We cross Canal Street, and the boxy shape of the Soho Grand distracts me. I scan its windows for the room I lived in a year ago. I spot it three floors from the roof, its curtains two-thirds down; it’s idling, clean and empty inside. I get a glimpse of Café Noir, my late-night hangout with Erik. “Fuck nostalgia,” I whisper. I turn to the screen in my cab, which is showing clips of Warren in Afghanistan. No warning, nothing. No Internet Zeus hacking my screen to protect me. I go for the Exit icon, but the driver hits the brakes, I’m suddenly thrown forward, I double-touch the screen, and Warren’s up again, playing with children in a refugee camp. I’m not trained to deal with this.
“I’ll walk,” I tell the driver, but he doesn’t hear me. “Here’s fine!” I shout.
He looks at me in the mirror and shakes his head.
“Carsick,” I say.
I walk up West Fourth to Sant Ambroeus on Perry. I get an espresso and a brioche, open their copy of the FT. I go straight for the Life & Arts section, which has Jay-Z’s picture on the cover: “Show Me What You Got, FBI.” I flip the page to a caricature of Warren, who had “Lunch with the FT.” I throw the fucking paper aside and ask for the check.
“IT’S THE NEIGHBORHOOD YOU WANT to be in,” the broker says in a thick New York accent. A cloud of perfume mixed with sweat surrounds me as I follow her through the dark corridor that apparently leads to the “one-and-a-half-bedroom” on Bank Street that she is talking up to me.
The living room is surprisingly sunny. Its bumpy white walls—nails and cables buried by dozens of sloppy paint jobs—look anaglyphic and whole, like the stone walls on a Greek island. I smile at the idea of my two villages, Trikeri and Greenwich, with comparably patched walls but little else in common.
“Does it come with roommates?” I point to a few pages of the Daily News spread on the floor, covered with rat droppings and a fresh glue trap.
“Honey, this is New York,” the broker replies. “It’s a rent-stabilized building. In this neighborhood, who cares? You’re a block from Magnolia Bakery and above Marc Jacobs. Literally!”
“Have you seen Marc Jacobs?” I mumble, walking into the half bedroom, or whatever this tiny second room is supposed to be.
“Once!” she shouts, dismissing my irony. “I was at Pastis with my girlfriends. Just five minutes from here. I’m telling you, this neighborhood . . . The unit is not available till December, but it’s worth the wait,” she adds, trying to read my reaction.
“I’m not sure I can wait that long,” I say.
“Honey, do you know what I call these apartments?”
I really don’t.
“I call them investment rentals!” she says proudly.
Erik hates the West Village. “Too pretty, too brunch, too nasal,” he used to say, in the same voice he used to express his indifference to Paris or Prague. “Overdecorated Ohio wet dreams,” he called them. I would grant him a pass on what’s wrong with Ohio and listen to him talk up São Paulo and Caracas. “Cities! Think west-west Thirties. It’s all about capacity. No bullshit West Village four-table restaurants. Got it?”
I did. That’s why I’m all about the bullshit now. The more bullshit, the more “Tatiana” the restaurant, the better. Two months of sleeping in her loft, having thrown myself into her life, and I’m still shocked by how opposite yet similar those two are, were. Erik was Erik. He was anti-everything, while Tatiana is game-all: art, money, love, fashion, MySpace, the full monty. She flaunts her background. “I got my mom’s looks and stamina, and my father’s brains and self-destruction,” she advertises. “And everything in between,” which is plenty: affairs, awards, arrests, a Braque, a UN ambassadorship, bankruptcy. There’s no discretion in her world; nothing’s off-limits. Tatiana is a superlative, the reason people like Andrea move to New York.
But look just under the surface, and you run into an Erik-Tatiana sameness. Both are always poor and procrastinating—chasing the right people, never money—but at the eleventh hour, doors magically open. They both crack down on the so-called norm with such juvenile militancy, with such terrorism, that people around them want more. Tatiana is the strongman we follow to the Blue Ribbon (her Pakistani kitchen) to talk about whatever she wants to talk about. My Erik replacement, clearly. My new stalling in living, only this time it comes in black: between the two of us we cover most conditions and pharmacopoeias. I have insomnia and sleeping pills, Tatiana has coke and bulimia. We share alcohol, but she’s also a cutter—“managed” by Paxil and Adderall—which makes her more fucked up, thus more entertaining, and makes me a selfish enabler. Do I have guilt? Sure. But I need distraction, which right now is the only way I can see surviving.
“And this is the bedroom!” The broker startles me. “Not bad for West Village.”
There’s another glue trap under a skull-stenciled window.
“Why do I see skulls everywhere?” I murmur.
“What, honey?”
Suddenly I have a premonition, an appalling hunch that Erik is changing. His new pals and hangouts . . . it is not that hard to see, really. He is going mainstream, upscale even, while I—just training, not good enough, now thrown away—grow more and more Tatiana-dependent, surrounded by drugs and Gotham glitter.
Fuck your skull, Erik! I’ll take brunch and sleaziness, Nasal Village and Marc Jacobs. “Got an application form?” I ask.
TEN HOURS LATER I’M ON a barstool in Teresa’s red-walled dressing room on Forty-Second Street. God and Justin, behind the bar, make vodka–Red Bulls. Doors open and close in this postconcert backstage gathering turned celebration. Some are sober, others drunk, a few in headphones.
Teresa wears a long knitted cardigan, sits cross-legged on a sofa, and talks with fans whom Security escorts in and presents to her in groups of four or five. “Did you like the show?” she asks the fans. “Do you know who’s over there?” She points at Tatiana.
“Tatiana!” the fans, most of them underage Latinos, correctly answer.
Two sofas away from Teresa, Tatiana is busy curling Alkis’s thick black hair. “Are you a genius like Stathis?” she asks him.
“No one is as smart as Stathis. He just needs a real job,” Alkis says, and looks my way. “What do you do?” he asks Tatiana.
“I collect gift bags,” Tatiana answers, and Alkis laughs.
Ray consumes stuff in and out of the suite, in the bathroom, while on the phone, talking to Security, to Wardrobe . . . Every few minutes he sails over to Teresa to kiss her, but his jaw clasps from cheap cocaine or something, and she’s standoffish.
“Do you want a drink?” Tatiana turns and asks Alkis as she walks to the bar.
“Sure,” Alkis says, and stares at Teresa, who is signing autographs.
Justin offers Tatiana a vodka-Bull. She takes a sip and makes a sour face. “If you give my mom’s boyfriend your stuff, I’m gonna fucking kill you,” she tells Justin, but he shakes a glass with ice and vodka violently, pretending he can’t hear her.
“Tell him!” Tatiana orders me.
“Justin, don’t give her mom’s boyfriend your stuff,” I repeat, but I can’t keep a straight face.
“Don’t laugh! Don’t laugh!” she tells me, soberly. “You know that Ray has a coke problem.”
“Right,” I say, and do laugh. She can be protecting or projecting, or just desperate to be part of her mother’s life—envying her for Ray, or not. She’s an addict; she can say anything.
A media mogul walks into the dressing room with his wife, a Teresa lookalike, the Asian version, and three bodyguards. The suite’s main door closes behind them, and immediately things slow down as the big fish cuts across the room. Teresa stands up, and the couple kiss her. Then the three of them talk quietly.
“. . . I would close my eyes to get lost in your singing . . . but then I had to open them because I wanted to look at you . . .” I overhear the seventy-year-old billionaire sa
ying while his wife rests her head on his shoulder.
“So don’t wanna be famous,” Tatiana whispers to me while staring at them.
“You want to stay half-famous then?” I say, and she gives me a fuck-off look.
Teresa points to Tatiana. “She’s my passion,” she tells the couple.
“No, performing is your passion!” Tatiana yells back to her mother, throwing the suite’s temperature to an evening low.
Teresa gazes stoically at her daughter. She’s either used to this or a good actress indeed.
“When are you going back to Los Angeles?” the trophy wife asks Teresa.
“First thing in the morning. Depressed in Paris goes into production next week.”
“Where’s Kate?” Ray shouts as he bursts through the bathroom door, sniffing and spitting. It’s embarrassing to see him—his jaw is practically displaced—running into sofas in front of Teresa.
Tatiana fires Ray a look and snaps at Justin: “Fuck you. I asked you for one thing. What the hell is wrong with you?”
“We should go. Teresa needs to rest,” the trophy wife says, and the billionaire kisses Teresa again. “Call us!” The couple leave and people in headphones start running around again, but faster, like making up for lost time.
Tatiana goes back to Alkis and brushes his thigh. “Will you be my angel? Will you take me downtown?”
Alkis gets up and spreads his hands in the surrender position as Tatiana pulls him by his belt. “Call 911 . . .” he says, and they exit.
“I need a break,” Teresa tells Security. She sits back on her sofa and waves at me. “Stathis, can you come here for a second?”
I’m not sure exactly what’s going on, but I don’t feel good about this.
“Speechless,” I say, half-kneeling in front of her, leveraging all the body-language respect I can, hoping to make this as brief as possible. “I had never seen you perform live before.”
“Thank you. Now, can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“Did Ray do coke? Look me in the eyes and tell me the truth.”
I take a glimpse at Ray, who’s popping back one vodka shot after another. Is she blind? It’s comical to see how they tolerate him.
“If he did, it wasn’t with me,” I reply.
“If you’re going to be like this, you—” Teresa lashes out at him, but she suddenly chokes. “You . . .” she coughs, “. . . you should find a place to spend the night.”
Ray freezes, and sweat runs down from his hair to his cheeks. Even in this ridiculous state, he still holds the quiet innocence of a ten-year-old. “But I’ll be lonely,” says the man-child.
“One has to occasionally,” God says, wiping Ray’s forehead with a Kleenex. “Why don’t we all go to my place?”
Teresa starts to choke again, her neck veins pulse, and a redhead nears us. I take out my BlackBerry and walk cautiously toward the door. E-mail, text, and voice mail alerts remind me of the dozen people I haven’t called today, or this month, but Tatiana’s number flashes and I pick up, relieved by the distraction.
“I’m going home with Alkis,” Tatiana says over the phone before I get to speak. “Kate’s already there. Come. Just don’t bring Justin. I can’t stand him.”
“Sounds good,” I say.
“I love you,” Tatiana says in a sad voice, and hangs up.
“I’m not going anywhere with him like this,” Teresa shouts.
Ray slams his glass on the bar and walks out the door. Exiting, he pinches my back, and right then I want to hang out with him.
“I’m not packing your stuff!” Teresa cries after him.
Ten minutes later, I’m in a cab with Justin and Ray.
“Who’s that Alkis dude?” Ray asks.
“A guy Stathis used to work with,” Justin says, shifting in his seat, reaching for something in his pocket. “He’s cool.”
“Does he have a master’s like Stathis?” Ray smirks.
“I think Alkis has two, right, boss?” Justin says.
“I have two guns.” Ray winks at me.
“I’ve seen your gun, Ray,” I say, trying to make him shut up.
Ray laughs. “Does Alkis make lots of money, like you?”
“Alkis makes more,” Justin says eagerly, holding a key under Ray’s nose.
I take out my BlackBerry to wall them out, but halfway through my sister’s voice mail, the dumb cokehead next to me gets loud and I can’t hear a thing. I try to press 9—I do, really—but I press 7 instead. I have three missed calls, all from Gawel.
“Did you speak with Gawel?” I ask Justin.
“I told him I’d text him after the concert.”
“I don’t want him around,” I say.
“Why? Gawel’s down. He doesn’t care.”
“Is there anyone who’s not down with anything, Justin?” I raise my voice. “And where the hell are we going?”
“Beatrice Inn,” Ray says. “Before LA!”
“What are you going to do in LA?” Justin asks him breathlessly.
“Party all the time, party all the time, paaarty all the tiiime . . .” Ray sings.
“Really,” Justin insists.
“I’m training Teresa’s cast for her next movie,” Ray says, and offers me a bump.
I stare at the key with the white powder on its edge that he holds close to my face. I’m still new at this, I’m not like these guys, so I’m totally in control. I can go either way.
“P-U-S-S . . .” Ray spells, and I take it.
“Stathis will be in LA in a couple of weeks too,” Justin says.
“You’re kidding me,” Ray says, helping himself to a hit. “My brother . . .” He sniffs and offers me another. “Seconds, then?”
WALKING DOWN THE STEPS INTO the Beatrice Inn, I already feel a spooky vibration. Twenty-year-olds smoke on worn sofas that look as if they’ve been rotting there since a Cold War evacuation drill. After only seconds in this parlor, I know that something I’m supposed to find out will show up in this ridiculously low-ceilinged basement. I light up as Ray walks over to the Disney girl from Soho House. She throws her head back, the Andrea-Alkis way, before they kiss.
“Buying a round, boss. Wanna give me a hand?” Justin motions to the next room, and I follow him into a crowded bar that is tiled all in white, like a public bathroom.
“Put it out,” a security giant says, squeezing by me, so I lower my cigarette.
Bob Dylan is barely audible, which is both a tease and an excuse for more blow. I spot a line of people belting the wall next to the bar. At the front of the line, people fuss outside a tiny wooden door. When it opens, three come out and four go in.
“How about a trip over there?” I ask Justin, nodding to the line by the bathroom.
“Oh, you don’t need to wait in line.” Justin smiles at me. “Unless you want to cut, of course. Here.” He takes out his small plastic bag, sticks in his key, and does a bump. “These guys are bringing back New York!” Justin sniffs. Then he sticks the key back into the bag and offers it to me. I look around. People seem to know one another. There’s an easygoingness of sorts, a hip-person-gone-bad-but-keeping-it-down-to-earth vibe. I take the bump, and Justin elbows us through the crowd to the bartender.
“Two tequila shots and three vodka tonics,” Justin orders. The shots are gone at once. “Grab your drink. We’re going upstairs,” Justin yells, picking up the vodkas as they appear. “Best music in the city. We were dancing with Teresa till four the other night.”
We walk through an open coat check, where the Disney girl is pulling Ray out of his sheepskin jacket. “I remember you!” She tosses her hair back. I nod, hand Ray his drink, and debate leaving my coat, but “Like a Rolling Stone” hits me like a bullet, drumming up the coke in me, and I sprint upstairs.
People dance and sho
ut in the same low-ceilinged grime under a cheap disco ball, surrounded by red sofas and low-tech orange lights. The air is thick, suffocating, but no one seems to care. I spot a prop bar by the deejay and do one more tequila shot, and suddenly a pounding glee takes over me. It’s 2006, but I Dylan-hum like I am at my high school’s island party until a young British actress talking to Warren halts my drums. In the supernatural moment that follows, I see Erik behind him with a tennis player. My heart’s beating fast, but it needs to go faster.
“Give me your stuff,” I tell Justin.
I turn away and snort as much as I can.
“I wanna dance,” I shout to the Disney girl, who sweeps Ray and me onto the dance floor, spilling my vodka all over her cowboy shirt. Ray gets on his knees to dry her, licks her belly, and for a minute I think I have built some firewall between Erik and me. Nothing can hurt me. Then Joy Division comes on: “. . . taking different roads, / then love, love will tear us apart again . . .” The very same song that played over and over on the radio in Bequia, and my adrenaline redlines to a trance-valve that dumps everything. I look directly at Erik. He says something in Warren’s ear. Warren glares my way and smiles. “Come on,” I read his lips telling my ex, and Warren walks up to me. This is happening to someone else.
“Hi, I’m Warren,” Warren shouts in my ear. He gives me his hand.
“Stathis.” I nod.
“I’ve heard lots about you, Stathis.” He’s too close. He blocks Erik. I don’t know what to do.
“Likewise.” What the fuck am I saying?
“Oh, I have the worst reputation,” Warren yells, again closer than necessary. Our faces touch.
“That’s an Erik line,” I say.
“It is, isn’t it?” Warren laughs and pulls a few inches back. His eyes are penetrating, but they are a distraction right now. I’m near a touchdown. Then Warren turns and kisses the Disney girl. Erik’s hand, Erik’s fingers, touch my ear.
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