Jamie Fields: legs slung over a floral-patterned swivel chair, wearing an ultrafashionable Prada camisole top, shimmery black disco pants, black stiletto shoes, black Armani sunglasses, and her face is masklike, but after my initial shock I’m projecting something vaguely apologetic onto it and she confirms this by removing the sunglasses, stoplight-red Hard Candy polish on her nails.
Jamie notices how distracting they are. “I know—it’s ugly,” she sighs, lighting a cigarette. “It’s for the movie.”
“Which one?” I’m asking.
She shrugs, exhaling. “Both?”
“How did you get in here?” I ask.
“I’m well acquainted with certain key staff members at the Four Seasons,” she says casually. “They know me. They let me do whatever I want. It’s a perk. Let’s leave it at that.”
I pause before asking, “Are you going to start flailing around again?”
“No. I’m sorry about all of that.”
Another pause. “What happened back there?”
“Oh, I just thought you were someone else,” she mutters. “Forget about it. Anywa-a-a-ay …”
“You thought I was someone else?” I ask. “Baby, that hurts.”
“I know.” Jamie reaches into a Gucci leather clutch envelope and pulls out a small gift-wrapped box. “So I thought this might ease your pain.”
I reach out and hesitantly take the box. “What is it?”
“Cigars. Montecristos,” she says, standing up, stretching. “I mean, I’m assuming you’re still as trendy as you used to be.” She takes a drag off the cigarette, makes a face, stubs it out in an ashtray. “I really don’t think times have changed that much.” She starts moving around the suite, not impressed but not unimpressed, just bizarrely neutral, fingering the curtains, studying various knickknacks of mine taking up space on a desk.
The phone suddenly rings. When I pick it up no one’s there. I slowly place the phone back down.
“That keeps happening,” I mutter.
Jamie continues to move around the room, runs her hands beneath desktops, inspects a lamp, then another, opens an armoire, gazes at the space behind the TV—Beck on a donkey, a Spice Girl swinging a lasso—then she lifts a remote control and seems on the verge of taking it apart when I interrupt.
“Baby, why don’t you sit down?” I ask.
“I’ve been lounging around all day.” She stretches again, resumes a more casual pose. “I can’t stay still.”
“Um, baby?” I begin awkwardly. “How did you find me?”
“Hey—” She looks back at me. “How did you find me?”
Pause. “You go first.”
“I had my assistant call all the places I thought you’d be staying at.”
She sighs, continues. “The Connaught, the Stafford, Claridge’s, the Dorchester, the Berkeley, the Halcyon, then—boom—the Four Seasons.”
A long pause, during which I just stare at her, dumbfounded.
“What?” she asks. “What is it?”
“How about the fucking Hempel? Why didn’t you check the fucking Hempel? Jesus, baby.”
A smile creeps up but she stops it when she realizes something and this causes her to groan, flopping back into the swivel chair.
“Don’t make me put my sunglasses back on, Victor,” she warns.
The phone rings again. I sigh, reach over to the nightstand, pick the phone up, listen. Silence, a series of beeps unevenly spaced, two clicks, a patch of far-off static, another beep, then silence. I look back at Jamie in the swivel chair, playing thoughtfully with her sunglasses, legs dangling over an armrest, before I slowly place the phone back down.
“I asked for Victor Johnson’s room but then I remembered—or read somewhere—that you changed your name. To Victor Ward.” She pauses, smiles playfully. “Why?”
“Various committees assumed it was a smart PR move to jump-start my career.” I shrug. “It made me semi-famous.”
“A misconception made you semi-famous,” she corrects.
“I’ve traveled quite well on that misconception.”
“It was a suit that got you the gig.”
“It was also an inordinate amount of sheer cool.”
“Why do I have the feeling your father made you change the name?” She smiles playfully again. “Huh? Did Daddy make a request?”
“I don’t talk about my father—”
“Oh god, whatever.” She stands up again, then flops down in the chair again, sighs a number of times. “Listen, I’m just here to tell you I’m sorry about freaking out and, y’know, have a good time in London and all that and, um, I’ll see you in another eight years.”
“So are you gonna freak out again?” I ask, playing it cool, moving across the bed so that I’m closer to her.
“I’m feeling, um, reformed.”
“Oh, that’s good.”
Pause. “That depends on your definition of good,” she says.
“What’s the story, baby?” I sigh mock-wearily. “What are you doing? Where are you going?”
“Today was the last day of the shoot,” she says. “We finished the interiors last week in Pinewood.” Pause. “So I’m basically free, free, free.”
“Well, then I’m glad I caught you.”
“Caught me?” she asks, stiffening, vaguely annoyed. “Why are you glad you caught me, Victor?”
Suddenly her cell phone rings. She pulls it out of a Lulu Guinness handbag I hadn’t noticed before and answers it. While staring directly at me, she says, “Yes? … It’s fine .… Right .… No, I’m at the Four Seasons .… Is that the buzzword for the day? … Let’s see a show of hands .… Yes …. Sounds delicious .… Right …. Later.” She clicks off, stares blankly at me.
“Who was that?” I ask, shivering, my breath steaming.
“No one you know,” she murmurs, and then, barely audible, “yet.”
I’m lying on my side now, running my hands slinkily across the floral print of the comforter, drawing attention to my hands because of the way they’re moving, and my shirt’s become untucked in a not-too-suggestive way and when I look down “sheepishly,” then back up with a seductive smile, Jamie is glaring at me with a noxious expression. When I revert to not being so studly, she relaxes, stretches, groans.
“I’ve got to get something to eat,” she says.
“Baby, are you famished?”
“Beyond famished.”
“Hey, I saw that movie.” I grin, faux-mischievously. “What about room service?” I suggest, my voice deepening.
She stands there, contemplating something, glances back at the TV, then her eyes carefully scan the ceiling. Finally she murmurs, “Let’s get out of here.”
“Where to?”
“Let’s go out for dinner.”
“Now? It’s only five,” I point out. “Is anything open yet?”
“I know a place,” she murmurs. Something on the ceiling, in the corner, dominates Jamie’s attention and she moves toward it, reaching up, then—realizing something—stops herself. She turns around, tries to smile, but apparently she can’t help it: the room seems to worry her in some way.
“Baby, it’s just a set,” I’m saying. “Forget about it.”
11
Though the restaurant doesn’t serve until 6 Jamie gets us into Le Caprice at 5:30 with a cryptic phone call she makes in the cab on the way to Arlington Square.
“I was supposed to have dinner with Amanda Harlech but I think this will be much more, er, interesting,” she says, tucking the cell phone back into her handbag.
“That’s me,” I say. “A blast from the past.”
While sitting across the table from her in Le Caprice I’m aware that Jamie Fields is so beautiful that she’s starting to blow away whatever residual memories of Lauren Hynde I might have held on to and after knocking back a martini and some white wine we order crab-and-corn chowder and a plate of chargrilled squid and the two of us start relaxing into the moment, only briefly interrupted on Jamie’s p
art by a few giant yawns and a slightly deadened look behind those very cool blue eyes. I order another martini, momentarily thinking, This is gonna be so easy.
“Where did you go after shooting today?” I ask.
“I had a Himalayan rejuvenation treatment at Aveda in Harvey Nichols,” she says. “I needed it. I deserved it.”
“Cool, hip.”
“So what are you doing in London, Victor?” she asks. “How did you find me?”
“Baby,” I’m saying, “it was purely accidental.”
“Uh-huh,” she says somewhat dubiously. “What were you doing on the set this morning?”
“I was just browsing, doing some shopping in Nothing Hill, minding my own business and—”
“It’s Notting Hill, Victor,” Jamie says, motioning to a waiter for more bread. “Notting Hill. Continue.”
I stare at her, sending out vibes; some hurtle back at me, others land softly, sticking.
She’s waving a hand in front of my face. “Hello? Victor?”
“Oh yeah,” I say, blinking. “Um, could you repeat the question?”
“How—did—you—find—me?” she asks tensely.
“I just stumbled onto … things, y’know?” I squint, making an airy motion with my hands, hoping it clarifies.
“That sounds like you but I’m not buying it.”
“Okay, okay,” I say, grinning sexily at her, leaning in, seeing how far I can push this mode. “Someone at a party—”
“Victor,” she interrupts, “you’re a very good-looking guy. You don’t need to push it with me, okay? I get it.”
The sexy grin fades and I sit back and take a sip of the martini, then carefully wipe my lips with a napkin.
“Proceed,” she says, arms crossed, staring.
“Someone at a party I was at mentioned, um, something,” I say, distracted, shrugging everything off. “Maybe it was at the Groucho Club. I think it was someone who went to Camden with us—”
“You think?”
“Baby, I was so loaded—”
“Oh shit, Victor, who was it?”
“Wait—I’m sorry, I think it was someone I bumped into at Brown’s—”
“Who, for god’s sake?”
I lean in, grinning sexily and purring, “I see I have your full attention now.”
“Victor,” she says, squirming. “I want to know.”
“Baby,” I say, “let me tell you something.”
“Yeah?” she asks expectantly.
“I never reveal my sources,” I whisper to her in the empty restaurant and then lean back, satisfied.
She relaxes and, to prove she’s okay with this, takes a final spoonful of chowder and licks the spoon thoughtfully. Now it’s her turn to lean in. “We have ways of making you talk,” she whispers back.
Playfully, I lean in again and say with a husky voice, “Oh, I bet you do.”
But Jamie doesn’t smile at this—just suddenly seems preoccupied with something else, which may or may not concern me. Withdrawn and pensive, she sighs and fixes her eyes on a point behind my back. I turn around and glance at a row of David Bailey photographs lining the wall.
“Hey baby,” I start, “you seem tired all of a sudden. Are you like really beat?”
“If you had to deliver lines like ‘Once Farris gets hold of the scepter it’s over for your planet’ all day, you’d be soul-sick too,” she says tiredly. “Japanese investors—what’s left to say?”
“Hey, but I am soul-sick,” I exclaim, trying to cheer her up. “A girlfriend once told me so,” I say mock-proudly.
“Who are you seeing now?” she asks listlessly.
“I’m off relationships for now. ‘Be more sensitive, be more macho.’ Jesus, forget it.” Pause. “I’m chasing hookers instead.”
“Speaking of which—what ever happened to Chloe Byrnes?” she asks. “Or did she OD yet?” Jamie shrugs, then reconsiders. “I suppose I would’ve heard about that.”
“No, she’s cool,” I say, figuring out how to play the current situation, landing on: “We’re on hiatus. Like on vacation.”
“What? That’s code for she dumped your ass?”
“No,” I start patiently. “It means every … relationship has its, like, um—oh yeah—ups and downs.”
“I take it this is a down?”
“You could say so.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” I say glumly.
“I heard she had a run-in with heroin,” Jamie says lightly.
“I can’t confirm that rumor,” I say.
“Because it isn’t true?” Jamie pulls out a pack of cigarettes.
“Hey baby—”
“It’s okay,” she says patiently. “You can smoke in restaurants in London.”
“That’s not what I’m hey-babying about.”
“So just give me the lowdown. Chloe’s not dead: have I got that much right?” she asks.
“No, she’s not dead, Jamie,” I say, mildly pissed off.
“Well, rumor has it, Victor … ,” Jamie says, shaking her head fauxsadly, lighting the cigarette.
“I don’t give a shit about what gossip you’ve heard.”
“Oh, stop right there, please.” Jamie sits back, exhaling smoke, arms crossed, marveling at me. “Is this the same Victor Johnson I knew way back when, or have you suddenly got your act together?”
“I’m just saying Chloe—”
“Oh, I don’t really want to hear about your relationship with Chloe Byrnes.” She cuts me off irritably, nodding at a waiter to remove a bowl. “I can just imagine. Weekends in South Beach, lunches with Andie MacDowell, discussions revolving around ‘Will Chloe get into fashion heaven or not,’ debating the color yellow, you keep finding syringes in Chloe’s Prada handbag—”
“Hey,” I snap. “It was a nasal habit.”
“Ooh.” Jamie’s eyes light up. “Is that on the record?”
“Oh shit, I don’t give a crap what people think,” I mutter, pushing myself away from the table. “Like I really care what people think, Jamie.”
A pause. “I think you’re adapting well,” she says, smiling.
“Yeah, I’m a genius, baby.”
“So why is the genius in London and not back in New York?” Jamie asks herself. “Let me guess: he’s doing research on that screenplay he always wanted to write.”
“Hey, I’m a genius, baby,” I tell her. “I know you might find that hard to believe, but there it is.”
“How snazzy,” she says, then fatigue overtakes her and she whimpers, “Oh no, I’m having flashbacks—the eighties are coming back to me and an anxiety attack is imminent.” She holds herself, shivering.
“That’s a good thing, baby,” I say, urging, “Float into it.”
“No, Victor,” she says, shaking her head. “Contrary to popular opinion, that is most definitely not a good thing.”
“Hey baby, why not?”
“Because it brings back our college years and I, for one, have no desire to relive them.”
“Oh come on, baby—you had fun at Camden. Admit it,” I say. “And don’t look at me like I’m insane.”
“Fun?” she asks, appalled. “Don’t you remember Rupert Guest? Hanging out with him was fun?”
“He was a drug dealer, baby,” I say. “He wasn’t even enrolled.”
“He wasn’t?” she asks, confused, then, remembering something both private and horrific, groans, “Oh god.”
“I remember Roxanne Forest, however,” I say, teasing her. “And some really good times with that Swedish chick—Katrina Svenson.”
“Oh gross,” she sighs, then she quickly recovers and decides to play along. “Do you remember David Van Pelt? Mitchell Allen? Those were my good times.”
A considerable pause. “In that case—not friends of mine, baby.”
I recognize the current expression on Jamie’s face—time to taunt—and then she throws me a name, but I’m staring at the black floor beneath us, trying to r
emember David Van Pelt or Mitchell Allen, momentarily zoning out, and I don’t hear the name Jamie just mentioned. I ask her to repeat it.
“Lauren Hynde?” Jamie says, in a certain tone of voice. “Do you remember her?”
“Um, no, not really,” I say casually, reacting to her tone.
“You must remember Lauren, Victor.” She says this sighing, looking away. “Lauren Hynde?”
“It doesn’t ring a bell,” I say blankly. “Why? Should it?”
“You left me for her.”
After a long silence, trying to remember the particular sequence of events during any given term, I end up saying, “No.”
“Oh Jesus, this might’ve been a mistake.” Jamie’s moving around in her chair, uncomfortably, as if she’s trying to unstick herself from the seat.
“No, I remember her,” I say, looking directly at Jamie. “But I also remember that I’d taken a term off and when I came back in December you weren’t around—”
“I also had taken the term off, Victor,” she counters.
“Baby, the point is …” Defeated, knowing there never was a point, that there never would be anything that could wrap this up neatly, I just ask quietly, “Are you still pissed?”
“Oh yeah, it destroyed me,” she says, rolling her eyes. “I had to move to Europe to get over the genius.”
“Have you really lived here that long?” I’m asking, mystified. “That’s … impossible.”
“I live in New York, dodo,” she says. “I work in New York.”
“Why don’t we ever see each other?”
“I think the combination of your self-absorption and my fear of just about everyone in Manhattan conspires against us.”
“Oh baby, you’re so tough,” I’m telling her. “Nobody scares you.”
“Do you know Alison Poole?” she asks.
“Um.” I cough lightly and then mutter, “I’ll pass on that one.”
“That’s not what I heard—”
“Hey, when’s the last time you saw me?” I ask, cutting her off. “Because the Klonopin I’m on affects long-term memory.”
“Well,” she starts, “I saw photos of you at the shows in WWD last week.”
“You mean the Todd Oldham show?” I’m asking. “Do you still have that issue?”
“No, you were at the Calvin Klein show,” she says.
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