So 5 Minutes Ago (26 page)

I press through the crowd, scanning the little pas de deux’s going on at the press booths. No sign of Troy. I catch sight of Merle Ginsberg, the indefatigable entertainment writer and fixture at these events, deep in conversation with Shalom Harlow about the lineage of her skintight flame-red gown.

“Great,” I say to Steven. “You’ve been here, what, ten minutes and already you’ve lost him?”

“Wait, there he is,” Steven says, nodding down the carpet. “Talking to
People,
or is that
The Today Show
?”

I turn and see Steven Cojocaru, aka Cojo, the legendary wispy-headed, acid-tongued style writer, talking animatedly with Troy. “Oh, fuck!” I say, turning and sprinting down the carpet. G will have my head here and now if he sees Troy talking unescorted to a TV outlet.

“Hey, guys,” I say, pulling up breathlessly, clamping my hand on Troy’s arm. “How’s it going?”

“Hey, girl,” Troy says, flashing me a blazing smile.

“Alex, you look fabulous,” Cojo says, bending down to give me a kiss.

“Not as fabulous as you.”

“No, but then no one does,” he says, shaking his highlighted and flat-ironed locks from his eyes. “Although this lad comes close.”

“Well, Troy
is
hard to beat,” I say, smiling up at them. “Especially in Armani.”

Troy looks confused. “Wait, isn’t this Gucci? Steven?” He looks at Steven hovering behind me. “Gucci, right?”

“Right,” Steven says, giving him a thumbs-up.

“Honey, it’s Gucci,” Cojo says, running his hand down Troy’s lapel. “And with what, Tony Lama?” He glances down at Troy’s snakeskin cowboy boots.

“Good eye,” Troy says, sticking out his foot. “With a walking heel.”

“A classic,” Cojo says in a tone of voice that is a little too sarcastic for comfort.

“So Gucci, then. My mistake,” I say brightly. But this is what I do here. Prattle, prattle, prattle. Fashion, fashion, fashion. Flatter, flatter, flatter. Keep things moving. Everyone smiling. Everyone talking about bullshit.

The prattle continues while I take a second to gaze around the crowd. It’s almost doubled in the past few minutes. The carpet is a river of black shot with color—red, fuchsia, azure—and with more famous faces swimming into view. Tobey Maguire. Vin Diesel. Reese Witherspoon. Debra Messing. God, is that Kevin Costner? But what’s with the hair? I make out the cast of
The West Wing
strolling in the way they always do, like the class valedictorians. Just wait until they get canceled. I stand on my toes to get a look at the entrance. Still no sign of the Phoenix—better call Suzanne and find out their ETA—but I make out Val and Melba and the rest of the show’s cast streaming in flanked by Fox publicists. Val’s got a tiara or something glittery clamped to her head, but what else is she wearing? I stand on my toes again. Her dress looks flesh-colored but floor-length, thank God. Still, I better do a drive-by.

“So I’ve been hearing good things about DWP, Alex.”

“What a minute, what?” I say, turning back to Troy and Cojo.

“Troy was just saying the agency is really doing great,” Cojo says. “After the merger. That you guys are really clicking.”

“Really?” I say, giving Troy a what-gives? look.

“Ah, come on, Alex,” he says, grabbing me by the shoulders. “I told him I wouldn’t be here except for you.”

“Oh, don’t believe a word he says, except when he’s talking about me,” I say, laughing and leaning into him. Happy Client and Happy Publicist.

“Oh my God,” Cojo says suddenly, catching sight of Kevin Costner. “Can you say ‘thatch roof’? Kevin,” he says, waving wildly. “Kevin, over here.”

“Okay, we’re done here,” I say, pushing Troy back into the crowd and looking around for Steven. Already, I can hear Troy’s name being called farther down the press line.

“I’ll take it from here,” Steven says, surfacing next to me.

“Are you
sure
?” I hiss. “You can’t let him out of your sight.”

“Yes, I’m sure. Go find Suzanne and the Phoenix. I’ll see you inside.”

I push off, dive into the crowd, and head upstream. But paddling against the current is difficult. I am jostled around, thrust up against Sharon Stone, the unofficial queen of the Globes who will show up at this thing when she’s in a walker, and nearly trip over Brad Pitt, who looks even cuter and more stoned up close. I finally surface next to Melba, Val’s costar. Actually, I surface next to her breasts. Melba herself is still a few inches away. “Hey, Melba,” I say, trying to wedge past her. Val is just behind her, holding forth to KNBC, her tiara glittering in the light of the video camera.

“I don’t know, I mean the Globes is just, it’s just the start of something big,” Val says, breaking into the song and flinging her arms over her head. The reporter laughs delightedly. Bingo. My little flasher just made the evening news.

I catch sight of the Fox publicist flanking Val. She rolls her eyes at me and I roll mine back. No point in waking the baby. I give the publicist a little wave and disappear back into the crowd.

I head farther upstream, trying to fish out my BlackBerry to check Suzanne’s whereabouts. Suddenly, there’s an eddy in the crowd, like water’s parting. I stand on my toes again. Down at the entrance, surrounded by security guys, the Phoenix emerges from the Toyota like Venus on the half-shell—a blaze of sequins with a black feather boa wrapped around her shoulders and a plume of ostrich feathers exploding from her head. She is flanked on one side by Suzanne, who is grinning wildly and—who’s that on the other? Oh God, it’s G. G, who looks about ready to kill someone.

I try to push my way through the crowd, but get stalled behind some slab of a security guy. I have to stand on my toes and crane halfway around him to keep the Phoenix in sight. God, I still can’t quite see her. I twist further past the security guy. Wait, there she is. A small moat has formed around her as she stops to pose for the photographers.
“Over here!” “Over here!”
The Phoenix smiles, hugging the feather boa to her chest. Suddenly, she turns and flings it aside. The crowd screams its approval. On the sequined black lace stretched tight across her very visible buttocks,
B-I-G
is spelled out in black satin. She turns again. I almost choke. Three more letters are spelled out across her equally visible breasts:
D-W-P.

It takes me several minutes to swim upriver. It’s the first time I’ve seen the Phoenix since my disastrous visit to Malibu before Christmas. In fact, I haven’t spoken to her since she predictably did not return any of my calls. But something has definitely happened. I mean, why would she be wearing a billboard for DWP if she planned to let Jerry fire us? “So what’s with the outfit?” I say, sliding in next to Suzanne when I finally reach them, stuck now at
E!
where Joan Rivers has the Phoenix under house arrest. “Oh my God, who’s that you’re wearing?” I hear Joan say. But then she says that a lot.

“Got me,” Suzanne says, as she keeps her eye on the Phoenix, who is still flanked by G. “All I know is that right about now, five million people are getting a good look at the best advertising we ever had.”

“Which seems weird if she was planning on firing us.”

“She still might,” Suzanne says, turning to me. “The last I heard from Jerry was that we had her through the rest of award season. After that, ‘we will talk.’ ”

We stand there and watch them for several minutes. “So you designed it, but why promote your publicity agency?” I hear Joan say. The Phoenix says something I can’t make out, but G turns and glares in our direction so it must be good.

“Yeah, Doug looks happy,” I say to Suzanne, as I smile and wave at G.

“You think so?” Suzanne says. “Well, fuck him.”

“Go, Suzanne,” I say admiringly. I have no idea how much she knows of G’s plan to sabotage her clients—or what I suspect is G’s plan to sabotage her clients—but it’s out of my hands now.

We stand there for a few more minutes when I feel the crowd start to ebb toward the hotel, like a tide receding. “Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats, the show’s about to start,” comes blaring over our heads.

“Shit,” I say to Suzanne. “We still have to hit
ET,
the
L.A. Times,
and probably
W
so the New York fashionistas can hear about her dress firsthand.”

“Then they’ll just have to seat her at the first commercial,” Suzanne says. “Go in and give them the heads-up.”

I dive back into the crowd and ride the current down to the hotel’s front entrance, where the lemmings are streaming in. Except for the gowns and tuxes, it feels like trooping back into high school after a fire drill. I make my way into the main ballroom with its ghastly glittery black ceiling and corner the first person in a headset I see.

“Well, she’s seated at a table in front so it won’t be the easiest thing,” the gofer huffs at me after conferring into his headset.

“Well, what can I tell you?” I say, raising my hands. “She’s going to be late.” Sometimes celebrity perk actually works in my favor.

The crowd pours in around us, landing according to their caste: nominees and a select handful of A-list producers and studio execs flow to the tables on the ballroom floor; agents, managers, assistants, and other guests scatter to the various parties to drink champagne and watch the ceremony on closed-circuit TV; publicists herd into the SRO ghetto at the back of the room, just off camera.

I turn and start for the door again, but am caught in a whirlpool of stars rushing for their tables. Courteney Cox. Tom Cruise. Tom and Rita. Michelle Pfeiffer. Katie Holmes. Ed Norton. James Gandolfini. Brad and Jennifer. It’s like the pages of a magazine fluttering by. Troy floats by talking animatedly to Kate Hudson. Somebody ought to cast them in a movie together. The lights dim and the crowd settles into their seats. Finally, my chance to escape back outside to Suzanne and the Phoenix. I start again for the door, when I feel a hand on my shoulder.

“I need to see you.”

G. Looking about as incendiary as he did when he arrived.

I don’t even pause. “Hey there,” I say, pulling free of his grasp. “Having a good time?”

But G is quick. Quicker than I am. “Not yet,” he says, clasping my arm again and turning me toward the door. We push through the crowd of publicists gathering at the back of the room and burst into the blazing hallway, squinting in the light.

“I assume this is your doing?” he says, still gripping my arm and propelling me past the latecomers sprinting down the hall. We come to rest against the wall, hemmed in by a large planter just opposite the doors to the auditorium.

“What’s my doing?” I say, shaking free of him. “She’s late because she’s late.”

“I don’t mean that. I mean her dress.”

I look at G. So it is true. He really is trying to get control of the agency by eliminating Suzanne’s clients. Otherwise, why would he care that the Phoenix is wearing a dress promoting the agency?

“Her dress?” I say, stalling him, my mind going in a thousand directions. So I was right about his plan. Still, why blow his cover here and with me? The Phoenix could still end up walking. G could still end up the victor. Why, unless he thought it was all in the bag? Until tonight.

“Her little publicity stunt,” he hisses.

“Oh, if you think I knew about that, I can assure you I did not,” I say, holding up my hands. “But it’s cool, don’t you think? Great promotion for us.”

G ignores me. “You lied to me. I told you to stay out of it.”

“Out of what?” I say, still playing dumb.

“I told you to stay away from other publicists’ clients. I asked you and you deliberately disobeyed me.”

Okay, you want to play it that way, we’ll play it that way. “Well, then I’m confused,” I say, smiling and shaking my head. “If I had anything to do with one of our biggest clients staying on—and I’m not saying I did—how would that be wrong? How would that merit this—”

“I don’t care about the clients,” he snaps, so loudly that a few heads swivel in our direction.

“You don’t care about the
clients
?” I say, all but batting my eyes.

“I
care,
” he says, drawing out the word, “that employees do what they’re asked. I care about loyalty. And you’ve just proved that I can’t trust you.”

“I think you’re making a few leaps of logic here,” I say, dropping my voice. If G’s going to have my head, I’d still prefer it didn’t make the morning’s gossip columns.

“We both know what’s going on,” he says, leaning in close, so I catch a whiff of his cologne. “I thought I could count on you. And I don’t like being wrong. I don’t like—”

Just then the gofer with the headset bursts out the door and catches sight of me. “It’s the break, it’s the break, where is she?” he all but screams. “If she’s coming in, it’s got to be
now
!”

I see my opening and I take it. “Okay, okay, I’m going,” I say, wriggling out from between the planter and G. “Hang on and I’ll get her.” I turn and all but sprint down the hall toward the hotel’s front entrance and the haven of the red carpet.

We’re heading into the second hour of the Globes—the second hour that I’ve been standing at the back of the room with the rest of the publicists cursing Manolo Blahnik’s name—when I decide to take a break and hit the bar for a Coke. Actually, I need something stronger, like a chair, but I’ll settle for sugar and caffeine.

Steven was here with me for about thirty minutes, until Troy miraculously won his category—and even more miraculously managed to thank Daddy Madden, the Fates, his AA group, me, Suzanne, “and the whole DWP gang,” without mentioning G or Peg. Although I intended to walk him through the press room, I decide to let Steven do it. Given G’s glowering presence—for some reason he and Suzanne are seated at the Phoenix’s table looking like Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt at Yalta—I want to stay close at hand when the Phoenix takes the stage. Besides, if I leave now, I’ll never make it back. Even sober, Troy still has his unerring party instincts. In fact, I bet Steven fifty bucks Troy heads straight from the press room to the Fox party.

U right, U win!
flashes on my BlackBerry as I’m standing in line at the bar.