Glamorama

by Bret Easton Ellis

  “So I’ve heard,” I murmur.

  “When did you and Lauren get so close?” he asks suddenly.

  “I really don’t know her at all, Damien,” I say, squeezing the hat. “She’s a friend of Chloe’s.”

  “She said she went to school with you,” he mutters. “She said you were—and don’t take this the wrong way—a total asshole.”

  “I won’t take that the wrong way.”

  “I can see that your self-esteem is pretty high today, huh?”

  “It’s funny—I thought she went to school with you, man.” I chuckle lamely to myself, bowing a little, eyes half-closed. “Didn’t you guys go to school together, m-man?”

  “Victor, I’ve got a fucking migraine. Just, y’know, don’t.” He closes his eyes, reaches for the Patrón, stops himself. “So—will you do it? Will you take her?”

  “I’m … taking Chloe.”

  “Just take Lauren with you guys.” His beeper goes off. He checks it. “Shit. It’s Alison. I’ve gotta go. Tell Lauren goodbye. And I’ll see you at the club.”

  “Tonight’s the night,” I say.

  “I think it’ll work,” he says. “I think it won’t be a disaster.”

  “We’ll see, man.”

  Damien reaches out his hand. Instinctively I shake it. Then he’s gone.

  I’m standing in the living room, taking a long time to notice Lauren leaning in the doorway.

  “I heard everything,” she murmurs.

  “That’s probably more than I heard,” I murmur back.

  “Did you know they were engaged?”

  “No,” I say. “I didn’t.”

  “I guess I’m coming with you guys tonight.”

  “I want you to,” I say.

  “I know you do.”

  “Lauren—”

  “I really wouldn’t worry about it,” she says, brushing past me. “Damien thinks you’re a fag anyway.”

  “An … important fag or an unimportant fag?”

  “I don’t think Damien bothers to differentiate.”

  “If I was a fag I think I’d probably be an important one.”

  “If we continue this conversation I think I’d probably be entering the Land of the Nitwits.”

  She turns off the TV and holds her face in her hands, looking like she doesn’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do either, so I check my watch again.

  “Do you know when the last time I saw you was, Victor?” she asks, her back to me.

  “At … Tower Records?”

  “No. Before that.”

  “Where?” I ask. “For god’s sake, don’t say the Calvin Klein show or in Miami.”

  “It was in ‘The Sexiest Men in the Galaxy’ issue of some crappy magazine,” she says. “You were lying on top of an American flag and didn’t have a shirt on and basically looked like an idiot.”

  I move toward her.

  “How about before that?”

  “In 1985,” she says. “Years ago.”

  “Jesus, baby.”

  “When you told me you’d come pick me up. At Camden.”

  “Pick you up from where?”

  “My dorm,” she says. “It was December and there was snow and you were supposed to drive me back to New York.”

  “What happened?” I ask. “Did I?”

  A long pause, during which the phone rings. Fabien Baron leaves a message. The phone rings again. George Wayne from London. Lauren just stares at my face, totally lost. I think about saying something but then don’t bother.

  “You should go.”

  “I am.”

  “Where?”

  “Pick up my tux.”

  “Be careful.”

  “It’s okay,” I say. “I’m a sample size.”

  11

  The last time Chloe and I were in L.A.: a rehab stint in a famously undisclosed location that only me and one of Chloe’s publicists knew about. The various strings had been pulled and Chloe bypassed waiting lists, landing in a fairly posh cell: she had her own deluxe adobe-inspired bungalow with a daiquiri-blue-colored sunken living room, a patio with faux-’70s lounge chairs, a giant marble bathtub decorated with pink eels and dozens of mini-Jacuzzi jets, and there was an indoor pool and a fully equipped gym and an arts-and-crafts center but there wasn’t a television set so I had to tape “All My Children” on the VCR in the hotel room I was staying at in a nearby desert town, which was really the least I could do. Chloe had her own horse, named Raisin.

  At first, whenever I visited, Chloe said that it was “all useless.” She bitched about the “too hypernutritious” food served on trays in the cafeteria (even though the chef was from a chic Seattle hotel) and she bitched about emptying her own ashtrays and there had been four suicide attempts that week and someone who was in for Valium dependency had climbed out a window and escaped for three days before anyone on staff noticed until a nurse read about it in the Star on Monday. Chloe bitched about the constant rambling and the shoving matches between patients—various self-destructive moguls, kids who copped to sniffing butane in group therapy sessions, heads of studios who had been smoking half an ounce of freebase daily, people who hadn’t been in touch with the real world since 1987. Steven Tyler hit on her at a vending machine, Gary Oldman invited her out to Malibu, Kelsey Grammer rolled on top of her “accidentally” in a stretching class, a biofeedback technician commented favorably on her legs.

  “But baby, you have full phone privileges,” I told her. “Cheer up.”

  “Kurt Cobain stayed here, Victor,” she whispered, dazed, bleached out.

  And then, as it always does, time began to run out. The tabloids were casting a shadow, her publicist warned, and “Hard Copy” was getting closer and Chloe’s private phone number was being changed daily and I had to remind Pat Kingsley that Chloe’s monthly retainer at PMK was $5,000 and couldn’t they do better?

  And so Chloe finally surrendered. We were left with Chloe’s counselor telling us from behind a black granite desk, “Hey, we try to do everything we can—but we’re not always successful,” and then I was guiding Chloe out to a waiting gold Lexus I had rented and she was carrying a gift bag filled with mugs, T-shirts, key rings, all stamped with the words “One Day at a Time,” and someone sitting cross-legged on a lawn was strumming “I Can See Clearly Now” on his guitar while the palm trees swayed ominously above us and Mexican children danced in a semicircle next to a giant blue fountain. That month cost $50,000, not including my suite in the nearby desert town.

  10

  The movies being shot all over SoHo tonight are backing up traffic everywhere and it’s damp and cold as I exit Lauren’s place and wheel the Vespa down the sidewalk on Fourth Street to the intersection at Broadway and the red light waiting for me there.

  I don’t spot the black Jeep until the light turns green (nothing moves, horns blare), and I pretend not to notice as I merge into the traffic heading downtown. In the handlebar mirror I watch the Jeep finally turn slowly behind me, making a right off Fourth, and I casually begin moving across lanes to the far side of Broadway, wheeling past dozens of cars, their headlights momentarily blinding me as I push between them, my breath coming in short, jagged gasps, the Jeep trapped in traffic behind me.

  Passing Third Street, I’m keeping my eyes on Bleecker, where I immediately jam a right, zooming around oncoming cars, bumping over the curb onto the sidewalk, almost hitting a group of kids hanging under the awning of the Bleecker Court apartments, and then I make a hard left onto Mercer and take it down to Houston, where I make a wide right, and just when I think I’m clear I almost collide with the black Jeep waiting at the corner. But it’s not the same black Jeep, because this one idling at Wooster and Houston has a license plate that reads SI-CO2 and the one still stuck on Broadway has a license plate that reads SI-CO1.

  As I pass this new Jeep, it pulls away from the curb and surges after me.

  At West Broadway I swing a wide left but with construction everywhere and all the movies be
ing shot the street is virtually impassable.

  Inching toward Prince Street, I notice vacantly that the first Jeep has somehow gotten in front of me and is now waiting at the end of the block.

  In the mirror I notice that the second Jeep is three cars back.

  I wheel the bike between two limousines parked at the curb, Space Hog blaring out of one of the sunroofs, and I hop off, take the keys and begin walking very slowly down West Broadway.

  On the sidewalk, lights from the stores lining the street throw shadows of someone following me. Stopping suddenly, I whirl around, but no one’s there, just this sort of semi-electric feeling that I’m unable to focus in on, and now someone, an extra, really passes by and says something unintelligible.

  Behind me someone gets out of the black Jeep.

  I spot Skeet Ulrich hanging out in front of the new martini bar, Babyland, and Skeet’s signing autographs and wearing suede Pumas and just taped the Conan O’Brien show and finished an on-line press conference and maybe or maybe not has the lead in the new Sam Raimi movie and we compare tattoos and Skeet tells me he has never been more hungover than when we got wasted together at the Wilhelmina party in Telluride and I’m kicking at the confetti that surrounds us on the sidewalk and waving a fly away with a Guatemalan crucifix Simon Rex gave me for my twenty-fifth birthday.

  “Yeah,” Skeet’s saying, lighting a cigar. “We were hanging with the new Thai-boxing champ.”

  “I am so lost, man.”

  “Caucasian dreadlocks?” Skeet says. “He had an Ecstasy factory hidden in his basement?”

  “Rings a bell, man, but man I’m so wiped out,” I say, looking over my shoulder. “Hey, what were we—I mean, what were you doing in Telluride?”

  Skeet mentions a movie he was in, while I offer him a Mentos.

  “Who were you in that movie, man?”

  “I played the ‘witty’ corpse.”

  “The one who lived in the crypt?”

  “No. The one who fucked the coven of witches.”

  “And taught them slang in the cauldron? Whoa.”

  “I’m a strict professional.”

  Someone walks by and takes our photo, calls Skeet “Johnny Depp,” and then Kate Spade says hi and I still have Lauren’s folded-up hat hanging out of my pocket and I touch it to remind myself of something. When I casually glance over my shoulder, the guy who got out of the Jeep on West Broadway is standing three doors down, staring into the windows of a new tanning salon/piercing parlor, and I can’t help giggling.

  “Johnny Depp, man?” Skeet mutters. “That’s cold.”

  “You look so much like Johnny Depp it’s eerie, man.”

  “I was relieved to hear that Johnny Depp has won a hard-earned reputation for monogamy.”

  “He’s slightly more famous than you, man,” I have to point out. “So you should probably watch what you say.”

  “Famous for what?” Skeet bristles. “Turning down commercial scripts?”

  “Man, I’m so wiped out.”

  “Still modeling, bro?” Skeet asks glumly.

  “Sometimes I wonder how I keep from going under.” I’m staring past Skeet at a guy who gets out of the Jeep on Prince and slowly, vaguely, starts walking my way.

  “Hey man, you’ve got it made,” Skeet says, relighting the cigar. “You’ve got it made. You’re a pretty good model.”

  “Yeah? How come, Skeet?”

  “Because you’ve got that semi-long thick hair thing going and those full lips and like a great physique.”

  The guy keeps moving up the block.

  Behind me, the other guy is now two stores away.

  “Hey, thanks, man,” I say, looking both ways. “Far out.”

  “It’s cool,” Skeet says. “Hey man, stop breathing so hard.”

  I urge Skeet to move with me over to the window of the Rizzoli bookstore. “Let’s pretend we’re browsing.”

  I look over my shoulder.

  “What, man?” Skeet asks, confused. “Browsing for … books?”

  The guy walking up from Prince is moving toward me faster.

  The other guy’s maybe two yards away.

  I keep my eyes glued to the window at Rizzoli and I can barely hear Skeet say, “Hey man—what’re you doing?” Pause. “Is that browsing?”

  Suddenly, just as Skeet starts to pose another question, I bolt across West Broadway and in that instant both guys start after me and when I hit Broome another guy dressed in black runs up the street toward me.

  I cut back across West Broadway, almost getting hit by a limo, to the other side of the street, all three guys behind me. A fourth suddenly lunges out of the new Harry Cipriani restaurant and I cross West Broadway again and run up the stairs into Portico, a furniture store.

  The four guys—young and good-looking, all wearing black—converge below me on the stairs of Portico, discussing something while I’m hiding behind a white-stained concrete armoire. Someone asks if I work here and I wave her away, hissing. One of the guys on the stairs lifts a walkie-talkie out of his black leather jacket, revealing a gun strapped in a holster, and then mumbles something into the walkie-talkie. He listens, turns to the other three guys, says something that causes them to nod and then casually opens the door and strides into Portico.

  I race through the store toward the back exit, which leads onto Wooster Street.

  All I hear is someone shouting “Hey!”

  I stumble out, grabbing the railing as I leap onto the sidewalk.

  I duck in and out of the traffic moving down Wooster and then walk-run up to Comme des Garçons to pick up my tuxedo.

  I slam the door behind me and rush downstairs, where Carter’s waiting.

  “What the fuck’s going on?” I shout. “Jesus Christ!”

  “Victor, the alterations are done,” Carter says. “Calm down. The tux is fabulous. Chloe took care of the bill this—”

  “No—some assholes just chased me down West Broadway,” I pant. He pauses. “Are you bragging or complaining?”

  “Spare me,” I shout.

  “Well, you’re here, so I’m just saying your ninja skills are reaching their peak, dear Donatello.”

  Still panting, I throw the tux on and have Carter call CLS for a BMW. JD pages me while Carter circles, mincing and wincing, making sure—along with Missy, the seamstress—that the fit is perfect, both of them grabbing me in totally inappropriate places, and when I call JD back on my cell phone Beau answers and asks why I’m not at my place for the MTV “House of Style” interview, which I’ve totally forgotten about. Supposedly people are outside my apartment “throwing fits,” and the chills I get hearing that phrase relax me somewhat.

  Wearing the tux, I stuff my other clothes into a Comme des Garçons bag, and as I’m heading out of the store, peering up Wooster, then down Wooster—totally serpenting to the BMW waiting at the curb—Carter calls out, “Wait—you forgot this!” and shoves the black hat with the red rose back into my sweaty hands.

  9

  At my place the Details reporter leans against a column just hanging out, eyeing my every move while sucking on a raspberry-flavored narcotic lollipop, and there’s also a ton of assistants milling around, including this really muscular girl with a clip-on nose ring who places gels the colors of kiwi and lavender and pomegranate over lights, and the cameraman says “Hey Victor” in a Jamaican patois and he’s wearing a detachable ponytail because he didn’t have one earlier when I saw him on Bond Street this afternoon and he’s part Chippewa and the director of the segment, Mutt, is conferring with a VJ from MTV News and Mutt just kind of smiles at me and rubs the scars on his bicep caused from bust-ups on his Harley when I say, “Sorry I’m late—I got lost.”

  “In your own … neighborhood?” he asks.

  “The neighborhood is going through what is known as gent-rah-fah-cay-shun, so it’s getting, um, complicated.”

  Mutt just kind of smiles at me and it’s freezing in the apartment and I’m slouching in a big pile of wh
ite satin pillows that the crew brought and some Japanese guy is filming the interview that MTV will be filming and another Japanese guy is taking photographs of the video crew and I start throwing out names of bands they should play over the segment when it airs: Supergrass, Menswear, Offspring, Phish, Liz Phair (“Supernova”), maybe Pearl Jam or Rage Against the Machine or even Imperial Teen. I’m so lost that I don’t even notice Mutt standing over me until he snaps his fingers twice right under my nose and I purse my lips and wink at him and wonder how cool I look in other people’s eyes.

  “I’m going to smoke a big Cohiba during the interview,” I tell Mutt.

  “You’re going to look like a big asshole during the interview.”

  “Hey, don’t forget who you’re talking to.”

  “MTV policy. No smoking. Advertisers don’t like it.”

  “Yet you sell Trent Reznor’s hate to millions of unsuspecting youth. Tch-tch-tch.”

  “I want to get out of here, so let’s start this thing.”

  “I was chased through SoHo earlier tonight.”

  “You’re not that popular, Victor.”

  I buzz JD on my cell phone. “JD—find out who just chased me through SoHo.” I click off and since I’m in my element I’m all smiles so I call out to the really muscular girl with the clip-on nose ring, “Hey pussycat, you could hail a cab with that ass.”

  “My name’s David,” he says. “Not Pussycat.”

  “Whoa—you got that whole boy/girl thing going down,” I say, shivering.

  “Who is this clown?” David asks the room.

  “The same old story,” Mutt sighs. “Nobody, up-and-comer, star, has-been. Not necessarily in that order.”

  “Hey, keep the vibe alive,” I say halfheartedly to nobody and then the makeup girl brushes my sideburns teasingly and I snarl “Don’t touch those” and then, in a more vacant mode, “Can somebody get me a Snapple?” It’s at this precise moment I finally notice the thing that’s totally lacking in my apartment: Cindy.

  “Wait, wait a minute—where’s Cindy?”

  “Cindy’s not conducting the interview,” Mutt says. “She’s just introducing it, in her own faux-inimitable style.”