Bobby glides in. I look up solemnly from whatever it is I’m doing. “You look nice,” he says.
I soften, smile weakly.
“What are you drinking?” he asks.
I have to look at the color of the drink before answering, “A Cosmopolitan.”
“Can I have a sip?”
“Sure.” I hand him the martini glass.
Bobby takes a sip, brightens up and smiles. “Great Cosmo, dude.”
A very long pause while I wait for him to hand the drink back. “I … appreciate the compliment.”
“Listen, Victor,” Bobby starts, kneeling down in front of me.
I tense up, cross my legs, the copy of Le Figaro slipping to the terrazzo floor.
“I appreciate you watching Jamie and—”
“Hey man, I—”
“—I just wanted to let you know that—”
“Hey man, I—”
“Hey, shhh, chill out.” He breathes in, stares intently up at me. “Listen, if I chastise you at times, if I seem to”—he pauses effectively—“warn you a little too harshly about where your place is in all of this, it’s just to keep you on your feet.” He pauses again, holding direct eye contact. “I really trust you, Victor.” Another pause. “Really.”
A long pause, this one on my part. “What’s going to happen, Bobby?” I ask.
“You’ll be prepped,” Bobby says. “You’ll be told what you need to know. You’ll be given just the right amount of infor—”
Upstairs someone slams a door and Tammy cries out and then it’s silent. Someone stomps down a hallway, cursing. From inside Tammy’s room Prodigy starts blasting out. Bobby flinches, then sighs. “That, however, is getting out of hand.”
“What’s the story?” I ask slowly.
“Tammy’s conducting an affair that is important to us but shouldn’t mean anything to Bruce.” Bobby sighs, still on his haunches in front of me. “But it does. And that is proving to be a problem. Bruce needs to get over it. Quickly.”
“What is”—I start, breathe in—“the problem?”
“The problem …” Bobby stares at me sternly. Finally a smile. “The problem really doesn’t concern you. The problem will be resolved soon enough.”
“Uh-huh, uh-huh,” I’m saying, trying to sip the drink.
“Are you okay, Victor?” Bobby asks.
“As well as … can be”—I gulp—“expected.”
“I actually think you’re better than that,” Bobby says, standing up.
“Meaning what?” I ask, genuinely interested.
“Meaning that I think you’ve adapted well.”
A long pause before I’m able to whisper, “Thank you.”
Bruce walks down the circular staircase wearing a black Prada suit and a bright-orange turtleneck, holding a guitar and a bottle of Volvic water. Ignoring both of us, he flops down in a corner of the room and starts strumming chords before settling again on the Bread song “It Don’t Matter to Me,” and the entire crew is silent, waiting. Bobby studies Bruce for a long time before turning back to me.
“Look,” Bobby says. “I understand where you’re coming from, Victor. We plant bombs. The government disappears suspects.”
“Uh-huh.”
“The CIA has more blood soaked into its hands than the PLO and the IRA combined.” Bobby walks over to a window, peels back a dark, lacy curtain and stares out at the other crew milling about on the street, just silhouettes whispering into walkie-talkies, movement in the mist, more waiting. “The government is an enemy.” Bobby turns to face me. “My god, you of all people should know that, Victor.”
“But Bobby, I’m not … political,” I blurt out vaguely.
“Everyone is, Victor,” Bobby says, turning away again. “It’s something you can’t help.”
My only response is to gulp down the rest of the Cosmopolitan.
“You need to get your worldview straightened out,” Bobby’s telling me. “You need to get your information about the world straightened out.”
“We’re killing civilians,” I whisper.
“Twenty-five thousand homicides were committed in our country last year, Victor.”
“But … I didn’t commit any of them, Bobby.”
Bobby smiles patiently, making his way back to where I’m sitting. I look up at him, hopefully.
“Is it so much better to be uninvolved, Victor?”
“Yes,” I whisper. “I think it is.”
“Everyone’s involved,” he whispers back. “That’s something you need to know.”
“I’m just, man, I’m just, man, I’m just—”
“Victor—”
“—man, having a hard time having to, like, justify this and …” I stare at him pleadingly.
“I don’t think you have to justify anything, man.”
“Bobby, I’m an … American, y’know?”
“Hey Victor,” Bobby says, staring down at me. “So am I.”
“Why me, Bobby?” I ask. “Why do you trust me?”
“Because you think the Gaza Strip is a particularly lascivious move an erotic dancer makes,” Bobby says. “Because you think the PLO recorded the singles ‘Don’t Bring Me Down’ and ‘Evil Woman.’”
Silence until the phone rings. Bobby picks up. Bruce stops playing the guitar. It’s the film crew from outside and they’re ready. Bobby tells them we’ll be right out. The film crew inside is already packing it in. The director, obviously satisfied, confers with Bobby, who keeps nodding while staring over at Bruce. On cue Tammy, Bentley and Jamie walk down the circular spiral staircase, and outside the film crew shoots us three times walking from the front door to the black Citroën, the six of us laughing, Bentley leading the way, Jamie and Bobby holding on to each other “playfully,” Bruce and I flanking Tammy and she’s clasping our hands, looking at each of us happily, because in the movie the crew outside is shooting I’m supposed to be in love with her. Jamie has to take a black Mercedes to Natacha because she’s wearing a dress that cost $30,000.
And at Natacha MTV’s filming a party upstairs where the girls are all wasted and beautiful and the guys are looking their hunkiest and everyone’s wearing sunglasses and waiting for assistants to light their cigarettes and there’s another party downstairs where Lucien Pellat-Finet is hanging out with the hat designer Christian Liagré and Andre Walker shows up on the arm of Claudia Schiffer who’s wearing a feathered jumpsuit and has a red pageboy and Galliano’s wearing a little black trilby hat and Christian Louboutin plays “Je T’Aime” on the piano with Stephanie Marais by his side singing the Jane Birkin part and we’re receiving fans at the table we’re slouched at, people flocking around us, whispering things, the prerequisite number of oohs and aahs, caviar sitting untouched on silver plates in front of us and it’s all really youthquakey and the mood is light until Ralph and Ricky Lauren show up and tonight’s theme is the unbearable lightness of being and everything is ubiquitous, the smell of shit rising up faintly from somewhere and floating all over the room.
“Victor,” Bobby warns, after someone’s handed me a packet of cocaine, reminding me of my assignment tomorrow. “And hey Bentley, pay attention.”
Bentley’s glassy-eyed from spending most of the day in a tanning bed and he’s spacing out on good-looking teenage guys in muscle Ts. My foot has fallen asleep, the tingling moving slowly up my leg, my eyes glancing over at my name on tonight’s invite. Photographers are taking pictures of our table. Tammy gazes away, her mouth caked with Urban Decay lipstick.
“He’s madly in love with that busboy.” Jamie smiles, lighting a cigarette.
We all turn our heads.
“I read an article about good-looking busboys in Time magazine.” Bentley shrugs. “What can I say? I’m easily influenced.”
“We’re not going ahead with the Venice project,” Bobby says loudly, over the din of the party.
“Harry’s Bar?” Bruce asks, turning away from Tammy.
“No.” Bobby shakes his head wh
ile waving to someone across the room.
Idly, without asking, I realize this means Harry’s Bar will not be blown up.
In the darkness downstairs at Natacha an MTV camera crew interrupts Bobby’s discussion of something called the “Band on the Run” project. A VJ begs Bobby and Jamie and Bentley to move closer together so the camera can get all three of them in the frame. Happily, they comply.
“It’s about attitude as lifestyle,” Jamie’s saying.
“You’re starting to sound like a Calvin Klein ad, baby, and I don’t like it,” Bobby growls.
Jamie waves playfully at the camera until Bobby’s asked about his involvement with Amnesty International. I turn away, notice Dennis Rodman striding confidently around the room in a loincloth, a giant pair of wings and a diamond nose ring. When I turn back to the table the VJ is asking Bentley how he likes Paris.
“I love everything but the Americans,” Bentley yawns, being vaguely entertaining. “Americans are notoriously inept at foreign languages. My idea of tedium? Listening to some nitwit from Wisconsin try and order a glass of ice at Deux Magots.”
From behind me I hear the segment director say to someone, “We’re not running that.”
“You should let people proceed at their own pace, Bentley,” Jamie says gently, leaning in, plucking an unlit cigarette from his hand. “Don’t have a tizzy.”
“What are you all wearing?” the VJ asks, lights and a camera swinging around to the rest of us. “Just go with it.”
It’s freezing in Natacha, everyone’s breath is steaming and we’re waving away flies, the floor littered with piles of confetti, and the smell of shit is even more pervasive after I do a couple of hits from the packet of coke that I reluctantly hand back to Bentley. Markus Schenkenberg, who thinks he’s my friend but who is not, pulls a chair up next to mine, another photo op, another black snakeskin jacket to show off, another chance for him to tell me, “We’re not infallible, Victuh.”
“Is that on the record or off the record?”
Markus yawns as Beatrice Dalle catwalks by, then glances back over at me.
“He’s a terrorist,” I tell Markus, motioning to Bobby.
“No,” Markus says, shaking his head. “He doesn’t look like a terrorist. He’s way too gorgeous.”
“Reject the hype, girlfriend,” I sigh, slouching deeper into my chair. “That guy’s a terrorist.”
“No,” Markus says, shaking his head. “I know terrorists. That guy doesn’t look like a terrorist.”
“You’re a daredevil,” I yawn, giving him shark eye. “You’re a total renegade.”
“I’m a little out of control,” Markus admits. “I’m thinking of jamming out right now.”
“He’s the villain,” I sigh.
Someone from Camden is leaning into Jamie, a French guy named Bertrand who was Sean Bateman’s roommate, whispering something in her ear, both of them staring at me. Jamie keeps nodding until Bertrand says something that causes her to stiffen up and stop nodding and she has to push Bertrand away, her face falling apart. Bertrand glares at me while folding back into the crowd. Mario Sorrenti and David Sims materialize, surrounding Markus. Bobby starts table-hopping with Shoshanna Lonstein, a former Talking Head, the magician David Blaine and Snoopy Jones. In tears, Tammy runs away from Bruce, who has China Chow perched on his knees, and a dealer Bentley sent over named the Grand Poobah whispers “Have you been experienced?” in my ear and arrangements are made.
32
A shot of Scotch tape being applied with rubber gloves to a white metal gas canister. This shot—with the camera slowly pulling back—is intercut with one of me taking a shower, slowly soaping my chest, my legs, the camera gliding gratuitously up over my ass, water cascading down the flexing muscles in my back. Another shot of the thick metal canister sitting on a Hans Wegner ottoman. A quick montage of my character dressing—slipping on Calvin Klein boxer-jockeys, a lime-green Prada turtleneck, a Yohji Yamamoto suit with a close-up of the label for the audience’s gratification. A close-up of my face, a hand entering the frame to slip on a pair of black Ray-Bans (an instance of well-paid product placement). Another close-up: a Xanax tablet placed on my tongue, a bottle of Volvic water tilted toward my lips. A shot of the gas canister being packed into a Louis Vuitton tote bag.
An exterior shot of Hozan. A brief interior shot of me eating a late lunch and in this shot the Christian Bale guy walks past me but I don’t notice because I’m concentrating on the patrolmen walking by carrying submachine guns, because I’m distracted by the arm that has fallen asleep. Shots of me moving down Rue de Fourey toward the Seine. A shot of me on Pont Marie crossing the Ile Saint-Louis with Notre Dame looming up above me, the sky gray and overcast. Then I’m crossing the Seine onto the Left Bank. A shot of me turning right on Boulevard Saint-Germain. A shot of me descending into a métro station. This shot lingers for several seconds on a crowd of straggling tourists.
A shot of me on a train, where I’m sitting down with the Louis Vuitton tote bag. Directions: Place the bag under your seat, casually open a copy of Le Monde, furrow your brow, pretend to read, look up at the handsome teenage boy flirting with you. A shot of Victor forcing a smile, looking down, a subtle refusal, a small movement of the head, a gesture that says I’m not interested. Another shot of the boy: a shrug on his part, half a grin. I’m repeating a song lyric under my breath—when Jupiter aligns with Mars when Jupiter aligns with Mars—and since I haven’t been told what’s in the Louis Vuitton tote bag it’s easy to slip it under the seat. Later I will find out that the bomb was placed in a 35-pound gas canister along with bolts, shards of glass and assorted nails and that this is what I was carrying around in the tote bag I checked at Hozan during the lunch I had earlier this afternoon, the tote bag I carried effortlessly while strolling through the streets of Paris.
The blast will be blamed on an Algerian guerrilla or a Muslim fundamentalist or maybe the faction of an Islamic group or a splinter group of handsome Basque separatists, but all of this is dependent on the spin the head of France’s counterespionage service gives the event. I don’t control the detonator. An image from childhood: you’re on a tennis court, you’re raising a racket, Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours plays on an eight-track somewhere and it’s the beginning of summer and your mother is still alive but you know there are darker times ahead.
Fifteen minutes after I leave the train, just after 6 p.m., at the juncture of Boulevard du Montparnasse and Boulevard Saint-Michel, across the street from Closerie des Lilas, the bomb kills ten people immediately. Seven others die during the following three days, all of them from severe burns. One hundred and thirty are treated for injuries, twenty-eight of them in serious condition. Later a scene will be shot in which Bobby expresses his anger that the bomb didn’t explode underground, where the damage would have been “far greater,” instead of on the Pont Royal, which is partially in open air. It was, he stressed, supposed to go off at the Saint-Michel-Notre Dame station, along the Seine, just as the doors opened onto the platform opposite the cathedral.
Instead: a flash.
A shot of the windows on the train imploding from the force of the blast.
A shot of doors folding in half.
A shot of the train lurching forward, burning.
A shot of a scattering crowd.
Various shots of people blown apart, extras and stuntmen thrown out of the lightweight steel car and onto the tracks.
Shots of body parts—legs and arms and hands, most of them real—skidding across the platform. Shots of mutilated people lying in piles. Shots of faces blown off. Shots of shredded melting seats. Survivors stand around in the thick black smoke, coughing, bursting into tears, choking on the stench of gunpowder. A shot of the Christian Bale guy grabbing a fire extinguisher, pushing through the panicked crowd to reach the burned-out hulk of the subway car. Over the sound track Serge Gainsbourg’s “Je T’Aime” starts playing.
A montage: hundreds of police officers arriving at the area bes
ide the bridge that crosses the Seine and leads to Notre Dame. Victor walking by the Gap while someone in an oversized Tommy Hilfiger shirt Rollerblades by. Victor having a drink at a brasserie on Rue Saint-Antoine, playing with his Ray-Bans. The French premier flying to the scene in a helicopter, while Tammy and the French premier’s son—shot by the second unit—fritter away the day at Les Halles after being called away from the Louvre (a call Bruce made from a phone booth on Rue de Bassano, near the Arc de Triomphe) and they’re wearing matching sunglasses and Tammy seems happy and she makes him smile even though he’s hungover from a coke binge that went on so long he started vomiting blood. She hands him a dandelion. He blows on it, coughs from the exertion.
And then: shots of security checks carried out on roads, at borders, in various department stores. Shots of the damaged train being towed to a police laboratory. A montage of the sweeps through Muslim neighborhoods. A Koran—a prop left by the French film crew—along with computer disks disclosing plans to assassinate various officials, is found in a trash can near a housing project in Lyons and, because of a clue Bobby planted, an actor cast in the role of a young Algerian fugitive is shot to death outside a mosque.
31
Wearing an Armani suit lined with Kevlar, I usher Jamie past the metal barricades the police erected in front of the Ritz because certain Japanese diplomats are staying at the hotel this week and even with my invitation and Jamie’s appearance in the show, “for precautions” we still need to produce our passports so they can be compared with our names on lists that are scanned at three separate checkpoints by the time we get backstage. Metal detectors supply totally inadequate protection, as Jamie slips through them effortlessly.
Backstage is freezing, camcorders surrounding everyone, personal trainers are French-inhaling sloppily wrapped joints and a very mean-streaky teenager who starred in Poltergeist 5: The Leg stands, debating, by a table lined with champagne bottles. I’m vaguely listening as Jamie talks with Linda Evangelista about how neither one of them was cast in the latest blockbuster, about a sunrise in Asia, about Rupert Murdoch. Barely able to smile when Linda taps my shoulder and says, “Hey Vic, cheer up,” I down another glass of champagne, concentrating on the models rushing around us, the smell of shit again rising up everywhere, my arm and one side of my neck falling asleep.
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