“I give you my blessing to continue,” I say, placing two free-drink tickets on Fitz’s leg.
“Like you even care, Victor,” Conrad says.
“I think this is good news, Conrad,” Fergy says, shaking the Magic 8 Ball. “I think, Far out. In fact Magic 8 Ball says ‘Far Out’ too.” He holds the ball up for us to see.
“It’s just this whole indie-rock scene equals yuck,” I say. “Y’know what I’m saying?”
Conrad just stares at Fitz.
“Conrad, hey, maybe we should go bungee jumping with Duane and Kitty this weekend,” Aztec says. “How about it, Conrad? Conrad?” Pause. “Conrad?”
Conrad continues to stare at Fitz, and as I’m leaving he says, “Has anybody realized that our drummer is the most lucid person in this band?”
17
Walking up Lafayette unable to shake off the feeling of being followed and stopping on the corner of East Fourth I catch my reflection superimposed in the glass covering of an Armani Exchange ad and it’s merging with the sepia-toned photo of a male model until both of us are melded together and it’s hard to turn away but except for the sound of my beeper going off the city suddenly goes quiet, the dry air crackling not with static but with something else, something less. Cabs lumber by silently, someone dressed exactly like me crosses the street, three beautiful girls pass by, each maybe sixteen and eyeing me, trailed by a thug with a camcorder, the muted, dissonant strains of Moby float from the open doors of the Crunch gym across the street where on the building above it a giant billboard advertises in huge black block letters the word TEMPURA. But someone’s calling “Cut!” and the noise from the construction site of the new Gap behind me and the beeper going off—for some freaky reason it’s the number of Indochine—moves me toward a phone booth where before dialing I imagine a naked Lauren Hynde striding toward me in a suite at the Delano with a deeper sense of purpose than I can muster. Alison picks up.
“I need to make a reservation,” I say, trying to disguise my voice.
“I’ve got something I want to tell you,” she says.
“What?” I gulp. “Y-you used to be a man?”
Alison knocks the phone on a hard surface. “Oh sorry, that’s my call-waiting. I’ve gotta go.”
“That didn’t sound like, uh, call-waiting, baby.”
“It’s a new kind of call-waiting. It simulates the sound of someone who’s dating a useless asshole angrily knocking their phone against a wall.”
“Essential, baby, you’re essential.”
“I want you here at Indochine within two minutes.”
“I’m inundated, baby, totally inundated.”
“What is this? Big-word day?” she snaps. “Just get that ass over here.”
“That ass has got to … see someone.”
“Jesus, Victor, the pregnant pause combined with ‘someone’ can only mean one person: that idiot you date.”
“Baby, I’ll see you tonight,” I fake-purr.
“Listen, I have Chloe’s number right in front of me, baby, and—”
“She’s not at home, Medusa.”
“You’re right. She’s at Spy Bar shooting a Japanese TV commercial and—”
“Damnit, Alison, you—”
“—I’m in a mood to screw things up. I need to be distracted from that mood, Victor,” Alison warns. “I need to be distracted from screwing things up.”
“You’re so phony, baby, it stings,” I sigh. “Ouch,” I add. “That was for, um, emphasis.”
“Oh Chloe, I’m so sorry. He came on to me. He was un animale. He told me he doesn’t even wuv you.”
“What’s your sick little point, baby?”
“I just don’t want to share you anymore, Victor,” Alison says, sighing as if she could care less. “I’m pretty sure I came to that conclusion at the Alfaro show.”
“You’re not sharing me,” I say, which is useless.
“You sleep with her, Victor.”
“Baby, if I didn’t some HIV-positive scumbag would and then—”
“Oh god!”
“—we’d all be in a whole helluva lotta trouble.”
“End it!” Alison wails. “Just end it!”
“And you’re gonna dump Damien?”
“Damien Nutchs Ross and I are—”
“Baby, don’t use the full monicker. It’s a bummer.”
“Victor, I keep explaining something to you and you act like you haven’t heard me.”
“What?” I ask, gulping again. “You u-used to be a man?”
“Without me, and by extension without Damien, you would have no club. Now, how many times do we need to go over this?” Pause, exhale. “Nor would you have a chance to open that other club you’re planning to—”
“Whoa!”
“—open behind all our backs.”
We’re both silent. I can envision a slow, triumphant smile pulling Alison’s lips upward.
“I don’t know why you think these things, Alison.”
“Shut up. I will only continue this conversation at Indochine.” A pause that I let happen. Because of it, Alison calls out, “Ted—could you ring up Spy Bar for me?” She clicks off, daring me.
Past the limousine parked out front next to a giant pile of black and white confetti and up the stairs into Indochine, where Ted the maître d’ is being interviewed by “Meet the Press” wearing a giant top hat, and I ask him, “What’s the story?” Never breaking eye contact with the camera crew, I follow his finger as it points to a booth in the rear of the empty, freezing restaurant, noise from the latest PJ Harvey CD in the dank background. Alison spots me, stubs out a joint and gets up from a table where she’s on her Nokia 232 cell phone to Nan Kempner and eating cake with Peter Gabriel, David LaChapelle, Janeane Garofalo and David Koresh, all of them discussing lacrosse and the new monkey virus, a copy of this month’s Mademoiselle next to each plate.
Alison pulls me into the back of the restaurant, pushes me into the men’s room and slams the door.
“Let’s make this quick,” she growls.
“As if there’s any other way with you,” I sigh, spitting out a piece of bubble gum.
She lunges at me, clamping her mouth onto mine. In a matter of seconds she pulls back and frantically tears open a zebra-print waistcoat.
“You were so cold to me earlier,” she pants. “As much as I hate to admit it, I got wet.”
“I haven’t seen you all day, baby.” I’m pulling her tits out of a beige push-up bra.
“At the Alfaro show, baby.” She pulls an electro-cut miniskirt with charred seams up over tan thighs, pushing down a white pair of panties.
“Baby, how many times do we need to go through this?” I’m unbuttoning my jeans. “I wasn’t at the Alfaro show.”
“Oh my god, you’re such an absolute dick,” she groans. “You spoke to me at the Alfaro show, baby.” She glares cross-eyed while thrusting her tongue in and out of my mouth. “Barely, but you spoke.”
I’m at her neck and in mid-lick I straighten up, my pants falling to the floor, and just stare into her sex-crazed face. “You’re smoking wa-a-a-ay too much weed, baby.”
“Victor …” She’s delirious, my hand in her crotch, two now three fingers inside her, lolling her head back, licking her own lips, grinding down on my hand, her pussy tightening around my fingers. “I’m just about through with this—”
“With what?”
“Just come here.” She grabs my dick, squeezes it hard and pulls it condomless toward her, rubbing its head along the lips of her pussy. “Feel this? Is this real?”
“Against my better instincts, yes,” I say, slamming into her, just how Alison likes it. “But baby, I sense someone is causing major mischief.”
“Baby, just fuck me harder,” she groans. “And lift up your shirt. Let’s see that bod work.”
Afterwards, walking slowly back through the deserted restaurant, I grab a half-drunk Greyhound off a table and swish some around in my mouth before spitting
it back into the highball glass. While I’m wiping my lips with the sleeve of my jacket, Alison turns to me, sated, and admits, “I’ve been followed all day.”
I stop moving. “What?”
“Just so you know, I’ve been followed all day.” She lights a cigarette while moving past me, drifting by busboys setting up tables for tonight.
“Alison—are you telling me that those goons are outside right now?” I slam my hand against a table. “Oww—oh shit, Alison.”
She turns around. “I lost those goons in a Starbucks an hour ago.” She exhales, offers me the Marlboro. “If you can believe anyone’s stupid enough to lose someone in a Starbucks.”
“Starbucks can get pretty crowded, baby,” I say, taking the cigarette from her, dazed yet relieved.
“I’m not worried about them,” she says lightly.
“I think the fact that you can only have sex in the bathroom at Indochine should like give you major pause, baby.”
“I wanted to celebrate the fact that our worries about a certain photograph are over.”
“I talked to Buddy,” I say. “I know.”
“What horrible string did you pull?” she asks admiringly. “Confirm Chloe’s nasty ex-habit?”
“You don’t want to know.”
She considers this. “You’re right,” she sighs. “I don’t.”
“Did you make Damien buy that new 600SEL?”
“Actually he leased it,” Alison mutters. “Asshole.”
“Damien’s not an asshole.”
“I wasn’t referring to him, but yes he is.”
“Hey, tell me what you know about Baxter Priestly.”
“Someone with amazing cheekbones.” She shrugs. “In the band Hey That’s My Shoe. He’s a model-slash-actor. Unlike you, who’s a model-slash-loser.”
“Isn’t he like a fag or something?”
“I think Baxter has a major crush on Chloe Byrnes,” she says, eyes flickering gleefully over my face for a reaction, then, after thinking about something, she shrugs. “She could do worse.”
“Oh boy, Alison.”
She’s laughing, relaxed. “Victor—just keep an eye out.”
“What are you saying?” I ask, stretching.
“What is it you always say?” she asks. “The better you look, the more you see. Is that it?”
“Are you saying that Baxter Priestly and Chloe are—what, Alison?” I ask, arms still spread out. “Humping?!?”
“Why are you even worried?” She hands me back the cigarette. “What do you see in that poor little girl besides a staggering intellect?”
“What about Lauren Hynde?” I ask casually.
Alison stiffens up noticeably, plucks the cigarette from my lips, finishes it, starts moving toward the front of the restaurant.
“Barely anything. Two Atom Egoyan movies, two Hal Hartley movies, the latest Todd Haynes. Oh, and a small part in the new Woody Allen. That’s about it. Why?”
“Whoa,” I say, impressed.
“She’s so out of your league, Victor, it’s not even funny.” Alison takes her coat and purse from a stool at the bar.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I don’t think you have to worry about being taken seriously by her,” Alison says. “You’re not gonna be.”
“I’m just having a fly time, bay-bee.” I shrug.
“She apparently had that whole hair-pulling madness disease. It disappeared entirely under Prozac therapy. Or so they say.”
“So you’re basically saying we’re caught in a trap and we can’t back out? Is that it?” I’m asking.
“Well, you’re going to have to take the back way out.” She kisses me on the nose.
“There is no back way out, Alison.”
“Then just give me five.” She yawns, buttoning up.
“Where are you going?” I ask sheepishly. “I suppose a ride is out of the question considering the circumstances, huh?”
“I have an extremely vital hair appointment at Stephen Knoll,” Alison says, squeezing my cheek. “Kiss-kiss, bye-bye.”
“See you tonight,” I say, waving wanly.
“Big time,” she mutters, walking down the stairs, outside, away from me.
16
Umberto guards the door at Spy Bar on Greene Street waving flies away with a hand holding a walkie-talkie and wishes me luck tonight and lets me in and I head up the stairs smelling my fingers then duck into the men’s room where I wash my hands and stare at myself in the mirror above the sink before I remember time is fleeting, madness takes its toll and all that and in the main room the director, assistant director, lighting cameraman, gaffer, chief electrician, two more assistants, Scott Benoit, Jason Vorhees’ sister, Bruce Hulce, Gerlinda Kostiff, scenic ops and a Steadicam operator stand around a very large white egg, mute, video cameras circling, filming a video of the making of the commercial, photographers taking pictures of the video team.
Chloe sits away from them at a large booth in the back of the room. A group of makeup artists holding gels and brushes surround her and she’s wearing rhinestone-studded hot pants, a minidress with a flippy skirt and she looks unnaturally happy in this twilight zone but after catching my gaze she just shrugs helplessly. Someone named, I think, Dario, who used to date Nicole Miller, wearing sunglasses and a Brooks Brothers coconut hat with a madras band and a telescope crown and sandals, is lying on a tatami mat nearby, with a Mighty Morphin Power Rangers tattoo on his bicep. I use the phone at the bar to check my messages: Balthazar Getty, a check for my tai chi instructor bounced, Elaine Irwin, a publicist from my gym, Val Kilmer, Reese Witherspoon. Someone hands me a café au lait and I hang out with this model named Andre and share a too tightly rolled joint by a long buffet table covered with really trendy sushi and Kenny Scharf-designed ice buckets and Andre’s life is basically made up of lots of water, grilled fish and all the sports he can do and he has a look that’s young, grungy, somewhat destitute but in a hip way.
“I just want people to smile a little more,” Andre’s saying. “And I’m also concerned with the planet’s ecological problem.”
“That’s so cool,” I say, gazing at thin sheets of light-blue ice that cover an entire wall, lie in patches on the bar and on the mirrors behind the bar. Someone walks by in a parka.
“And I’d like to open a restaurant in the shape of a giant scarab.”
We both stand there staring at the egg and then I slowly walk away, explaining, “My café au lait’s a little too foamy, guy.”
The makeup team has finished and they leave Chloe alone and I move over to where she’s staring at us in a giant portable mirror that sits in the middle of the table, magazines scattered everywhere around her, some with Chloe’s face on the cover.
“What’s with the glasses?” she asks.
“Reef says it’s fashionable to look like an intellectual this season.” It’s so cold our breath frosts, comes out in puffs.
“If someone asked you to eat your own weight in Silly Putty, would you do that too?” she asks quietly.
“I’m a-buggin’, I’m a-jumpin’, baby.”
“Victor, I’m so glad you know what’s important and what’s not.”
“Thanks, babe.” I lean in to kiss her neck but she flinches and whispers something about disturbing powder, so I end up placing my lips on top of her scalp.
“What am I smelling?” I ask.
“I’ve been using vodka to lighten my hair,” she says sadly. “Bongo got a whiff at the Donna Karan show and started muttering the Serenity Prayer.”
“Don’t sweat it, baby. Remember that all you have to do is say cheese about two hundred times a day. That’s it!”
“Being photographed six hours straight is sheer torture.”
“Who’s the dude in the corner, baby?” I gesture toward the guy on the tatami mat.
“That’s La Tosh. We go way back. I’ve known him for weeks. We met over a spring roll at Kin Khao.”
“Très jolie.”
I shrug.
“Supposedly he’s one of Rome’s best-connected psychos,” she sighs. “Do you have any cigarettes?”
“Hey, what happened to the nicotine patch you were gonna wear today?” I ask, concerned.
“It was making me all wobbly on the runway.” She takes my hand and looks up into my face. “I missed you today. Whenever I’m really tired I miss you.”
I lean in, hug her a little, whisper into her ear. “Hey—who’s my favorite little supermodel?”
“Take those glasses off,” she says sourly. “You look like somebody who’s trying too hard. You look like Dean Cain.”
“So what’s the story?” I remove the frames, slip them back into their case.
“Alison Poole has called about ten times today,” Chloe says, looking around the table for cigarettes. “I haven’t called her back. Do you have any idea what she wants?”
“No, baby. Why?”
“Well, didn’t you see her at the Alfaro show?”
“Baby, I wasn’t at the Alfaro show.” I pull a small piece of confetti from her hair.
“Shalom said she saw you there.”
“Shalom needs new contacts, then, baby.”
“So why are you visiting me?” she asks. “Are you sure you don’t have a cigarette?”
I check all my pockets. “I don’t think so, baby.” I find a pack of Mentos, offer her one. “Um, I just wanted to stop in, say hello, the usual. I’ve gotta be back at the club, meet this DJ we desperately need for the party tonight and then I’ll see you at Todd’s show.”
“I’ve got to be out of here in forty minutes if I’m going to make it for hair.” She takes a sip from a Fruitopia bottle.
“God, it’s freezing in here,” I say, shivering.
“This week has been hell, Victor,” Chloe says blankly. “Maybe the most hellish week of my life.”
“I’m here for you, baby.”
“I know I should be comforted by that,” she says. “But thank you anyway.”
“I’ve just been so swamped today, baby, it’s totally scary,” I say. “I’ve just been so totally swamped.”
“We really need to treat ourselves to a vacation,” Chloe says.
“So what’s the story, baby?” I try again. “What’s this thing about?” I ask, gesturing toward the crew, the egg, the guy on the tatami mat.
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