Last Night at Chateau Marmont (12 page)

“Well I think it’s fucking awesome,” Jon declared, and raised his tall, tapered beer glass. “A toast to fire cro—” He stopped short and an adorably sheepish look crossed his face. Brooke wanted to tell him he could call her “fire crotch” anytime.

“A toast to hot redheads and first appearances on
Leno.
Congrats, man. That’s big.” Jon held his glass aloft and everyone clinked it with his own. Brooke’s champagne flute was the last to touch it, and she wondered if there was any way she could smuggle the glass home with her.

“Cheers!” everyone called out. “Congratulations!”

“So how was it?” Brooke asked Julian, happy to give him the opening to shine once again in front of all these people. “Tell me everything.”

“He was perfect,” Samara announced in her clipped, professional voice. “His performance followed really solid guests.” She paused and turned to Julian. “I thought Hugh Jackman was charming. Did you?”

“Yeah, he was good. And so was that chick from
Modern Family,
” Julian said, nodding.

“We caught a break with that—two legitimately interesting and famous guests, none of the child performers or the magicians or the animal trainers,” Samara said. “Trust me, nothing’s worse than getting upstaged by a studio full of chimpanzees.”

Everyone laughed. A waiter arrived at the table and Leo ordered for the group without consulting anyone. Brooke normally hated it when people did that, but even she couldn’t argue with his choices: another bottle of champagne, a round of tequila gimlets, and a bunch of snack plates, everything from truffled porcini bruschetta to mozzarella di bufala and arugula. By the time the first dish of crab cakes in an avocado puree arrived, Brooke had happily rediscovered her earlier buzz and was feeling almost euphoric from the excitement. Julian—her Julian, the same one who slept in socks every night—had just performed on
The Tonight Show.
They were staying in a gorgeous suite at the infamous Chateau Marmont, eating and drinking like rock royalty. One of the most famous musicians of the twentieth century had announced he loved her hair. Of course her wedding was the best day of her life (weren’t you required to say that no matter what?), but this was quickly clocking in as a very close second.

Her cell phone screeched from her bag on the ground, a shrill fire-alarm-like ring she’d chosen post-nap to ensure she didn’t oversleep again.

“Why don’t you get it?” Julian asked through a full mouth as
Brooke stared at her phone. She didn’t want to answer it, but she was worried something was wrong; it was already after midnight back at home.

“Hey, Mom,” she said as quietly as she could. “We’re all in the middle of dinner right now. Is everything okay?”

“Brooke! Julian’s on right now and he’s incredible! He looks adorable, and the band is playing perfectly, and my god, you just want to eat him up. I think it’s the best he’s ever been.” Her mother’s words tumbled out in a frantic jumble, and it was all Brooke could do to put the pieces together.

She glanced at her watch. Nine twenty California time, which meant
The Tonight Show
was airing that very second up and down the East Coast. “Really? He looks good?” Brooke asked.

This got everyone’s attention.

“Of course, it’s airing on the East Coast now,” Samara said, pulling out her BlackBerry. Sure enough, it was vibrating with the intensity of a washing machine.

“Amazing,” her mother was saying through the receiver. “He looks absolutely amazing. And Jay gave him a really nice introduction. Wait—he’s just finishing up the song now.”

“Mom, I’ll call you later, okay? I’m being really rude right now.”

“All right, honey. It’s late here so call me in the morning. And congratulate Julian for me.”

Brooke clicked to disconnect the call, but her phone instantly rang again. Nola. She glanced around the table and noticed that with the exception of Jon, who had wandered over to say hello to another group, everyone else was on the phone, too.

“Hey, can I call you later? We’re just eating.”

“He’s ridiculously good!” Nola screeched.

Brooke smiled. Nola had never before been that enthusiastic about any of Julian’s performances, not even close. “I know.”

“Holy shit, Brooke, I’m like at the edge of my seat. When he re
ally lets go and sings that last stanza or whatever you call it, with his eyes closed and his head back like that? Good god, it gave me the chills.”

“I’ve told you. He’s the real deal.”

Brooke overheard Julian thanking someone with an embarrassed but proud smile. Leo was shouting something about Julian being “fucking awesome,” and Samara was saying that she’d check on Julian’s availability and call back in the morning. Brooke’s phone was blowing up with incoming text messages and e-mails, little notifications popping up on her screen even as she talked to Nola.

“Look, I’ve got to run right now, things are crazy here. Are you up for another hour?” She lowered her voice to a barely discernible whisper. “I’m having dinner at the Chateau with Jon Bon Jovi. And apparently, he loves redheads.”

“Shut up. Shut. The. Hell. Up!” Nola hissed into the phone. “First of all, when on earth did my best friend become so fabulous? ‘Dinner at the Chateau’? Are you
kidding
me? And second . . . I need to hang up right this second so I have enough time to book a flight to L.A. and then dye my hair red.”

Brooke laughed.

“Seriously, Brooke, don’t be surprised if I show up there first thing tomorrow morning, ginger hair and all, and crash on your couch. Consider yourself warned.”

“I love you, Nol. I’ll call you in a little.”

She hung up, but it didn’t matter. Each of their phones kept ringing, buzzing, and singing, and each of them kept answering, eager to hear the next round of praise and adulation. By far the winning e-mail of the evening came from Julian’s mother, addressed to both of them, which simply read:
Your father and I saw you on Leno this evening. While we weren’t impressed with the other guests he interviewed, we thought your performance was quite good. Of course, with the kind of opportunities and support you’ve had since childhood, we knew anything was possible. Congratulations on your accomplishment!
Brooke and Ju
lian read it at the same time on different devices and laughed so hard they couldn’t speak for many minutes.

It was only after another hour that things calmed down, and by then, Jon had wandered back to them, Samara had booked Julian on two other shows, and Leo had ordered their third bottle of champagne. Julian just sat back in his chair, looking equal parts stunned and elated.

“Thank you guys so much,” he finally said, holding his flute up and nodding to each of them. “I can’t even find the words, but this, this is, uh, just the most amazing night
ever.
”

Leo cleared his throat and held up his own glass. “Sorry, buddy, but I think you’re wrong there,” he said with a wink to the rest of them. “This night is just the beginning.”

I
T
wasn’t yet ten thirty on a late May morning and already the Texas heat was crushing. Julian had already sweated through his T-shirt and Brooke was chugging water by the liter, convinced they were both seriously dehydrated. She’d tried to go for her run that morning but had given up after ten minutes when she felt light-headed, starving, and nauseated at the same time. When Julian had suggested for possibly the very first time in five years of marriage that they spend a couple hours shopping, she couldn’t climb into the ugly green rental car fast enough. Shopping meant air-conditioning, and she’d take it.

They drove first through the hotel’s residential neighborhood, followed by a long stretch of highway, and then, after nearly twenty minutes, a few miles down a winding country road that was paved in some parts and little more than dust and gravel in others. All through the trip Brooke begged to be told where they were going, and each time Julian smiled wider and refused to answer her.

“Would you have ever guessed it looks like this just ten minutes outside of Austin?” Brooke asked as they passed fields of wildflowers and, on the other side of it, a dilapidated barn.

“Never. It’s straight out of a movie for how you’d envision a rural
Texas ranchers’ town, not a suburb of a major cosmopolitan city. But I guess that’s exactly why they film here.”

“Yeah, no one at work believed they shoot
Friday Night Lights
here.”

Julian turned to look at her. “Everything okay at work? You haven’t said much about it lately.”

“For the most part everything’s good. You know the patient at Huntley, the freshman scholarship student? Remember, the one who has a totally different background from most of the other girls? Well, she feels like she doesn’t fit in, in a million ways, but the one that’s the hardest for her is the weight. She’s now convinced she’s morbidly obese, even though she’s pretty close to normal.”

“What can you do for her?”

She sighed. “You know, not that much. Besides listen to her and reassure her, I just need to keep an eye on her and make sure nothing gets out of hand. I’m absolutely certain I’m not dealing with a serious eating disorder, but it’s scary when someone is so preoccupied with weight, especially when that someone is a teenage girl. With school ending for the summer next month, I’m worried about her.”

“And everything at the hospital?”

“It’s okay. Margaret wasn’t thrilled with me for taking off these two days, but what can you do?”

He turned to look at her. “Is two days really such a big deal?”

“Not by itself, but I took three days for L.A. and
Leno,
that half day for your round of follow-up interviews in New York, and a day to go to your album cover shoot. And that was all in the last six weeks. But whatever. I’ve barely seen you since then—I wouldn’t have missed this for anything.”

“Rook, I don’t think it’s fair to say we’ve barely seen each other. Things have just been hectic. In a good way.”

She disagreed—no one could say that catching glimpses of each other for an hour here or there as Julian passed through their apart
ment every few days was seeing each other—but she really hadn’t intended to sound so critical.

“That’s not what I meant, I promise,” she said in her most soothing tone. “Look, we’re together now, so let’s just enjoy it, okay?”

They sat in silence for a few minutes until Brooke touched her fingertips to her forehead and said, “I cannot believe I’m going to meet Tim Riggins.”

“Which one is he?”

“Oh, please. Just stop.”

“Is he the coach? Or the quarterback? I get confused,” Julian said, smiling. As if
anyone
didn’t know Tim Riggins.

“Uh-huh, whatever. When he walks into the party tonight and every woman in the room faints with lust, you’ll know. Trust me.”

Julian slapped the steering wheel in mock outrage. “Aren’t they supposed to be swooning because of me? I mean, I’ll be the rock star.”

Brooke leaned across the seat divider and kissed his cheek. “Of course they’ll swoon for you, baby. If they can stop staring at Riggins long enough to notice you, they’ll swoon like crazy.”

“Now I’m really not telling you where we’re going,” Julian said.

His brow was furrowed in concentration as he worked to avoid the potholes every ten feet or so, most of which were filled with water from the previous night’s thunderstorms. Her husband was simply not used to driving. Brooke panicked that they were going for a hike or a nature walk or some sort of rafting or fishing expedition, but she quickly reminded herself that her husband was a born-and-bred New Yorker, and his idea of communing with nature was the weekly watering of a small bonsai tree that sat on his nightstand. His knowledge of wildlife was limited: he could distinguish between a small rat and a large mouse on any subway platform, and he seemed to possess an instinctive sense of which bodega-dwelling cats were friendly and which would hiss and scratch if you got too close. Other than that, he
liked to keep his shoes clean and his bed indoors and would venture outside—say, to Central Park for SummerStage or the Boat Basin when friends threw parties there—only when armed with fistfuls of Claritin and a fully charged cell phone. He hated when Brooke called him a city prince, but he could never successfully deny the charge.

The sprawling, ugly complex seemed to rise directly out of a cleared thicket and advertised itself in glaring neon: Lone Star Western Wear. There were two buildings, not quite adjoining but sharing an unpaved parking lot, and a couple of cars idled outside.

“Here we are,” Julian said, pulling off one dirt path and onto another.

“You’re joking. Tell me you’re joking.”

“What? Shopping, just like I said.”

Brooke looked toward the squat buildings and the cluster of pickup trucks in front of them. Julian got out of the car, came around to the passenger side, and held his hand out to help Brooke step over the mud puddles in her thong sandals.

“When you said shopping, I was thinking something more like Neiman’s.”

The first thing Brooke noticed after the welcome blast of air-conditioning was a pretty young girl in tight jeans; a fitted, short-sleeved plaid shirt; and a pair of cowboy boots. Immediately she came over and said, “Good mornin’! Y’all just let me know if you need any help now!”

Brooke smiled and nodded. Julian grinned. Brooke punched him on the arm. A twangy guitar sound emanated from speakers in the ceiling.

“Actually, we’d love some help,” Julian said to the blonde.

The girl clapped her hands together placed one on Julian’s shoulder and the other on Brooke’s. “Well alrighty then, let’s get started. What are we looking for today?”

“Yes, what
are
we looking for today?” Brooke asked.

“We’re looking for a Western-style outfit for my wife to wear to a party,” Julian said, refusing to make eye contact with Brooke.

The salesgirl smiled and said, “Well, that’s great, I know just the thing!”

“Julian, I have my outfit all picked out for tonight. That black dress I tried on for you? With the cute purse Randy and Michelle got me for my birthday? Remember?”