by Lolita Files
Her eyes were pure enigma. Big blue batshields that told him nothing at all.
She was walking away.
“Hey,” he said.
She turned around.
He was right behind her. He pulled her into his arms in a warm, comforting hug, kissed her forehead, put his mouth beside her ear.
“Whatever’s wrong, babe,” he whispered, “it’s gonna be all right. Really. And I’m here. Whenever you want to tell me what it is, even if it’s something I did, I’m here. Okay? Okay?”
“Okay.”
“I love you, Beryl,” he said. He chuckled awkwardly. “How stupid. I love you, and I don’t even know your last name.”
She looked up at him with vagueness, searching his eyes for something. What? he wondered. What the fuck was she looking for?
“It’s Unger,” she said, her voice wan, deadpan, as flat as her backside. “Messier said it at the book signing when he introduced me to the crowd.”
“Oh. I guess I wasn’t paying much attention.”
“The guy who tried to get me to take his manuscript said it, too.”
“Well, I was definitely distracted by then,” Penn said. “I was too concerned with making sure you were okay.”
“It’s on my prescription bottles.”
“So it is,” he said. “Why are you hammering me on this? I wasn’t looking at your last name when I found those bottles. I wanted to know what was wrong with you. So sue me. I’m an inattentive clod.”
He wiped the tears from her face.
“Sweet baby.”
“I’ve got to go.”
She pried herself free and rushed to the living room and the front door.
“I love you, Beryl.”
It was a quiet, unthreatening remark. Nothing oppressive to the left or the right. It was just…there. Hanging above her, a sword of confusion.
She stopped, just for a second, her thin shoulders squared as though bracing for attack.
Then the door was open, and she was through it, and, just like that, she was gone.
Penn sat at the foot of the bed, furious, wondering what could have happened to make his perfect plan come so undone.
Something nagged at him. A feeling. No. She wouldn’t have gone there. Not just yet.
He leaned down toward the drawer, the one in the lower right quadrant of the dresser. Drawer number nine.
He pulled it open.
It was empty.
His masterpiece was gone.
He was drinking Grey Goose, cold, straight from the freezer, straight from the bottle. He was sitting in bed, wondering what to do now.
Plan B was screwed and there was no Plan C. She’d been nuts enough, quirky to the extreme, so absent of self-control that she’d raided his drawers and found the manuscript already. And she knew he was a writer, had assumed he was that commonest of things—another hustler trying to peddle his wares.
It wasn’t supposed to go down like this. She was supposed to go through the philosophy books first, ask questions about those. Then she was to find his dissertation on Wagner and Gesamtkunstwerk, the one on top of the TV in his bedroom, hiding right in plain sight. She was supposed to see it, get a feel for how he thought. That would lead to a conversation about product branding, which would, in turn, lead him to discuss his views on himself as the consummate brand.
And then the book. In due time.
Not to-fucking-day.
The loon had gone straight for his jugular, ripped it out, and flown back to her loony roost, leaving him bleeding in the wind. With no recourse. No real one, anyway.
He chugged back the liquor.
He was fucked.
She’d taken the manuscript to let him know she knew, the cruel, bony bitch. She hadn’t said a word, not one solitary word. She’d just welled up and gone all foolish on him, and then she’d split.
She’d played the player. She’d beaten the game.
He knocked back a third of the vodka in one gulp.
“Fuck it,” he said.
Fuck it, indeed. What to do next? Next. There was no next. Nothing but drunkenness and derailed opportunity. His party was over. In less than eighteen hours…
…eighteen…. eight.
8.
Bungalow 8.
Wait.
There was a party. A party with rich people. Diamonds. And cash. Aurora Kash cash. And probably lots of others with equally deep pockets. And a very, very popular author. A pretty author. Sweet, pretty chock-o-latte, almost as dreamy as that dreamiest of dreams, Diva Jessye.
Why not? he figured. What the hell did he have to lose? The Beryl plan was already shot.
He took another swig.
Enter Plan C.
Gregor Balzac
…awakened with a start. His head was throbbing and he couldn’t see. The whole of him was hurting. He tried to move, but his flesh was so tight, so constricted, it defied anything beyond the horror of pain.
“Get up, man. We’re gonna go shoot some hoops.”
It was Neil at the door, inconsiderate as usual, already on his way in without invitation.
“What the—”
The door slammed and there was a rush of feet in the other direction. Neil was on the other side, shrieking.
“Pete! Pete! Come here, man! You gotta see this!”
Pete was their other roommate, the third man in the shared space that was their rented house in Van Nuys, a town on the early side, the southern side, of the San Fernando Valley, that vast bowl of suburban sprawl just over the hill from Los Angeles proper.
“What’s up? What’s all the screaming about?”
All one had to do was listen to Pete’s voice and they’d have the Cliff’s Notes to the man. He spoke with a lazy drag, the words reluctant boulders hauled out by ropes. His languor was a depressing infection. Just hearing him was enough to drain the energy from a room.
The two of them were just outside Gregor’s door. There was a shuffling of feet, huddled voices, Neil’s high, Pete’s thick, low, and slow, and then the knob was turning again, one creak at a time. The sound made the throbbing in Gregor’s head grow worse. He feared an aneurysm was imminent. He wanted to shout at them to either go away or come on in at once, but he couldn’t get the words out.
He didn’t have a mouth.
“Look at that,” Neil whispered, both men now inside the room.
“It’s Gregor.”
“That’s not Gregor,” Pete said, his voice higher, words coming faster than even he realized they could. He was smoking a joint. The fumes aggravated Gregor’s already monstrous pain.
“It is him. It’s got on his shirt.”
“My God. It does.”
The pulsing in Gregor’s temples was so intense, he was crying. He could feel the leaking tears ooze thickly down his face. He needed a doctor, a hot rag, some Vicodin.
He wanted to tell them to call for help, but he was trapped inside himself. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t see. All he could do was feel and hear and ooze thick sticky tears.
“This is unfuckingbelievable,” Neil said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“I have,” said Pete, exhaling more fumes. “He’s a big fucking dick.”
Beryl’s mouth was open, had been open for more than an hour.
She was deep into Untitled and it was good, damn good, even though she’d had no plans to read the thing ever, had flung it across the living room when she came home and cried for the good side of three hours until she’d run out of pity for herself and had been hit with the shits.
Compliments of the Defibrillator and an empty, stressed stomach.
She was sitting on the toilet, manuscript on the floor. She hadn’t checked phone messages or e-mails or even read the day’s papers. She’d left them at Penn’s place anyway, and she didn’t have any desire to go back out to get new ones. She never saw the write-up about her in Page Six. She was too caught up.
This story—this ridiculous story with no name—
it was full of sadness and wit and a thousand natural shocks, and prurience and pornography and pussies and penises, and actors and models and freaks and greed and, of all things, Kafka. It was Kafka Redone. Penn had taken the man’s masterpiece of classic literature, The Metamorphosis, and updated it, set it in modern times in the most unlikeliest of places—the San Fernando Valley, the porn capital of the world—and instead of making the main character wake up as a giant cockroach, he’d awakened as…
A giant prick.
A prick named Gregor Balzac.
It was crass. It was vulgar.
It was absolute genius.
II.
consequences
Writers and whores. I see no difference.
—Salman Rushdie
Coke would
…never go out of style.
People could talk all they wanted about designer drugs, heroin, and crystal meth, but the powdery stuff—blow, snow, white girl, yeyo, toot, whatever one’s term of fancy—it was stalwart, as reliable as the sunrise. It had stood the test of much, much time. Nations had been founded on it, while others had become war torn over the stuff. It was the bread of life, both the giver and taker of dreams. Cut just right, it could deliver a blast of I-don’t-give-a-fuck-inducing numbness that was as liberating as a divorce decree.
Snuffed up in the right dose at a party, and it was on.
Snuffed up in the wrong dose, and the party was over.
Cocaine had gotten a bad rap in the nineties. Almost overnight, it had gone from being the rock star of narcotics to a shameful leper, much the way cigarettes were falling from grace. It was generally seen as an uncool habit for uncool people, even though the powerful and successful continued to do it on the sneak. For a moment, even heroin had become chic and crack wasn’t as whack, yet cocaine was the dirty whore with a dirty past. But there was a new generation of Hollywood hipsters, musicians, and celebutantes who were unabashed about letting the world peek into their sexual antics and recreational drug choices. Rappers and rockers alike bragged in interviews and videos about how much they loved weed, blow, and group sex, and piles of white stuff were once again making appearances on the mirrored tables and plates of the better house parties, alongside big fat blunts and rounds of X. People were once more dipping into their little vials of toot with their tiny silver spoons. “It” girls were photographed with insouciant traces of powder around the edges of their noses. Yeyo had been relegated to the bastard position behind Ecstasy and other amphetamine-and methamphetamine-based designer drugs for nearly a decade, but now it was stepping back into the spotlight to regain its rightful, time-weathering position.
Cocaine was, once again, the king of the room.
“Cooooooooooooke…is a many-splendored thing.”
Sharlyn was singing as she dip-dip-dove her schnoz into a fluffy white minimound of the stuff in a folded piece of plain white paper she’d taken from her purse. She didn’t snort often. Miles didn’t know she did it at all. He’d never seen that side of her and would disapprove if he did, same as he frowned on the cursing.
Fuck Miles, she thought.
Diamond and Aurora didn’t know, either. At least, they never let on that they did. No one had ever seen her do it. Well, practically no one.
There was a knock on the door of her stall.
“Shar.”
It was her friend Tina, who was also her stylist. Tina was the one who’d hooked her up with the supplier of this most primo cocaine, a guy called Titty. Really. Titty Mebane. Miles didn’t like Tina. Natch.
“She’s too much of a free spirit,” he said, “and she’s always cursing. She’s good with clothes, but there’s something rather seedy about her.”
Fuck Miles.
Shar opened the door and let Tina in.
“All I want is a little,” Tina said, scooping a teensy bit with the glittery-blue acrylic nail of her pinky. She snuffed it up. “Yum.”
“I didn’t know you were coming,” Shar said, wiping her nose.
“I heard there might be cute boys here.”
“But you’ve had all the cute boys.”
“Not nearly enough,” Tina replied.
Sharlyn smoothed the front of her low-rise Frankie B.s and opened the stall door. She walked out into the always packed bathroom and squeezed her way over to the mirror. Tina followed her.
“That’s a cute top. Did I pick that out for you?”
“No, I got it today. I wanted something that made me feel good.”
“That oughta do the trick. Are your tits warm enough?”
“You’re such a whore.”
They both laughed and made their way out of the bathroom.
Bungalow 8 was one of, if not the, most private nightspots in the city. Located in West Chelsea, it was the spawn of that entrepreneurial maven of club savvy, Amy Sacco, who also owned Cabana at the Maritime Hotel and the popular bar Lot 61. Lot 61 was a fun, funky, super-cool lounge, with exquisite food, drinks strong enough to choke an ox, and damn good deejays playing damn good music. Over time, it had become less a gathering of the who’s who of the celebrity world and ultrahip scenesters, and was now more bridge-and-tunnel, full of non-Manhattanites and regular folks trying to flex as though they were actual denizens of the city. Imposter was written all over them, but no one gave a fuck. People could get loose and have a good time. If one didn’t mind hobnobbing with the hoi polloi, Lot 61 was a great place to be.
For those who wanted to leave the unwashed masses behind, Bungalow 8 was the antidote. Getting inside was a feat akin to winning a hundred-million-dollar lottery, although rumors (urban legends, perhaps?) were beginning to circulate of superattractive nobodies getting in on less-challenging Monday nights, the apparent Achilles’ heel of the doorkeeper’s week. There was a No Vacancy sign flashing in the window, lest anyone got the idea that they might have a chance at entry. Modeled after the glamour and style of the famous lair to the stars, Bungalow 8 at the Beverly Hills Hotel, this Bungalow 8 was an intimate setting filled with potted palms, murals, lots of big furniture, and skylights, all mixed with a tropical poolside theme. The place brought to mind images of everything from old Hollywood to something out of Brian De Palma’s Scarface. One would not have been surprised to see Tony Montana and his “liddle fren” burst into the room at any moment. (Big-time Tony, of course, after he became a major drug lord; the doorman would have never even made eye contact with Mariel-boat-lift Tony.) There was a concierge and a nearby helipad for the truly important who needed to lift off at a moment’s notice. Bungalow 8 put the “clu” in exclusive, and those who didn’t have a clue and insisted on trying to pry their way in were doomed to doing the walk of shame, back, back, back to the nobody worlds from whence they came, back to the tar pits and asphalt of the cruel city, back with the rest of the non–Amex Black Card–wielding, no-helicopter-having human dreck.
There would be no unwashed masses in Bungalow 8.
It was strictly the playground of the unwashed elite.
Penn was standing a few feet down the block, calculating his move. A crowd of idiots hovered near the door, soon-to-be walk of shamers all, blocked by a bouncer whose forehead looked as though it could crush stone. These people had no chance of getting in and they knew it, but this was New York, and people liked to dream, and for some it was enough to be able to say they saw so-and-so going inside or coming out of such-and-such club. Mindless frivolity. Penn had greater things at hand, and it didn’t involve crowding around a door, begging entry. This would be a breeze. This kind of thing always was.
Sure enough, a small group of two beautiful girls and three men of assorted size and persuasion passed by him amid a cloud of cigarette smoke and laughter. Penn noticed that one of the girls was the actress Chloë Sevigny. He fell into step along with them as though he belonged and walked toward the club. Chloë and her friends realized what he was doing and welcomed him in. As they passed effortlessly through the door, Chloë turned to him and said, “You’re beautiful.”
/>
“Thank you.”
“You owe me,” said Chloë. “I’ll collect later. Not tonight.”
“Done,” he replied with a nod, and disappeared into the party.
“I want a lobster club sandwich,” Shar said.
“No you don’t. You want another Wardrobe Malfunction.”
Sharlyn burst into a profound round of giggles. She couldn’t stop herself. She kept laughing and laughing and laughing. Then she saw Diamond DeLane dancing with her husband.
“Look at them go,” Sharlyn said, growing somber. “At least she’s got her man.” Her eyes began to well up and her lip was in a pout. “Where’s Aurora?”
“I don’t know. But we need some more drinks.”
“Noooooo,” Shar whined.
Tina raised her right brow.
“All right,” Shar said, snapping out of her instant funk. “Just a couple more. Hey, I can’t feel my nose. Is it still there?”
“Oh yeah,” Tina said, pressing the tip of her client-buddy’s snout. “You definitely still have it.”
“And my cheeks. What about my cheeks?”
“Cheeks are in effect.”
Sharlyn went into her tiny purse and pulled out a compact. She still had her cheeks, even though she couldn’t feel them. And there it was. Her perfect brown nose. Not too wide and Negroid, but not so narrow that it looked retouched, which it wasn’t.
“Miles loves my nose.”
“Of course he does,” Tina concurred in a deadpan voice.
“What?” Shar said, snapping the compact shut. “Are you saying he doesn’t?”
“I’m saying you need another drink.”
“He loves my nose. He loves everything about me. And I love him.”
“Of course you do. Now let’s have another drink.”
Tina shined her pearly whites at Shar. The diamond stud in her left front tooth twinkled in the light. Shar stared at the sparkling jewel, cocking her head to the side.
“Did that hurt?” she asked.
“C’mon, Shar, you know it didn’t.”