that enabled her to say anything at all, no matter how preposterous, in hopes of helping me through this.

“Why did you let me come to this thing?” I asked her.

Her eyes were hot little black holes, sucking in everything she looked at with a tiny cosmic whoosh. She looked viciously beautiful. The two magazine sharks bristled in my peripheral vision; Felicia was every bit as balletically bony and haughtily attired as they were, but she was on the edge and hypersensitive, while they were circumscribed by convention. She was in tremendous psychic pain; they needed no opiates to get them through the day. They just wanted husbands, but Felicia was beyond such pedestrian female pursuits. This was Felicia’s take on things, at any rate, and for once I was inclined to buy into it. Just then I loved her the way a drowning rat loves a piece of driftwood.

“You were very clear about it on the phone last night. Your pride demanded that you put in an appearance. You said you were a Norskehoovian lutefisk-eating aquavit-swilling iceberg, so you could take anything.”

I burst out laughing. “I did not say that.”

“Hewdy-hewdy,” she said. “You’re going to miss me when I go into rehab, admit it. I’m turning myself in tomorrow.”

I looked into her hard, shrinking pupils, alarmed and excited. For some reason I didn’t care to examine, my immediate visceral instinct was to talk her out of it. “What?”

“It’s gone far enough. You were right. It’s getting old.” She nudged me. “It’s Norskehoovian-iceberg time.”

“Giselle,” I said crisply. “Ted.”

“Jeremy! Felicia!” Giselle looked simultaneously steely and luscious in a strappy, shimmery peach-colored dress. Her face had been made up to be photographed from afar; her eyes were drowning in mascara; her skin a celluloid-ready surface. I couldn’t look at Ted.

“Oh, Teddy,” Felicia was saying. “You were never this cute in college, it’s not fair.”

“You always say the right thing, Felicia,” said Ted, laughing, tossing his head.

Double Eurotrash air kisses, girls kissing boys and each other—mwah mwah, mwah mwah, mwah mwah. Women were so small and oddly shaped and soft, I thought as I kissed Giselle, my hands resting lightly on her shoulders so I could maneuver my way around her head. They were so unlikely, such a dubious proposition. Their skin gave so easily; their shoulder bones felt so brittle and frightening. How could Ted have sex with this one? Ted offered me his hand to shake with an earnest, forthright smile. I was tempted to lick his palm or shove his hand into my pants. “Hello, Ted,” I said instead. “How are you doing?”

“Very well. How’s your sister?”

I was thrown, just for a beat. Amanda; I was staying with her. Ted’s face was a mask of friendliness I saw right through but could do nothing to shatter. Did I imagine the resigned little sneer he gave my martini glass? Impotently, I twisted my fingers around its stem and sucked in my stomach, despising myself and him equally. “She’s great,” I said.

“Are y’all having fun in New York?” Felicia drawled, dripping honey all over everyone.

“I love New York,” said Giselle. “I keep begging Ted to move here for a little while, that house is just standing empty. I can’t believe we never use it.”

Felicia’s hand, which had found its way into the crook of my elbow, gave me a little squeeze. “And how’s your adorable little
daughter
?”

“You can see for yourself, she’s here with her nanny, getting spoiled rotten by the film crew. They worship her. She’ll turn into a horrible brat if we’re not careful.” Giselle was clearly delighted by this. She no doubt wanted her daughter to have everything she herself had lacked as a child.

“Giselle,” Felicia said, “you were just great in that movie. I hope you win an Oscar. You certainly deserve one for that performance.”

Giselle’s glance slid almost imperceptibly and probably unconsciously to me in anticipation of my expected assent, which I was too consternated to deliver on cue, but she covered for me expertly. “Thanks,” she said. “It was pure fun to work on that movie. We all had such a blast together, it was like being at some totally fun boarding school or something. Ben and Dan are my favorite—oh, there they are, I’m going to go over and say hello. See you guys in a minute?”

She went off in a dazzling shower of flashbulbs that sounded like the popping and whirring of giant mandible-wielding insects.

“Where’s Yoshi?” I asked Ted pointedly.

“I imagine he’s around here somewhere.” Ted skated his gaze smoothly around the room.

“I’m going to the bar,” I said, getting bored with this bootless little game of Ted baiting. “Can I get anyone anything?”

“I’ll have one of whatever you’re having,” said Felicia.

Ted shook his head.

Gary O’Nan stood at the bar, lurking raffishly in a white flannel suit, one hand in the pants pocket, the other holding a drink. His face resembled an iguana’s, all slitty eyes and toothy lazy hungry grin, but his expression sharpened when he caught sight of me, as if he’d been lying in wait for me and I’d walked right into his trap when he’d least expected it, before he’d even set it. Standing right next to him, camera
slung around his neck, bending his head to listen to a tiny, yappy, sharp-beaked old lady in a pale green dress who bore more than a passing resemblance to my pet bird Juanita and whose face I recognized from the charity benefit photos in the Styles section of the Sunday
Times
, was Phil Martensen.

“Hello,” said Gary to me, making it sound like a question. “Jeremy, right?”

“Gary,” I said as I held up two fingers and my martini glass to the bartender. “Absolut, very dry with olives and a twist,” I yelled over the noise.

The bartender, a big, burly fellow in suspenders, took my glass from me and busied himself.

“Nice cruisewear, Gary,” I said.

He raised his eyebrows. “How did you like the movie?”

“Giselle is so talented,” I said blandly.

“Isn’t she.”

We sized each other up in silence for a beat or two.

“Your friend Felicia Boudreaux and I go way back,” he said then. “Our grandfathers were
friends
, wink wink, if you catch my drift.”

“She mentioned that the other day when she ran into you.”

“Did she?” He looked flattered. “Would you mind if Phil and I joined you? I’d love to meet Ted Masterson. I gather he’s a friend of yours? Felicia mentioned something at Benito’s the other day.”