Glamorama

by Bret Easton Ellis

  Suddenly, that first week in Paris, Bobby threw an elaborate cocktail party in honor of Joel Silver, who ended up bragging to Richard Donner, who had just flown in from Sacramento, about his new three-million-dollar trailer and someone else was flying his dogs over on the Concorde and then Serena Altschul showed up and gave us the inside scoop on the Bush tour and a soon-to-be-slain rap star and Hamish Bowles arrived with Bobby Short and then—boom boom boom, one after the other—Crown Princess Katherine of Yugoslavia, Prince Pavlos of Greece, Princess Sumaya of Jordan and Skeet Ulrich, who was wearing a Prada suit and a shirt with spread collars and seemed happy at first to see me even if the last time we bumped into each other I ended up running away from him down a darkened street in SoHo. Skeet worriedly noticed the way I eyed a dropped Mentos lying on the terrazzo floor. I bent down and, after brushing it off, popped the Mentos into my mouth and started chewing rapidly.

  “You just need to, um, put a positive spin on things,” Skeet told me hesitantly.

  “I’m saying hello to oblivion,” I told Skeet, chewing rapidly.

  He paused, shrugged, nodded glumly and immediately walked away.

  Aurore Ducas passed by and so did Yves Saint-Laurent and Taki. An Iraqi ambassador spent the entire party standing close to Bobby, who kept making hand motions my way, urging me to mingle. I spent the early part of the evening chatting nervously to Diane Von Furstenberg and Barry Diller and trying to move closer to Jamie, who sometimes was ignoring me and sometimes laughing hysterically while petting a basset hound someone had dragged in, and bartenders poured champagne into thin crystal flutes while staring blankly past us. And predictably the party got hipper as it kept gliding further along and people started dancing to Republica and Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell arrived with The Artist Formerly Known As Prince and Tom Ford showed up with Dominique Browning and I had a heavy conversation with Michael Douglas about high-end safaris while I held a plate of lobster looking fairly benign and “I’m Your Boogie Man” by KC and the Sunshine Band blasted out, which was Jamie’s cue to start dancing and my cue to just stare wonderingly at her. Baptiste Pitou did the flower arrangements. The word PARTY kept flashing above us in bright, multicolored lettering.

  Bruce left the party the moment the French premier’s son showed up and Tammy locked herself in an upstairs bathroom with a bottle of champagne and fell into a fairly hysterical state and someone—this zonked-out NYU film student who’d spent a few nights in the apartment and was lighting everybody’s cigarettes—gave me his phone number, signing the back of an old issue of Le Monde with an important pen he borrowed from a certain luminary. A new David Barton gym was opening somewhere in Pigalle and a baffled Princess Sumaya of Jordan gasped “Ooh—how perfect.” The director and Felix, along with most of the film crew, were thrilled by the direction the party was taking. I ended up slumped over on a bench in the courtyard and drunkenly said “Bonjour, dude” to Peter Jennings as he left and my foot had fallen asleep so I limped back into the party and tried to dance with Jamie but Bobby wouldn’t let me.

  36

  The shows we attended today: Gaultier, Comme des Garçons and—after a stop at the new Frank Malliot place located somewhere beneath the Champs Élysées—Galliano (a giant white curtain, uncharacteristic modern lighting, “Stupid Girl” by Garbage blaring, models bowing, we needed alibis), and then inevitably Les Bains for a dinner in honor of Dries von Noten and male bouncers pull us in and I’m wearing Prada and mellowing out on immense dosages of Xanax and it’s a big hyped-up bash and I’m saying “Hey baby” in strained variations to Candelas Sastre and Peter Beard and Eleanore de Rohan-Chabot and Emmanuel de Brantes and Greg Hansen and a dentist I visited briefly in Santa Fe when Chloe was on location there and Ines Rivero and there are way too many photographers and store buyers and PR types and all the girls are carrying straw bags and wearing dresses the colors of crayons and the club is decked out with immense flower arrangements made up of gardenias and roses. I keep overhearing the word “insects” and when I light a cigarette I’m just noticing the thousand francs clutched in my hand that for some reason Jamie gave me during the Galliano show while I sat next to her trembling violently. This morning over breakfast Bobby said nothing about where he was heading off to today but since so many scenes are being shot without me I just frantically memorize my lines and show up according to the production schedule, staying inconspicuous, staying out of sight.

  I walk over to where the film crew waits and I hit my mark, lighting Jamie’s cigarette. She’s wearing a tight sequined pantsuit by Valentino and carefully applied winged eyeliner. Eric Clapton starts playing over the sound system, which is my cue.

  “Eric Clapton sucks.”

  “Oh yeah?” she asks. “That’s just great.”

  I grab a glass of champagne off a tray a waiter gliding by is holding and we’re both out in the open standing next to each other on the dance floor, looking at everything else but us.

  “I want you,” I say, wanly smiling, nodding to Claudia Schiffer as she passes by. “I want you very badly.”

  “That’s not in the script, Victor,” she warns, smiling wanly too. “That’s not going to play.”

  “Jamie, please,” I say. “We can talk. Bobby’s not here yet.”

  “Just knock those date-rape fantasies out of that pretty little head of yours,” she says, exhaling.

  “Baby,” I say genuinely. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “You’re about to hurt both of us if you keep this up.”

  “Keep what up?” I ask.

  She turns even farther away. I move closer.

  “Hey Jamie—” I reach out to touch her shoulder. “What’s the story?”

  “You don’t even know where you are, Victor,” she says grimly, but still smiling, even managing little waves at people who wave first. “You have no idea where you are.”

  “Show me.”

  “I can’t afford to do that, Victor.”

  “You don’t love him,” I say. “I can tell. You don’t love Bobby. It’s a job, right? It’s part of the plan, right? You’re just acting, right?”

  She says nothing.

  Bobby parts a green velvet curtain and walks in wearing a dazzling Valentino tuxedo with a Prada backpack strapped over his shoulders that he didn’t check and he surveys the room while lighting a cigarette, briefly blinded by paparazzi, and he just came from a party at Anahi and his hair looks wet and he starts moving toward us, grinning tightly as he strides across the dance floor.

  “I think you’re afraid of him,” I say. “But you don’t love him.”

  “Let’s just get through this week, okay?” she says, tensing up.

  “Tell me you love him—say it,” I whisper. “Tell me you even like him.”

  The camera suddenly stops circling, holding us both in the frame tightly while we stare helplessly as Bobby comes nearer.

  “Be quiet,” she says, nodding at someone passing by in the shadows.

  “I’ll say something to him,” I whisper. “I don’t care.”

  “Let’s lower the volume, Victor,” she warns, smiling widely.

  “I hope that’s a humorous reference to something I didn’t hear you say, Victor,” Bobby says, leaning in and kissing Jamie on the mouth.

  “Mmm,” Jamie purrs, tasting her lips. “Margarita?”

  “What are you talking about, Bobby?” I deliver the line in such a way that it’s impossible to tell whether I’m feigning innocence or acting hard but Bobby’s distracted by something across the room and in a suave way doesn’t seem to care.

  “I’m starving,” Jamie says.

  “What?” Bobby murmurs, craning his neck.

  “I said I’m starving,” she repeats anxiously.

  Vaguely panicked, I swallow another Xanax and focus on an MTV crew interviewing Nicole Kidman, who has a bindi on her forehead.

  “Rhinebeck is in a rotten mood,” Bobby says, staring over at Bruce slouched stony-faced in a booth on the outer limits o
f the party with Tammy beside him, gorgeous and shell-shocked, wearing sunglasses, both of them surrounded by a smattering of young Londoners.

  “I think he’ll be okay,” Jamie says. “It’ll be over soon.”

  “Yeah, but Tammy’s getting damaged and that could screw things up,” Bobby says. “Excuse me.”

  Bobby walks over to the booth, shaking hands with everyone who’s impressed by his presence, and when he leans in, Bruce barely registers him and then Bentley strolls over with Marc Jacobs and finally Tammy looks up at Bentley as he shows her the watch he’s wearing and she smiles briefly at Marc but the moment the entire booth bursts into cackling her face becomes a mask.

  “Talk to him,” I’m telling Jamie. “Tell him it’s over between you two. Tell him it’ll be okay.”

  “It’ll be okay?” she asks. “You dummy,” she mutters.

  “I’m just trying to articulate how I’m really feeling.”

  “Your primary responsibility, Victor, at this juncture, is to just—”

  “Shut up,” I say softly.

  “Get over me.”

  “You started this.”

  “This is just the tip of the iceberg,” Jamie says, and then she can’t help it—her face relaxes and glancing over at me her eyes acknowledge mine and she whispers quickly, “Please, Victor, just act low-key and we’ll talk later.”

  “When?” I whisper back.

  Bobby returns with Bentley and Marc Jacobs and Marc and Bentley just got back from checking out Marc’s headquarters at the Pont Neuf and Marc’s very nervous because one of the new hot designers is a teenage drag queen who gets his inspiration from a Chihuahua named Hector.

  “I was trapped in a conversation with a Belgian iconoclast and Mr. Jacobs here saved me,” Bentley says, waving a fly away.

  Marc bows and then kisses Jamie on the cheek, nonchalantly nods my way and says, “Hey, Victor.”

  “Jesus, it’s freezing in here,” Bentley says, his breath steaming, and then, eyeing me, adds, “You’re looking tired, Victor. Gorgeous but tired.”

  “I’m cool, I’m cool,” I say evenly. “Everything’s cool.”

  “Here—you forgot this.” Bobby hands Bentley the Prada backpack while Marc charms Jamie by making goofy faces behind Bentley’s back, causing even Bobby to crack half a smile.

  “Why didn’t you check it for me?” Bentley whines. “Jesus, Bobby.”

  “I didn’t know I was going to stay.” Bobby shrugs, staring at me.

  After I’m seated at a table with Donatella Versace, Mark Vanderloo, Katrine Boorman, Azzedine Alaïa, Franca Sozzani and the Belgian iconoclast and we’ve all laughed at other people’s expense and smoked dozens of cigarettes and waiters have cleared away plates of food that were barely looked at let alone touched and all of us have whispered secret things to the person on our left, Jamie walks by the table with a joint and asks for a light from Donatella, who’s sitting next to me, and Jamie—while pretending to talk to Donatella, who’s talking to Franca—tells me that Bobby is leaving for Beirut tomorrow and then he’s traveling on to Baghdad and Dublin, where he’s meeting with a member of a Virginia paramilitary group, and he’ll be back in five days. I’m listening intently as she says this and she’s encouraging me to laugh gaily and she relays this information in such a way that if you were across the room—as Bobby is now—you would assume she was telling Donatella how terrific Victor looks or contemplating aloud how fabulous her life turned out and Jamie takes just one hit off the joint before leaving it for the rest of the table to smoke and my foot has fallen asleep, and limping away, trying to follow her, I bump into slow-moving silhouettes and shadows and I notice Bentley making a dashing exit with the Prada backpack and then the rock group Autour de Lucie starts tuning up, about to perform their first song, a cover of the Who’s “Substitute.”

  35

  ABBA’s “Voulez-Vous” blasts out over the sound track and in front of Les Bains a white Range Rover waits and in the front passenger seat the director from another film crew is going over tonight’s sequence while in back various assistants staring intently ahead communicate on wireless headphones with the second unit, which has already set up at the designated site. With the Prada backpack slung over his shoulder Bentley hops into the Range Rover as it pulls away, followed by a black Citroën, toward the Boulevard Saint-Germain. Café Flore has been canvassed all week and a detailed description of its layout yielded the best table to leave the Prada backpack at. Bentley studies the following scene on two pieces of fax paper, memorizes his lines.

  The cab drops Bentley off a block away from Café Flore and he walks quickly, purposefully, over to that outside table just off the sidewalk where Brad, the actor playing the NYU film student Bentley picked up at La Luna last week, is sitting with two friends—Seattle waif boys who attended Camden with Brad—and they’re all stylishly chewing gum and smoking Marlboros, slouching in their seats with perfect hair, and an empty Starbucks cup sits in the middle of the table and by Brad’s feet is a Gap bag filled with newly bought T-shirts. “Ooh, let’s play dress-up,” Brad says when he sees Bentley maneuvering toward the table in his Versace tuxedo.

  Café Flore is packed, shimmering, every table filled. Bentley notices this with a grim satisfaction but Bentley feels lost. He’s still haunted by the movie Grease and obsessed with legs that he always felt were too skinny though no one else did and it never hampered his modeling career and he’s still not over a boy he met at a Styx concert in 1979 in a stadium somewhere in the Midwest, outside a town he has not been back to since he left it at eighteen, and that boy’s name was Cal, who pretended to be straight even though he initially fell for Bentley’s looks but Cal knew Bentley was emotionally crippled and the fact that Bentley didn’t believe in heaven didn’t make him more endearing so Cal drifted off and inevitably became head of programming at HBO for a year or two. Bentley sits down, already miked, in a crimson-and-forest-green chair and lights a cigarette. Next to them Japanese tourists study maps, occasionally snap photos. This is the establishing shot.

  “Hey Bentley,” Brad says. “This is Eric and Dean. They went to Camden and are both aspiring models. We’ve been comparing diets.”

  “So that’s why I thought you all looked so cool,” Bentley says, the Camden reference causing him to flash on Victor and what’s in store for him.

  “Laurent Garnier is spinning tonight at Rex,” Brad says hopefully.

  “Maybe, maybe,” Bentley says, nodding, exhaling smoke, and then, looking over at the tattoo circling Dean’s wrist, “Nice.”

  “Do you have it?” Brad asks, referring to the Ecstasy Bentley was supposed to bring to Café Flore.

  “I’m going to have to go to Basil’s flat,” Bentley says offhandedly, smiling at Dean again.

  “Oh man,” Brad groans, disappointed. “That’ll take forever.”

  “Patience—hey, you’re only twenty-three, what’s the rush?” Bentley asks, patting Brad’s thigh, giving it a tight squeeze, which relaxes Brad, causes him to look down, blush slightly. “It’ll take me twenty minutes at most,” Bentley promises, bending the cigarette into an ashtray. He stands up.

  “How do I know you’ll come back?” Brad asks, looking up at him.

  “I’ll leave this,” Bentley says, hefting the Prada bag into Brad’s lap. “Just hold on to it.”

  “Will you please hurry?” Brad says, grinning. “We’re in dire need of stimulants.”

  “You look just like Jon Bon Jovi,” Bentley tells him.

  “So I’ve been told.” Brad smiles proudly.

  “That’s what makes you so cool.”

  “Where’s that ABBA coming from?” Dean asks, twisting around in his chair.

  “I’ll be back,” Bentley says, brushing dots of confetti off Brad’s shoulder. “I’ll be back.” The Arnold Schwarzenegger impersonation doesn’t work a second time and Bentley, who actually doesn’t think Brad is half bad, silently cringes.

  “What’s that?” Bentley asks, havi
ng noticed the crude drawing of what looks like a leaf and a number Brad is doodling on a napkin.

  “A design for a tattoo I want to get.”

  “Why the number four?” Bentley asks, squinting.

  “It’s my favorite number.”

  “I think it’s nice you have one.”

  “And see?” Brad asks. “That’s a leaf.”

  But it’s time for Bentley to go, there are cues, signals given across the boulevard, emanating from various cars and vans, strategically parked, cameras whirring.

  “You’re gorgeous, baby,” Brad says, kissing Bentley lightly on the mouth.

  “Don’t lose that,” Bentley says, pointing at the Prada bag.

  “I’ll hold on to it, don’t worry, just get the stuff,” Brad says impatiently, urging Bentley to go, tightly clutching the Prada bag.

  Bentley walks away, disappearing into the crowd wandering the sidewalk tonight. “He has the coolest apartment” is the last thing Bentley ever hears Brad say.

  After walking a block Bentley cuts across Boulevard Saint-Germain and hops into the black Citroën waiting at the curb, and as he smiles a shadow crosses his face.

  A telephoto lens slowly moves in on the Prada backpack sitting on Brad’s lap.

  The force of the first explosion propels Brad into the air. A leg is blown off from the thigh down and a ten-inch hole is ripped open in his abdomen and his mangled body ends up lying in the curb on Boulevard Saint-Germain, splashing around in its own blood, writhing into its death throes. The second bomb in the Prada backpack is now activated.

  Dean and Eric, both spattered with Brad’s flesh and bleeding profusely from their own wounds, manage to stumble over to where Brad has been thrown, screaming blindly for help, and then, seconds later, the other blast occurs.

  This bomb is much stronger than the first and the damage it causes is more widespread, creating a crater thirty feet wide in front of Café Flore.

  Two passing taxis are knocked over, simultaneously bursting into flame.

  What’s left of Brad’s corpse is hurled through a giant Calvin Klein poster on a scaffolding across the street, splattering it with blood, viscera, bone.