I ponder this before asking, “Have you ever been chased by a chow, man?”
“What’s a chow man?”
“A chow, a chow-chow. It’s like a big fluffy dog,” I try to explain. “They’re mean as shit and they were used to guard palaces in like China and shit.”
“Have I ever been chased by a chow?” Bailey asks, confused. “Like the last time I was … trying to … break into a palace?” His face is all scrunched up.
Pause. “I just want some muesli and juice right now, ’kay?”
“You look busted up, man.”
“I’m thinking … Miami,” I croak, squinting up at him.
“Great! Sunshine, deco, seashells, Bacardi, crashing waves”—Bailey makes surfing motions with his arms—“fashion shoots, and Victor making a new splash. Right on, man.”
I’m watching the early-morning traffic cruise by on 14th Street and then I clear my throat. “Er … maybe Detroit.”
“I’m telling you, baby,” he says. “The world is a jungle. Wherever you go it’s still the same.”
“I just want some muesli and juice right now, okay, man?”
“You need to utilize your potential, man.”
“There’s a snag in your advice, man,” I point out.
“Yeah?”
“You’re—a—waiter.”
I finish reading an article about new mascaras (Shattered and Roach are the season’s most popular) and hip lipsticks (Frostbite, Asphyxia, Bruise) and glam nail polish (Plaque, Mildew) and I’m thinking, genuinely, Wow, progress, and some girl behind me with a floppy beach hat on and a bandeau bra top and saucer eyes is listening to a guy wearing a suit made of sixteenth-century armor saying “um um um” while snapping his fingers until he remembers—“Ewan McGregor!”—and then they both fall silent and the director leans in to me and warns, “You’re not looking worried enough,” which is my cue to leave Florent.
Outside, more light, some of it artificial, opens up the city, and the sidewalks on 14th Street are empty, devoid of extras, and above the sounds of faraway jackhammers I can hear someone singing “The Sunny Side of the Street” softly to himself and when I feel someone touch my shoulder I turn around but no one’s there. A dog races by going haywire. I call out to it. It stops, looks at me, runs on. “Disarm” by the Smashing Pumpkins starts playing on the sound track and the music overlaps a shot of the club I was going to open in TriBeCa and I walk into that frame, not noticing the black limousine parked across the street, four buildings down, that the cameraman pans to.
5
A door slams shut behind me, two pairs of hands grab my shoulders and I’m shoved into a chair, and under the fuzzy haze of a black light, silhouettes and shadows come into focus: Damien’s goons (Duke but not Digby, who was recast after we shot yesterday’s breakfast) and Juan, the afternoon doorman at Alison’s building on the Upper East Side, and as the lights get brighter Damien appears and he’s smoking a Partagas Perfecto cigar and wearing skintight jeans, a vest with bold optical patterns, a shirt with starburst designs, a long Armani overcoat, motorcycle boots, and his hands—grabbing my sore face, squeezing it—are like ice and kind of soothing until he pushes my head back trying to snap my neck, but one of the goons—maybe Duke—pulls him away and Damien’s making noises that sound like chanting and one of the mirror balls that used to hang above the dance floor lies shattered in a corner, confetti scattered around it in tall piles.
“That was a particularly hellish greeting,” I say, trying to maintain my composure once Damien lets go.
Damien’s not listening. He keeps pacing the room, making the chanting noises, and the room is so freezing that the air coming out of his mouth steams and then he walks back to where I’m sitting, towering over me even though he’s not that tall, and looks into my face again, cigar smoke making my eyes water. He studies my blank expression before shaking his head disgustedly and backing away to pace the room without knowing which direction to take.
The goons and Juan just stare vacantly at me, occasionally averting their eyes but mostly not, waiting for some kind of signal from Damien, and I tense up, bracing myself, thinking, just don’t touch the face, just anywhere but the face.
“Did anybody read the Post this morning?” Damien’s asking the room. “The headline? Something about Satan escaping from hell?”
A few nods, some appreciative murmuring. I close my eyes.
“I’m looking at this place, Victor,” Damien says. “And do you want to know what I’m thinking?”
Involuntarily I shake my head, realize something, then nod.
“I’m thinking, Jesus, the zeitgeist’s in limbo.”
I don’t say anything. Damien spits on me, then grabs my face, smearing his saliva all over my nose, my cheeks, reopening a wound on my mouth where Hurley hit me.
“How do you feel, Victor?” he’s asking. “How do you feel this morning?”
“I feel very … funny,” I say, guessing, pulling back. “I feel very … unhip?”
“You look the part,” Damien sneers, livid, ready to pounce, the veins in his neck and forehead bulging, grasping my face so tightly that when I yell out the sounds coming from my mouth are muffled and my vision blurs over and he abruptly lets go, pacing again.
“Haven’t you ever come to a point in your life where you’ve said to yourself: Hey, this isn’t right?”
I don’t say anything, just continue sucking in air.
“I guess it’s beside the point to tell you you’re fired.”
I nod, don’t say anything, have no idea what kind of expression is on my face.
“I mean, what do you think you are?” he asks, baffled. “A reliable sales tool? Let’s just put it this way, Victor: I’m not too thrilled by your value system.”
I nod mutely, not denying anything.
“There’s good in this business, Victor, and there’s bad,” Damien says, breathing hard. “And it’s my impression that you can’t discern between the two.”
Suddenly something in me cracks. “Hey,” I shout, looking up at him. “Spare me.”
Damien seems pleased by this outburst and starts circling the chair, raising the cigar to his mouth, taking rapid light puffs, its tip glowing off then on then off.
“Sometimes even the desert gets chilly, Victor,” he intones pretentiously.
“Please continue, O Wise One,” I groan, rolling my eyes. “Fucking spare me, man.”
He smacks me across the head, then he does it again, and when he does it a third time I wonder if that third slap was in the script, and finally Duke pulls Damien back.
“I may park wherever I feel like it, Victor,” he growls, “but I also pay the fucking tickets.”
Damien breaks free from Duke and grabs my cheek at the place Hurley’s fist struck and twists it upward between two fingers until I’m shouting out for him to stop, reaching up to pull his hand away, but when he lets go I just fall back, limp, rubbing my face.
“I’m just like …” I’m trying to catch my breath. “I’m just like … trying to fit this into … perspective,” I choke, slipping helplessly into tears.
Damien slaps my face again. “Hey, look at me.”
“Man, you’re shooting from the hip.” I’m panting, delirious. “I admire that, man.” I take in air, gasping. “I go to jail, right? I go directly to jail?”
He sighs, studying me, rubs a hand over his face. “You act very hard to be cool, Victor, but really you’re very normal.” Pause. “You’re a loser.” He shrugs. “You’re an easy target with a disadvantage.”
I try to stand up but Damien pushes me back down into the chair.
“Did you fuck her?” he suddenly asks.
I can’t say anything since I don’t know who he’s talking about.
“Did you fuck her?” he asks again, quietly.
“I’ll, um, take the Fifth,” I mumble.
“You’ll take what, you sonofabitch?” he roars, the two goons rushing over, holding him back from beating t
he shit out of me.
“The photograph’s a lie,” I’m shouting back. “The photo was faked. It looks real but it’s not. That’s not me. It must have been altered—”
Damien reaches into the Armani overcoat and throws a handful of photographs at my head. I duck. They scatter around me, one hitting my lap, faceup, the rest falling to the floor, different photos of Lauren and me making out. In a few shots our tongues are visible, entwined and glistening.
“What are … these?” I’m asking.
“Keep them. Souvenirs.”
“What are these?” I’m asking.
“The originals, fuckhead,” Damien says. “I’ve had them checked out. They weren’t altered, fuckhead.”
Damien crosses the room, gradually calming himself down, closes and locks a briefcase, then checks his watch.
“I suppose you’ve figured out that you’re not opening this dump?” Damien’s asking. “The silent partners have already been consulted on this minor decision. We’ve taken care of Burl, and JD’s been fired too. He’ll actually never work anywhere in Manhattan again because of his unfortunate association with you.”
“Damien, hey,” I say softly. “Come on, man, JD didn’t do anything.”
“He has AIDS,” Damien says, slipping on a pair of black leather gloves. “He’s not going to be around much longer anyway.”
I just stare at Damien, who notices.
“It’s a blood disease,” he says. “It’s some kind of virus. I’m sure you’ve heard of it.”
“Oh, yeah,” I say uncertainly.
“Baxter Priestly’s with me now,” Damien says, getting ready to make an exit. “It somehow seems …” He searches for the right word, cocks his head, comes up with “appropriate.”
Juan shrugs at me as he follows Damien and the goons out of the club and I pick up one of the photographs of Lauren and me and turn it over as if there might be some kind of explanation for its existence on the back but it’s blank and I’m drained, my head spinning, swearing “fuck fuck fuck” as I move over to a dusty sink behind what would have been the bar and I’m waiting for the director to shout “Cut” but the only sounds I’m hearing are Damien’s limo screeching out of TriBeCa, my feet crunching what’s left of the mirror ball, sleigh bells not in the shooting script, a buzzing fly circling my head which I’m too tired to wave away.
4
I’m standing at a pay phone on Houston Street, three blocks from Lauren’s apartment. Extras walk by, looking stiff and poorly directed. A limousine cruises toward Broadway. I’m crunching on a Mentos.
“Hey pussycat, it’s me,” I say. “I need to see you.”
“That’s not possible,” she says, and then less surely, “Who is this?”
“I’m coming over.”
“I won’t be here.”
“Why not?”
“I’m going to Miami with Damien.” She adds, “In about an hour. I’m packing.”
“What happened to Alison?” I ask. “What happened to his fiancée?” I spit out. “Huh, Lauren?”
“Damien dumped Alison and she’s put a contract out on his head,” she says casually. “If you can believe that, which I actually can.”
While I’m processing this information the cameraman keeps circling the pay phone, distracting me into forgetting my lines, so I decide to improvise and surprisingly the director allows it.
“What about … what about when you get back, baby?” I ask hesitantly.
“I’m going on location,” she says, very matter-of-fact. “To Burbank.”
“For what?” I’m asking, covering my eyes with my hand.
“I’m playing the squealing genie in Disney’s new live-action feature Aladdin Meets Roger Rabbit, which is being directed by—oh, what’s his name?—oh yeah, Cookie Pizarro.” She pauses. “CAA thinks it’s my big break.”
I’m stuck. “Give Cookie my, um, best,” and then I sigh. “I really want to come over.”
“You can’t, honey,” she says sweetly.
“You’re impossible,” I say through clenched teeth. “Then why don’t you come meet me?”
“Where are you?”
“In a big deluxe suite at the SoHo Grand.”
“Well, that sounds like neutral ground, but no.”
“Lauren—what about last night?”
“My opinion?”
A very long pause that I’m about to break when I remember my line, but she speaks first.
“My opinion is: I guess you shouldn’t expect too much from people. My opinion is: You’re busted and you did it to yourself.”
“I’ve been … I’ve been under … a lot of pressure, baby,” I’m saying, trying not to break down. “I … stumbled.”
“No, Victor,” she says curtly. “You fell.”
“You sound pretty casual, huh, baby?”
“That’s what people sound like when they don’t care anymore, Victor,” she says. “I’m surprised it doesn’t sound more familiar to you.”
Pause. “There’s nothing, um, very encouraging about that answer, baby.”
“You sound like your tongue’s pierced,” she says tiredly.
“And you exude glamour and, um, radiance … even over the phone,” I mumble, feeding another quarter into the slot.
“See, Victor, the problem is you’ve got to know things,” she says. “But you don’t.”
“That picture wasn’t us,” I say, suddenly alert. “I don’t know how, Lauren, but that wasn’t—”
“Are you sure?” she asks, cutting me off.
“Oh come on,” I yell, my voice getting higher. “What’s the story, Lauren? I mean, Jesus, this is like a nightmare and you’re taking it so—”
“I don’t know, Victor, but I’m sure you’ll wake up and figure it all out,” she says. “I wouldn’t necessarily bet on it but I think you’ll figure it all out. In the end.”
“Jesus, you sound like you don’t want to ruin the surprise for me.”
“Victor,” she’s sighing, “I have to go.”
“It’s not me, Lauren,” I stress again. “That might be you. But that’s not me.”
“Well, it looks like you, Victor. The paper says it’s you—”
“Lauren,” I shout, panicking. “What in the hell’s happening? Where in the fuck did that photo come from?”
“Victor,” she continues calmly. “We cannot see each other anymore. We cannot talk to each other anymore. This relationship is terminated.”
“You’re saying this like you’ve just completed some kind of fucking assignment,” I cry out.
“You’re projecting,” she says sternly.
“I urge you, baby, one last time to reconsider,” I say, breaking down. “I want to be with you,” I finally say.
“Trust me, Victor,” she says. “You don’t.”
“Baby, he gets his shirts tailored—”
“Frankly I couldn’t care less,” she says. “Those are things you care about. Those are the things that make you decide a person’s worth.”
After a long pause I say, “I guess you heard about Mica.”
“What about Mica?” she asks, sounding totally uninterested.
“She was, um, murdered, baby,” I point out, wiping my nose.
“I don’t think that was a murder,” Lauren says carefully.
After another long pause I ask, “What was it?”
Finally, solemnly, she says, “It was a statement,” giving it more meaning than I’m capable of understanding.
“Spare me, Lauren,” I whisper helplessly.
She hangs up.
The camera stops rolling and the makeup girl drops a couple glycerin tears onto my face and the camera starts rolling again and just like in rehearsals I hang the phone up in such a way that it drops out of my hand, swinging by its cord, and then carefully, gently, I lift it up, staring at it. We don’t bother reshooting and it’s on to the next setup.
3
Chloe actually lets the doorman buzz me up after th
e director tells Ashton to give me the rundown so that I’m prepared for the following scene, which is basically that when Chloe skipped the shows she was supposed to do today it caused some kind of horrible ruckus and since “Hard Copy,” “Inside Edition,” “A Current Affair,” “Entertainment Tonight” and “Nightline” have been calling all morning Chloe is heading to Canyon Ranch for two weeks with Baxter Priestly and in the elevator the director, getting fed up with me, hisses “Look anguished” and I try to but I’m just vaguely unhappy and when I glance uncertainly at the camera it rises up as the elevator doors open and follows me into the darkness of the hallway that leads to Chloe’s loft.
Inside the apartment it’s freezing, even with all the lights burning; the windows are covered with huge sheets of ice, and frost layers the kitchen cabinets and the giant glass coffee table, the floor slippery in places. The phone keeps ringing, competing with the TV in Chloe’s bedroom, and as I walk in to turn it down a promo for this afternoon’s “Patty Winters Show” appears, the host cradling a severely deformed four-year-old while Bette Midler sings “From a Distance” on the sound track, and then it’s back to a soap opera, where a character says to another character, “That wasn’t nice,” and I move slowly over to the bathroom but Chloe isn’t in there. The tub is full of suds and there are two empty containers of Ben & Jerry’s Chubby Hubby ice cream sitting by the sink, next to the retainer Chloe uses to bleach her teeth, which sits beside a large hand mirror that with a twinge of panic I’m about to inspect, but then Chloe walks into the bedroom and I whirl around and the phone keeps ringing.
She’s on a cellular, listening to someone, and looking remarkably composed, she glances over at me as she walks toward the bed, on top of which sits the set of Gucci luggage Tom Ford sent for her birthday, and she says something into the phone I can’t hear, then clicks off, and I reconsider opening my arms and saying “Ta-da!” but instead ask “Who was that?” and then, when there isn’t an answer, “That’s not your phone.”
“It’s Baxter’s,” she says. “He gave it to me.” Pause. “Since I can’t answer my own.”
“Baby,” I start. “Are you okay?” I’m thinking about the hand mirror in the bathroom behind me, wondering if there was anything on it. “You’re not back into …” I let my voice drift off.
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