Glamorama

Glamorama

Bret Easton Ellis

There was no time when you nor I nor these kings did not exist.

–Krishna

You make a mistake if you see what we do as merely political.

-Hitler

1

33

"Specks—specks all over the third panel, see?—no, that one—the second one up from the floor and I wanted to point this out to someone yesterday but a photo shoot intervened and Yaki Nakamari or whatever the hell the designer's name is—a master craftsman not—mistook me for someone else so I couldn't register the complaint, but, gentlemen—and ladies—there they are: specks, annoying, tiny specks, and they don't look accidental but like they were somehow done by a machine—so I don't want a lot of description, just the story, streamlined, no frills, the lowdown: who, what, where, when and don't leave out why, though I'm getting the distinct impression by the looks on your sorry faces that why won't get answered—now, come on, goddamnit, what's the story?"

Nobody around here has to wait long for someone to say something.

"Baby, George Nakashima designed this bar area," JD quietly corrects me. "Not, um, Yaki Nakamashi, I mean Yuki Nakamorti, I mean—oh shit, Peyton, get me out of this."

"Yoki Nakamuri was approved for this floor," Peyton says.

"Oh yeah?" I ask. "Approved by who?"

"Approved by, well, moi," Peyton says.

A pause. Glares targeted at Peyton and JD.

"Who the fuck is Moi?" I ask. "I have no fucking idea who this Moi is, baby."

"Victor, please," Peyton says. "I'm sure Damien went over this with you."

"Damien did, JD. Damien did, Peyton. But just tell me who Moi is, baby," I exclaim. "Because I'm, like, shvitzing."

"Moi is Peyton, Victor," JD says quietly.

"I'm Moi," Peyton says, nodding. "Moi is, um, French."

"Are you sure these specks aren't supposed to be here?" JD tentatively touches the panel. "I mean, maybe it's supposed to be, oh, I don't know, in or something?"

"Wait." I raise a hand. "You're saying these specks are in?"

"Victor—we've got a long list of things to check, baby." JD holds up the long list of things to check. "The specks will be taken care of. Someone will escort the specks out of here. There's a magician waiting downstairs."

"By tomorrow night?" I roar. "By to-mor-row night, JD?"

"It can be handled by tomorrow, no?" JD looks at Peyton, who nods.

"Around here, `tomorrow night' means anywhere from five days to a month. Jesus, does anybody notice I'm seething?"

"None of us have been exactly sedentary, Victor."

"I think the situation is simple enough: those"—I point—"are specks. Do you need someone to decipher that sentence for you, JD, or are you, y'know, okay with it?"

The "reporter" from Details stands with us. Assignment: follow me around for a week. Headline: THE MAKING OF A CLUB. Girl: push-up bra, scads of eyeliner, a Soviet sailor's cap, plastic flower jewelry, rolled-up copy of W tucked under a pale, worked-out arm. Uma Thurman if Uma Thurman was five feet two and asleep. Behind her, some guy wearing a Velcro vest over a rugby shirt and a leather windjammer follows us, camcording the scene.

"Hey baby." I inhale on a Marlboro someone's handed me. "What do you think about the specks?"

Girl reporter lowers her sunglasses. "I'm really not sure." She thinks about what position she should take.

"East Coast girls are hip," I shrug. "I really dig those styles they wear."

"I don't think I'm really part of the story," she says.

"You think any of these bozos are?" I snort. "Spare me."

From the top floor, Beau leans over the railing and calls down, "Victor—Chloe's on line ten."

Girl reporter immediately lifts the W, revealing a notepad, on which she doodles something, predictably animated for a moment.

I call up, staring intently at the specks: "Tell her I'm busy. I'm in a meeting. It's an emergency. Tell her I'm in a meeting and it's an emergency. I'll call her back after I put the fire out."

"Victor," Beau calls down. "This is the sixth time she's called today. This is the third time she's called in the last hour."

"Tell her I'll see her at Doppelganger's at ten." I kneel down, along with Peyton and JD, and run my hand along the panel, pointing out where the specks begin and end and then start up again. "Specks, man, look at these fuckers. They glow. They're glowing, JD," I whisper. "Jesus, they're everywhere." Suddenly I notice an entire new patch and yelp, gaping, "And I think they're spreading. I don't think that patch was here before? I swallow, then croak in a rush, "My mouth is incredibly dry because of this—could someone get me an Arizona diet iced tea in a bottle, not a can?"

"Didn't Damien discuss the design with you, Victor?" JD asks. "Didn't you know the existence of these specks?"

"I don't know anything, JD. Nothing, nada. Remember that. I . . . know . . . nothing. Never assume I know anything. Nada. Nothing. I know nothing, not a thing. Never—"

"I get it, I get it," JD says wearily, standing up.

"I really can't see anything, baby," Peyton says, still on the floor.

JD sighs. "Even Peyton can't see them, Victor."

"Ask the vampire to take off his fucking sunglasses," I snarl. "Spare me, man."

"I will not tolerate being called a vampire, Victor." Peyton pouts.

"What? You tolerate being sodomized but not being called Dracula in jest? Am I on the same planet? Let's move on." I wave my arm, gesturing at something invisible.

As the entire group follows me downstairs toward the third floor, the chef—Bongo from Venezuela via Vunderbahr, Moonclub, Paddy-O and MasaMasa—lights a cigarette and lowers his sunglasses while trying to keep up with me. "Victor, we must talk." He coughs, waves smoke away. "Please, my feet are killing me."

The group stops. "Uno momento, Bongo," I say, noticing the worried glances he's throwing Kenny Kenny, who's connected in some weird way to Glorious Foods and has yet to be informed he has nothing to do with catering tomorrow night's dinner. Peyton, JD, Bongo, Kenny Kenny, camcorder guy and Details girl wait for me to do something, and since I'm at a loss I peer over the third-floor railing. "Come on, guys. Shit, I mean I've got three more floors and five more bars to check. Please, give me some space. This is all very hard. Those specks almost made me literally sick."

"Victor, no one would deny the existence of the specks," Peyton says carefully. "But you have to place the specks within a, um, certain, well, context."

On one of the monitors lining the walls on the third floor, MTV, a commercial, Helena Christensen, "Rock the Vote."

"Beau!" I yell up. "Beau?

Beau leans over the top railing. "Chloe says she'll be at Metro CC at eleven-thirty."

"Wait, Beau—Ingrid Chavez? Has Ingrid Chavez RSVP'd?" I yell up.

"I'm checking—wait, for the dinner?"

"Yes, and I'm gritting my teeth, Beau. Check the Cs for dinner."

"Oh my god I have got to speak to you, Victor," Bongo says in an accent so thick I'm unsure of its origin, grabbing my arm. "You must let me have my time with you."

"Bongo, why don't you just get get the the hell out of here," Kenny Kenny says, his face twisted. "Here, Victor, try a crouton."

I snatch one out of his hands. "Mmm, rosemary. Delish, dude."

"It is sage, Victor. Sage."

"You you sh-sh-should go to hell," Bongo sputters. "And take that sickening crouton with you."

"Will both of you mos take a Xanax and shut the fuck up? Go bake some pastries or something. Beau—goddamnit! Speak to me!"

"Naomi Campbell, Helena Christensen, Cindy Crawford, Sheryl Crow, David Charvet, Courteney Cox, Harry Connick, Jr., Francisco Clemente, Nick Constantine, Zoe Cassavetes, Nicolas Cage, Thomas Calabro, Cristi Conway, Bob Collacello, Whitfield Crane, John Cusack, Dean Cain, Jim Courier, Roger Clemens, Russell Crowe, Tia Carrere and Helena Bonham Carter—but I'm not sure if she should be under B or C."

"Ingrid Chavez! Ingrid Chavez!" I shout up. "Has Ingrid Chavez fucking RSVP'd or not?"

"Victor, celebs and their overly attentive PR reps are complaining that your answering machine isn't working," Beau calls down. "They say it's playing thirty seconds of `Love Shack' and then only five seconds to leave a message."

"It's a simple question. Yes or No is the answer. What else could these people possibly have to say to me? It's not a difficult question: Are you coming to the dinner and the club opening or are you not? Is that hard to grasp? And you look just like Uma Thurman, baby."

"Victor, Cindy is not `these people,' Veronica Webb is not `these people,' Elaine Irwin is not `these people'—"

"Beau! How are the As shaping up? Kenny Kenny, don't pinch Bongo like that."

"All nine of them?" Beau calls down. "Carol Alt, Pedro Almodovar, Dana Ashbrook, Kevyn Aucoin, Patricia, Rosanna, David and Alexis Arquette and Andre Agassi, but no Giorgio Armani or Pamela Anderson."

"Shit." I light another cigarette, then look over at the Details girl. "Um, I mean that in a good way."

"So it's like . . . a good shit?" she asks.

"Uh-huh. Hey Beau!" I call up. "Make sure all the monitors are either on that virtual-reality videotape or for god's sake MTV or something. I passed a screen that had VH1 on it, and some fat hick in a ten-gallon hat was weeping—"

"Will you meet Chloe at Flowers—sorry, Metro CC?" Beau yells down. "Because I'm not gonna lie anymore."

"Oh, you'll lie," I scream up. "That's all you ever do." Then, after glancing casually at the Details girl: "Ask Chloe if she's bringing Beatrice and Julie."

Silence from upstairs makes me cringe, then Beau asks, thoroughly annoyed, "Do you mean Beatrice Arthur and Julie Hagerty?"

"No," I shout, gritting my teeth. "Julie Delpy and Beatrice Dalle. Spare me. Just do it, Beau."

"Beatrice Dalle's shooting that Ridley Scott—"

"The speck thing has really gotten to me. You know why?" I ask the Details girl.

"Because there were ... a lot?"

"Nope. Because I'm a perfectionist, baby. And you can write that down. In fact I'll wait a minute while you do so." Suddenly I rush back to the panel beneath the bar, everyone rushing back with me up the stairs, and I'm wailing, "Specks! Holy Christ! Help me, somebody, please? I mean everyone's acting like there's a question as to whether these specks are an illusion or a reality. I think they're pretty goddamn real."

"Reality is an illusion, baby," JD says soothingly. "Reality is an illusion, Victor."

No one says anything until I'm handed an ashtray, in which I stub out the cigarette I just lit.

"That's, uh, pretty heavy," I say, looking at the girl reporter. "That's pretty heavy, huh?"

She shrugs, rotates her shoulders, doodles again.

"My reaction exactly," I mutter.

"Oh, before I forget," JD says. "Jann Wenner can't make it, but he wants to send a"—JD glances at his notepad—"check anyway."

"A check? A check for what?"

"Just a"—JD glances at his pad again—"a, um, check?"

"Oh god. Beau! Beau!" I call up.

"I think people are wondering why we don't have a whatchamacallit,"

Peyton says. Then, after much finger snapping, "Oh yeah, a cause!"

"A cause?" I moan. "Oh god, I can only imagine what kind of cause you'd want. Scholarship fund for Keanu. Find Marky Mark a gay brain. Send Linda Evangelista to the rain forest so we can pounce on Kyle MacLachlan. No thank you."

"Victor, shouldn't we have a cause?" JD says. "What about global warming or the Amazon? Something. Anything."

"Passe. Passe. Passe." I stop. "Wait—Beau! Is Suzanne DePasse coming?"

"What about AIDS?"

"Passe. Passe."

"Breast cancer?"

"Oh groovy, far out," I gasp before slapping him lightly on the face. "Get serious. For who? David Barton? He's the only one with tits anymore."

"You know what I'm trying to say, Victor," JD says. "Something like Don't Bungle the Jungle or—"

"Hey, don't bungle my jungle, you little mo." I consider this. "A cause, hmm? Because we can"—I mindlessly light another cigarette—"make more money?"

"And let people have some fun," JD reminds me, scratching at a tattoo of a little muscle man on his bicep.

"Yeah, and let people have some fun." I take a drag. "I'm considering this, you know, even though the opening is in, oh, less than twenty-four hours."

"You know what, Victor?" Peyton asks slyly. I'm getting the, ah, perverse temptation, baby, to, ah—now don't get scared, promise?"

"Only if you don't tell me who you've slept with in the last week."

Wide-eyed, Peyton claps his hands together and gushes, "Keep the specks." Then, after seeing my face contort, more timidly offers, "Save . . . the specks?"

"Save the specks?" JD gasps.

"Yes, save the specks," Peyton says. "Damien wants techno, and those little fellas can definitely be construed as techno."

"We all want techno, but we want techno without specks," JD moans.

The camcorder guy zooms in on the specks, and it's very quiet until he says, yawning, "Far out."

"People people people." I lift my hands up. "Is it possible to open this club without humiliating ourselves in the process?" I start to walk away. "Because I'm beginning to think it's not possible. Comprende?"

"Victor, oh my god, please," Bongo says as I walk away.

"Victor, wait up." Kenny Kenny follows, holding out a bag of croutons.

"It's just that this is all so . . . so . . . '89?" I blurt out.

"A fine year, Victor," Peyton says, trying to keep up with me. "A triumphant year!"

I stop, pause, then turn slowly to face him. Peyton stands there looking hopefully up at me, quivering.

"Uh, Peyton, you're really whacked out, aren't you?" I ask quietly.

Shamefully, Peyton nods as if coaxed. He looks away.

"You've had a pretty tough life, right?" I ask gently.

"Victor, please." JD steps in. "Peyton was joking about the specks. We're not saving the specks. I'm with you. They're just not worth it. They die."

While lighting a gargantuan joint, camcorder guy shoots out the huge expanse of French windows, the lens staring at a view of a leafless Union Square Park, at a truck with a massive Snapple logo driving by, limousines parked at a curb. We are moving down another set of stairs, heading toward the bottom.

"Will someone please just give me one spontaneous act of goodness? Remove the specks. Bongo, go back to the kitchen. Kenny Kenny, you get a consolation prize. Peyton, make sure Kenny Kenny gets a couple of colanders and a nice flat spatula." I wave them off, glaring. We leave Kenny Kenny behind, on the verge of tears, rubbing a shaky hand over the tattoo of Casper the Friendly Ghost on his bicep. "Ciao."

"Come on, Victor. The average life span of a club is what—four weeks? By the time we close, no one's gonna notice them."

"If that's your attitude, JD, there's the door."

"Oh Victor, let's be realistic—or at least fake it. This isn't 1987 anymore."

"I'm not in a realistic mood, JD, so spare me."

Passing a pool table, I grab the 8 ball and slam-roll it into the corner pocket. The group is moving farther down into the club. We're now at the first floor and it's getting darker and Peyton introduces me to a huge black guy with wraparound sunglasses standing by the front entrance eating takeout sushi.

"Victor, this is Abdullah, but we shall call him Rocko, and he's handling all the security and he was in that TLC video directed by Matthew Ralston. That toro looks good."

"My middle name is Grand Master B."

"His middle name is Grand Master B," JD says.

"We shook hands last week in South Beach," Abdullah tells me.

"That's nice, Abdullah, but I wasn't in South Beach last week even though I'm semi-famous there." I glance over at the Details girl. "You can write that down."

"Yeah man, you were in the lobby of the Flying Dolphin, getting your photo taken," Rocko tells me. "You were surrounded by clams."

But I'm not looking at Rocko. Instead my eyes have focused on the three metal detectors that line the foyer, a giant white chandelier hanging above them, dimly twinkling.

"You did, um, know about these, right?" JD asks. A meek pause. "Damien ... wants them."

"Damien wants what?"

"Um." Peyton gestures with his arms as if the metal detectors were prizes. "These."

"Well, why don't we just throw in a baggage check-in, a couple of stewardesses and a DC-10? I mean, what in the hell are these?"

"This is security, man," Abdullah says.

"Security? Why don't you just spend the night frisking the celebrities as well?" I ask. "What? You think this is a party for felons?"

"Mickey Rourke and Johnny Depp both RSVP'd yes for dinner," Peyton whispers in my ear.

"If you'd like us to frisk the guests—" Rocko starts.

"What? I'm gonna have Donna Karan frisked? I'm gonna have Marky Mark frisked? I'm gonna have fucking Diane Von Furstenberg frisked?" I shout. "I don't think so."

"No, baby," Peyton says. "You're going to have the metal detectors so Diane Von Furstenberg and Marky Mark aren't frisked."

"Chuck Pfeiffer has a metal plate in his goddamned head! Princess Cuddles has a steel rod in her leg?" I shout.

JD tells the girl reporter, "Skiing accident in Gstaad, and don't ask me how to spell that."

"What's gonna happen when Princess Cuddles walks in through one of these things and alarms go off and buzzers and lights and — Jesus, she'll have a fucking heart attack. Does anybody really want to see Princess Cuddles have a coronary?"

"On the guest list we'll mark down that Chuck Pfeiffer has a metal plate in his head and that Princess Cuddles has a steel cod in her leg," Peyton says, mindlessly writing it down on a notepad.

"Listen, Abdullah. I just want to make sure that no one is gonna get in who we don't want in. I don't want anyone passing out invites to other clubs. I don't want some little waif mo handing Barry Diller an invite to Spermbar during dinner—got it? I don't want anyone passing out invites to other clubs."

"What other clubs?" Peyton and JD wail. "There aren't any other clubs!"

"Oh spare me," I wail back, moving across the first floor. "Jesus—you think Christian Laetner is gonna fit under one of those things?" It gets darker as we move into the back of the first floor, toward the staircase that leads to one of the dance floors located in the basement.

From the top floor, Beau calls down, "Alison Poole on line fourteen. She wants to speak to you now, Victor."

Everyone looks away as the Details girl writes something down on her little notepad. Camcorder guy whispers something and she nods, still writing. Somewhere old C + C Music Factory is playing.

"Tell her I'm out. Tell her I'm on line seven."

"She says it's very important," Beau drones on in monotone.

I pause to look at the rest of the group, everyone looking anywhere but at me. Peyton whispers something to JD, who nods curtly. "Hey, watch that!" I snap. I follow Camcorder's lens to a row of sconces he's filming and wait for Beau, who finally leans over the top-floor railing and says, "A miracle: she relented. She'll see you at six."

"Okay, folks." I suddenly turn around to face the group. "I'm calling a sidebar. Bongo, you are excused. Do not discuss your testimony with anyone. Go. JD, come over here. I need to whisper something to you. The rest of you may stand by that bar and look for specks. Camcorder man—turn that away from us. We're taking five."

I pull JD over to me and immediately he starts babbling.

"Victor, if this is about Mica not being around and us being unable to get ahold of her, please for the love of god don't bring it up now, because we can find another DJ—"

"Shut up. It's not about Mica." I pause. "But wait, where is Mica?"

"Oh god, I don't know. She DJ'd at Jackie 60 on Tuesday, then did Edward Furlong's birthday party, and now poof."

"What does that mean? What does poof mean?"

"She's disappeared. No one can find her."

"Well, shit, JD. What are we—no, no—you are gonna fix this," I tell him. "I have something else I want to talk about."

"If Kenny Kenny's going to sue us?"

"No."

"The seating chart for dinner?"

"No."

"The awfully cute magician downstairs?"

"Jesus, no." I lower my voice. "This is a more, um, personal problem. I need your advice."

"Oh, don't drag me into anything sick, Victor," JD pleads. "I just can't take being dragged into anything too sick."

"Listen . . ." I glance over at the Details girl et al., slouching against the bar. "Have you heard anything about a . . . photograph?"

"A photograph of who?" he exclaims.

"Shhh, shut up. Jesus." I look around. "Okay, even though you think Erasure is a good band, I think I can still trust you."

"They are, Victor, and—"

"Someone's got a, let's just say, incriminating photo of me and a certain young"— I cough—"young lady, and I need you to find out if it's, um, going to be printed sometime in the near future and maybe even tomorrow in one of the city's least respectable but still most widely read dailies or if by some miracle it will not and that's about it."

"I suppose you could be more vague, Victor, but I'm used to it," JD says. "Just give me twenty seconds to decode this and I'll get back to you."

"I don't have twenty seconds."

"The young lady I'm supposing—no, I'm hoping—is Chloe Byrnes, your girlfriend?"

"On second thought, take thirty seconds."

"Is this a That's Me in the Corner / That's Me in the Spotlight moment?"

"Okay, okay, let me clarify: a compromising photo of a certain happening guy with a girl who . . . and it's not like that bad or anything. Let's just say this girl attacked him at a premiere last week in Central Park and someone unbeknownst to them got a, um, photo of this and it would look . . . strange since I am the subject of this photograph . . . I have a feeling that if I make the inquiry it will be—ahem—misunderstood. . . . Need I go on?"

Suddenly Beau screams down: "Chloe will see you at nine-thirty at Doppelganger's!"

"What happened to Flowers? I mean eleven-thirty at Metro CC?" I yell back up. "What happened to ten o'clock at Cafe Tabac?"

A longish pause. "She now says nine-thirty at Bowery Bar. That's the end of it, Victor." Then silence.

"What horrible thing do you want me to do?" JD pauses. "Victor, would this photo—if published—screw up this guy's relationship with a certain young model named Chloe Byrnes and a certain volatile club owner of . . . oh, let's just say, hypothetically, this club, whose name is Damien Nutchs Ross?"

"But that isn't the problem." I pull JD closer and, surprised, he winks and bats his eyes and I have to tell him, "Don't get any ideas." I sigh, breathe in. "The problem is that a photo exists. A certain cretinous gossip columnist is going to run this photo, and if we think Princess Cuddles having a heart attack is bad . . . that's nothing." I keep looking over my shoulder, finally telling everyone, "We have to go downstairs to check the magician. Excuse us."

"But what about Matthew Broderick?" Peyton asks. "What about the salads?"

"He can have two!" I shout as I whisk JD down the long steep ramp of stairs heading into the basement, the light getting dimmer, both of us moving carefully.

JD keeps babbling. "You know I'm here for you, Victor. You know I put the stud back in star-studded. You know I've helped pack this party to the rafters with desirable celebs. You know I'll do anything, but I can't help you on this because of—"

"JD. Tomorrow in no particular order I've got a photo shoot, a runway show, an MTV interview with `House of Style,' lunch with my father, band practice. I even have to pick up my fucking tux. I'm booked. Plus this dump is opening. I—have—no—time."

"Victor, as usual I'll see what I can do." JD maneuvers down the stairs hesitantly. "Now about the magician—"

"Fuck it. Why don't we just hire some clowns on stilts and bus in an elephant or two?"

"He does card tricks. He just did Brad Pitt's birthday at Jones in L.A."

"He did?" I ask, suspicious. "Who was there?"

"Ed Limato. Mike Ovitz. Julia Ormond. Madonna. Models. A lot of lawyers and `fun' people."

It gets even colder as we near the bottom of the staircase.

"I mean," JD continues, "I think comparatively it's pretty in."

"But in is out," I explain, squinting to see where we're heading. It's so cold our breath steams, and when I touch the banister it feels like ice.

"What are you saying, Victor?"

"Out is in. Got it?"

"In is . . . not in anymore?" JD asks. "Is that it?"

I glance at him as we descend the next flight of stairs. "No, in is out. Out is in. Simple, non?"

JD blinks twice, shivering, both of us moving farther down into the darkness.

"See, out is in, JD."

"Victor, I'm really nervous as it is," he says. "Don't start with me today."

"You don't even have to think about it. Out is in. In is out."

"Wait, okay. In is out? Do I have that down so far?"

At the bottom, it is so cold that I've noticed candles don't even stay lit, they keep going out as we pass, and the TV monitors show only static. At the foot of the stairs by the bar, a magician who looks like a young German version of Antonio Banderas with a buzz cut idly shuffles a deck of cards, slump-shouldered, smoking a small joint, drinking a Diet Coke, wearing ripped jeans and a pocket T, the back-to-basics look, exaggeratedly sloppy, the rows of empty champagne glasses behind him reflecting what little light exists down here.

"Right. Out is in."

"But then what exactly is in?" JD asks, his breath steaming.

"Out is, JD."

"So . . . in is not in?"

"That's the whole p-p-point." It's so cold my biceps are covered with goose bumps.

"But then what's out? It's always in? What about specifics?"

"If you need this defined for you, maybe you're in the wrong world," I murmur.

The magician gives us the peace sign in a vague way.

"You did Brad Pitt's party?" I ask.

The magician makes a deck of cards, the stool he's sitting on, one of my slippers and a large bottle of Absolut Currant disappear, then says "Abracadabra."

"You did Brad Pitt's party?" I sigh.

JD nudges me and points up. I notice the massive red swastika painted onto the domed ceiling above us.

"I suppose we should probably get rid of that."

32

Zigzagging toward Chemical Bank by the new Gap it's a Wednesday but outside feels Mondayish and the city looks vaguely unreal, there's a sky like from October 1973 or something hanging over it and right now at 5:30 this is Manhattan as Loud Place: jackhammers, horns, sirens, breaking glass, recycling trucks, whistles, booming bass from the new Ice Cube, unwanted sound trailing behind me as I wheel my Vespa into the bank, joining the line at the automated teller, most of it made up of Orientals glaring at me as they move aside, a couple of them leaning forward, whispering to each other.

"What's the story with the moped?" some jerk asks.

"Hey, what's the story with those pants? Listen, the bike doesn't have a card, it's not taking out any cash, so chill out. Jesus."

Only one out often cash machines seems to have any cash in it, so while waiting I have to look up at my reflection in the panel of steel mirrors lining the columns above the automated tellers: high cheekbones, ivory skin, jet-black hair, semi-Asian eyes, a perfect nose, huge lips, defined jawline, ripped knees in jeans, T-shirt under a long-collar shirt, red vest, velvet jacket, and I'm slouching, Rollerblades slung over my shoulder, suddenly remembering I forgot where I'm supposed to meet Chloe tonight, and that's when the beeper goes off. It's Beau. I snap open the Panasonic EBH 70 and call him back at the club.

"I hope Bongo's not having a fit."

"It's the RSVPs, Victor. Damien's having a fit. He just called, furious—"

"Did you tell him where I was?"

"How could I do that when I don't even know where you are?" Pause. "Where are you? Damien was in a helicopter. Actually stepping out of a helicopter."

"I don't even know where I am, Beau. How's that for an answer?" The line moves up slowly. "Is he in the city?"

"No. I said he was in a helicopter. I said that he—was—in—a—heli-cop-ter."

"But where was the heli-cop-ter?"

"Damien thinks things are getting totally fucked up. We have about forty for dinner who have not RSVP'd, so our seating list might be interpreted as meaningless."

"Beau, that depends on how you define meaningless."

A long pause. "Don't tell me it means a bunch of different things, Victor. For example, here's how the O situation is shaping up: Tatum O'Neal, Chris O'Donnell, Sinead O'Connor and Conan O'Brien all yes but nothing from Todd Oldham, who I hear is being stalked and really freaking out, or Carrie Otis or Oribe—"

"Relax," I whisper. "That's because they're all doing the shows. I'll talk to Todd tomorrow—I'll see him at the show-but I mean what is going on, Beau? Conan O'Brien is coming but Todd Oldham and Carrie Otis might not? That just isn't an acceptable scenario, baby, but I'm in an automated teller right now with my Vespa and I can't really speak—hey, what are you looking at?—but I don't want Chris O'Donnell anywhere at my table for dinner. Chloe thinks he's too fucking cute and I just don't need that kind of awful shit tomorrow night."

"Uh-huh. Right, no Chris O'Donnell, okay, got that. Now, Victor, first thing tomorrow we've got to go over the big ones, the Ms and the Ss—"

"We can pull it together. Don't weep, Beau. You sound sad. It is now my turn to get some cash. I must go and—"

"Wait! Rande Gerber's in town—"

"Put him under G but not for the dinner unless he's coming with Cindy Crawford then he is invited to the dinner and you then know which consonant, baby."

"Victor, you try dealing with Cindy's publicist. You try getting an honest answer out of Antonio Sabato, Jr.'s publicist—"

I click off, finally push in my card, punch in the code (COOLGUY) and wait, thinking about the seating arrangements at tables 1 and 3, and then green words on a black screen tell me that there is no cash left in this account (a balance of minus $143) and so therefore it won't give me any money and I blew my last cash on a glass-door refrigerator because Elle Decor did a piece on my place that never ran so I slam my fist against the machine, moan "Spare me" and since it's totally useless to try this again I rustle through my pockets for a Xanax until someone pushes me away and I roll the moped back outside, bummed.

Cruising up Madison, stopping at a light in front of Barneys, and Bill Cunningham snaps my picture, yelling out, "Is that a Vespa?" and I give him thumbs-up and he's standing next to Holly, a curvy blonde who looks like Patsy Kensit, and when we smoked heroin together last week she told me she might be a lesbian, which in some circles is pretty good news, and she waves me over wearing velvet hot pants, red-and-white-striped platform boots, a silver peace symbol and she's ultrathin, on the cover of Mademoiselle this month, and after a day of doing shows at Bryant Park she's looking kind of frantic but in a cool way.

"Hey Victor!" She keeps motioning even when I've pulled the Vespa up to the curb.

"Hey Holly."

"It's Anjanette, Victor."

"Hey Anjanette, what's up pussycat? You're looking very Uma-ish. Love the outfit."

"It's retro-gone-wacko. I did six shows today. I'm exhausted, she says, signing an autograph. "I saw you at the Calvin Klein show giving Chloe moral support. Which was so cool of you."

"Baby, I wasn't at the Calvin Klein show but you're still looking very Uma-ish."

"Victor, I'm positive you were at the Calvin Klein show. I saw you in the second row next to Stephen Dorff and David Salle and Roy Liebenthal. I saw you pose for a photo on 42nd Street, then get into a black scary car."

Pause, while I consider this scenario, then: "The second fucking row? No way, baby. You haven't started your ignition yet. Will I see yon tomorrow night, baby?"

"I'm coming with Jason Priestley."

"Why aren't you coming with me? Am I the only one who thinks Jason Priestley looks like a little caterpillar?"

"Victor, that's not nice," she pouts. "What would Chloe think?"

"She thinks Jason Priestley looks like a little caterpillar too," I murmur, lost in thought. "The fucking second row?"

"That's not what I meant," Anjanette says. "What would Chloe think of—"

"Spare me, baby, but you're supergreat." I start the Vespa up again. "Take your passion and make it happen."

"I've heard you've been naughty anyway, so I'm not surprised," she says, tiredly wagging her finger at me, which Scooter, the bodyguard who looks like Marcellus from Pulp Fiction, interprets as "move closer."

"What do you mean by that, pussycat?" I ask. "What have you heard?"

Scooter whispers something, pointing at his watch, while Anjanette lights a cigarette. "There's always a car waiting. There's always a Steven Meisel photo shoot. Jesus, how do we do it, Victor? How do we survive this mess?" A gleaming black sedan rolls forward and Scooter opens the door.

"See you, baby." I hand her a French tulip I just happen to be holding and start pulling away from the curb.

"Oh Victor," she calls out, handing Scooter the French tulip. "I got the job! I got the contract."

"Great, baby. I gotta run. What job, you crazy chick?"

"Guess?."

"Matsuda? Gap?" I grin, limousines honking behind me. "Baby, listen, see you tomorrow night."

"No. Guess?."

"Baby, I already did. You're mind-tripping me."

"Guess?, Victor," she's shouting as I pull away.

"Baby, you're great," I shout back. "Call me. Leave a message. But only at the club. Peace."

"Guess?, Victor!" she calls out.

"Baby, you're a face to watch," I say, already putting a Walkman on, already on 61st. "A star of tomorrow," I call out, waving. "Let's have drinks at Monkey Bar after the shows are over on Sunday!" I'm speaking to myself now and moving toward Alison's place. Passing a newsstand by the new Gap, I notice I'm still on the cover of the current issue of YouthQuake, looking pretty cool—the headline 27 AND HIP in bold purple letters above my smiling, expressionless face, and I've just got to buy another copy, but since I don't have any cash there's no way.

31

From 72nd and Madison I called Alison's doorman, who has verified that outside her place on 80th and Park Damien's goons are not waiting in a black Jeep, so when I get there I can pull up to the entrance and roll my Vespa into the lobby, where Juan—who's a pretty decent-looking guy, about twenty-four—is hanging out in uniform. As I give him the peace sign, wheeling the moped into the elevator, Juan comes out from behind the front desk.

"Hey Victor, did you talk to Joel Wilkenfeld yet?" Juan's asking, following me. "I mean, last week you said you would and—"

"Hey baby, it's cool, Juan, it's cool," I say, inserting the key, unlocking the elevator, pressing the button for the top floor.

Juan presses another button, to keep the door open. "But man, you said he'd see me and also set up a meeting with—"

"I'm setting it up, buddy, it's cool," I stress, pressing again for the top floor. "You're the next Markus Schenkenberg. You're the white Tyson." I reach over and push his hand away.

"Hey man, I'm Hispanic—" He keeps pressing the Door Open button.

"You're the next Hispanic Markus Schenkenberg. You're the, um, Hispanic Tyson." I reach over and push his hand away again. "You're a star, man. Any day of the week."

"I just don't want this to be like an afterthought—"

"Hey man, spare me." I grin. "`Afterthought' isn't in this guy's vocabulary," I say, pointing at myself.

"Okay, man," Juan says, letting go of the Door Open button and offering a shaky thumbs-up. "I, like, trust you."

The elevator zips up to the top floor, where it opens into Alison's penthouse. I peer down the front hallway, don't see or hear the dogs, then quietly wheel the Vespa inside and lean it against a wall in the foyer next to a Vivienne Tam sofa bed.

I tiptoe silently toward the kitchen but stop when I hear the hoarse breathing of the two chows, who have been intently watching me from the other end of the hallway, quietly growling, audible only now. I turn around and offer them a weak smile.

I can barely say "Oh shit" before they both break out into major scampering and rush at their target: me.

The two chows—one chocolate, one cinnamon—leap up, baring their teeth, nipping at my knees, pawing at my calves, barking furiously.

"Alison! Alison!" I call out, trying desperately to bat them away.

Hearing her name, they both stop barking. Then they glance down the hallway to see if she's coming. After a pause, when they hear no sign of her—we're frozen in position, red chow standing on back legs, its paws in my groin, black chow down on its front paws with Gucci boot in mouth—they immediately go to work on me again, growling and basically freaking out like they always do.

"Alison!" I scream. "Jesus Christ!"

Gauging the distance from where I'm at to the kitchen door, I decide to make a run for it, and when I bolt, the chows scamper after me, yelping, biting at my ankles.

I finally make it into the kitchen and slam the door, hear both of them skidding across the marble floor into the door with two large thumps, hear them fall over, then scamper up and attack the door. Shaken, I open a Snapple, down half of it, then light a cigarette, check for bites. I hear Alison clapping her hands, and then she walks into the kitchen, naked beneath an open Aerosmith tour robe, a cell phone cradled in her neck, an unlit joint in her mouth. "Mr. Chow, Mrs. Chow, down, down, goddamnit, down."

She hurls the dogs into the pantry, pulls a handful of colored biscuits from the robe and throws them at the dogs before slamming the pantry door shut, the sounds of the dogs fighting over the biscuits cut mercifully short.

"Okay, uh-huh, right, Malcolm McLaren . . . Yeah, no, Frederic Fekkai. Yeah. Everybody's hung over, babe." She scrunches up her face. "Andrew Shue and Leonardo DiCaprio? . . . What? . . . Oh baby, no-o-o way." Alison winks at me. "You're not at a window table at Mortimer's right now. Wake up! Oh boy ... Ciao, ciao." She clicks off the cellular and carefully places the joint on the counter and says, "That was a three-way with Dr. Dre, Yasmine Bleeth and Jared Leto."

"Alison, those two little shits tried to kill me," I point out as she jumps up and wraps her legs around my waist.

"Mr. and Mrs. Chow aren't little shits, baby." She clamps her mouth onto mine as I stumble with her toward the bedroom. Once there she falls to her knees, rips open my jeans and proceeds to expertly give me head, deep-throating in an unfortunately practiced way, grabbing my ass so hard I have to pry one of her hands loose. I take a last drag off the cigarette that I'm still holding, look around for a place to stub it out, find a half-empty Snapple bottle, drop in what's left of the Marlboro, hear it hiss.

"Slow down, Alison, you're moving too fast," I'm mumbling.

She pulls my dick out of her mouth and, looking up at me, says in a low, "sexy" voice, "Urgency is my specialty, baby."

She suddenly gets up, drops the robe and lies back on the bed, spreading her legs, pushing me down onto a floor littered with random issues of WWDs, my right knee crumpling a back-page photo of Alison and Damien and Chloe and me at Naomi Campbell's birthday party, sitting in a cramped booth at Doppelganger's, and then I'm nibbling at a small tattoo on the inside of a muscular thigh and the moment my tongue touches her she starts coming—once, twice, three times. Knowing where this will not end up, I jerk off a little until I'm almost coming and then I think, Oh screw it, I don't really have time for this, so I just fake it, moaning loudly, my head between her legs, movement from my right arm giving the impression from where she lies that I'm actually doing something. The music in the background is mid-period Duran Duran. Our rendezvous spots have included the atrium at Remi, room 101 at the Paramount, the Cooper-Hewitt Museum.

I climb onto the bed and lie there, pretending to pant. "Baby, where did you learn to give head like that? Sotheby's? Oh man." I reach over for a cigarette.

"So wait. That's it?" She lights a joint, sucks in on it so deeply that half of it turns to ash. "What about you?"

"I'm happy." I yawn. "Just as long as you don't bring out that, um, leather harness and Sparky the giant butt plug."

I get off the bed and pull my jeans and Calvins up and move over to the window, where I lift a venetian blind. Down on Park, between 79th and 80th, is a black Jeep with two of Damien's goons sitting in it, reading the new issue of what looks like Interview with Drew Barrymore on the cover, and one looks like a black Woody Harrelson and the other like a white Damon Wayans.

Alison knows what I'm seeing and from the bed says, "Don't worry, I have to meet Grant Hill for a drink at Mad.61. They'll follow and then you can escape."

I flop onto the bed, flip on Nintendo, reach for the controls and start to play Super Mario Bros.

"Damien says that Julia Roberts is coming and so is Sandra Bullock," Alison says vacantly. "Laura Leighton and Halle Berry and Dalton James." She takes another hit off the joint and hands it to me. "I saw Elle Macpherson at the Anna Sui show and she says she'll be there for the dinner." She's flipping through a copy of Detour with Robert Downey, Jr., on the cover, legs spread, major crotch shot. "Oh, and so is Scott Wolf."

"Shhh, I'm playing," I tell her. "Yoshi's eaten four gold coins and he's trying to find the fifth. I need to concentrate."

"Oh my god, who gives a shit," Alison sighs. "We're dealing with a fat midget who rides a dinosaur and saves his girlfriend from a pissed-off gorilla? Victor, get serious."

"It's not his girlfriend. It's Princess Toadstool. And it's not a gorilla," I stress. "It's Lemmy Koopa of the evil Koopa clan. And baby, as usual, you're missing the point."

"Please enlighten me."

"The whole point of Super Mario Bros. is that it mirrors life."

"I'm following." She checks her nails. "God knows why."

"Kill or be killed."

"Uh-huh."

"Time is running out."

"Gotcha."

"And in the end, baby, you . . . are . . . alone."

"Right." She stands up. "Well, Victor, that really captures the spirit of our relationship, honey." She disappears into a closet bigger than the bedroom. "If you had to be interviewed by Worth magazine on the topic of Damien's Nintendo stock, you'd want to kill Yoshi too."

"I guess this is all just beyond the realm of your experience," I murmur. "Huh?"

"What are you doing tonight for dinner?" she calls out from the closet.

"Why? Where's Damien?"

"In Atlantic City. So the two of us can go out since I'm sure Chloe is tres exhausted from all dat wittle modeling she had to do today."

"I can't," I call back. "I've got to get to bed early. I'm skipping dinner. I've got to go over—oh shit—seating arrangements."

"Oh, but baby, I want to go to Nobu tonight," she whines from the closet. "I want a baby shrimp tempura roll."

"You are a baby shrimp tempura roll," I whine back.

The phone rings, the machine picks up, just new Portishead, then a beep.

"Hi, Alison, it's Chloe calling back." I roll my eyes. "Amber and Shalom and I have to do something for Fashion TV at the Royalton and then I'm having dinner with Victor at Bowery Bar at nine-thirty. I'm so so tired . . . did shows all day. Okay, I guess you're not there. Talk to you soon—oh yeah, you have a pass backstage for Todd's show tomorrow. Bye-bye." The machine clicks off.

Silence from the closet, then, low and laced with fury, "Seating arrangements? You—have—to—go—to—bed—early?"

"You can't keep me in your penthouse," I say. "I'm going back to my plow."

"You're having dinner with her?" she screams.

"Honey, I had no idea."

Alison walks out of the closet holding a Todd Oldham wraparound dress in front of her and waits for my reaction, showing it off: not-so-basic black-slash-beige, strapless, Navajo-inspired and neon quilted.

"That's a Todd Oldham, baby," I finally say.

"I'm wearing it tomorrow night." Pause. "It's an original," she whispers seductively, eyes glittering. "I'm gonna make your little girlfriend look like shit!"

Alison reaches over and slaps the controls out of my hand and turns on a Green Day video and dances over to the Vivienne Tam—designed mirror, studying herself holding the dress in it, and then completes a halfhearted swirl, looking very happy but also very stressed.

I check my nails. It's so cold in this apartment that frost accumulates on the windows. "Is it just me or am I getting chilly in here?"

Alison holds the dress up one more time, squeals maniacally and rushes back into the closet. "What did you say, baby?"

"Did you know vitamins strengthen your nails?"

"Who told you that, baby?" she calls out.

"Chloe did," I mutter, biting at a hangnail.

"That poor baby. Oh my god, she's so stupid."

"She just got back from the MTV awards. She had a nervous breakdown before it, y'know, so be reasonable."

"Ma-jor," Alison calls out. "Her smack days are behind her, I take it."

"Just be patient. She's very unstable," I say. "And yes, her smack days are behind her."

"No help from you, I'm sure."

"Hey, she got a huge amount of help from me," I say, sitting up, paying more attention now. "If it wasn't for me she might be dead, Alison."

"If it wasn't for you, pea brain, she might not have shot up the junk in the first fucking place."

"She didn't `shoot' anything," I stress. "It was a purely nasal habit." Pause, check my fingernails again. "She's just very unstable right now."

"What? She gets a blackhead and wants to kill herself?"

"Hey, who wouldn't?" I sit up a little more.

"No Vacancy. No Vacancy. No Vac—"

"Axl Rose and Prince both wrote songs about her, may I remind you."

"Yeah, `Welcome to the Jungle' and `Let's Go Crazy.'" Alison walks out of the closet wrapped in a black towel and waves me off. "I know, I know, Chloe was born to model."

"Do you think your jealousy's giving me a hard-on?"

"No, only my boyfriend does that."

"Hey, no way do I want to get it on with Damien."

"Jesus. As usual, you're so literal-minded."

"Oh god, your boyfriend's a total crook. A blowhard."

"My boyfriend is the only reason, my little himbo, that you are in business."

"That's bullshit," I shout. "I'm on the cover of YouthQuake magazine this month."

"Exactly." Alison suddenly relents and moves over to the bed and sits down next to me, gently taking my hand. "Victor, you auditioned for all three `Real World's, and MTV rejected you all three times." She pauses sincerely. "What does that tell you?"

"Yeah, but I'm one fucking phone call away from Lorne Michaels."

Alison studies my face, my hand still in hers, and smiling, she says, "Poor Victor, you should see just how handsome and dissatisfied you look right now."

"A hip combo," I mutter sullenly.

"It's nice that you think so," she says vacantly.

"Looking like some deformed schmuck and suicidal's better?" I tell her. "Christ, Alison, get your fucking priorities straightened out."

"My priorities straightened out?" she asks, stunned, letting go of my hand and placing her own to her chest. "My priorities straightened out?" She laughs like a teenager.

"Don't you understand?" I get up from the bed, lighting a cigarette, pacing. "Shit."

"Victor, tell me what you're so worried about."

"You really want to know?"

"Not really but yes." She walks over to the armoire and pulls out a coconut, which I totally take in stride.

"My fucking DJ's disappeared. That's what." I inhale so hard on the Marlboro I have to put it out. "No one knows where the hell my DJ is."

"Mica's gone?" Alison asks. "Are you sure she's not in rehab?"

"I'm not sure of anything," I mutter.

"That's for sure, baby," she says faux-soothingly, falling onto the bed, looking for something, then her voice changes and she yells, "And you lie! Why didn't you tell me you were in South Beach last weekend?"

"I wasn't in South Beach last weekend, and I wasn't at the fucking Calvin Klein show either." Finally the time has come: "Alison, we've got to talk about something—"

"Don't say it." She drops the coconut into her lap and holds up both hands, then notices the joint on her nightstand and grabs it. "I know, I know," she intones dramatically. "There is a compromising photo of you with a girl"—she bats her eyes cartoonishly—"supposedly moi, yada yada yada, that's going to fuck up your relationship with that dunce you date, but it will also"—and now, mock-sadly, lighting the joint—"fuck up the relationship with the dunce I date too. So"—she claps her hands—"rumor is it's running in either the Post, the Trib or the News tomorrow. I'm working on it. I have people all over it. This is my A-number-one priority. So don't worry"—she inhales, exhales—"that beautiful excuse for a head of yours about it." She spots what she was looking for, lost in the comforter, and grabs it: a screwdriver.

"Why, Alison? Why did you have to attack me at a movie premiere?" I wail.

"It takes two, you naughty boy."

"Not when you've knocked me unconscious and are sitting on my face."

"If I was sitting on your face no one will ever know it was you." She shrugs, gets up, grabs the coconut. "And then we'll all be saved—la la la la."

"That's not when the picture was taken, baby." I follow her into the bathroom, where she punches four holes in the coconut with the screwdriver and then leans over the Vivienne Tam-designed sink and pours the milk from the shell over her head.

"I know, I agree." She tosses the husk into a wastebasket and massages the milk into her scalp. "Damien finds out and you'll be working in a White Castle."

"And you'll be paying for your own abortions, so spare me." I raise my arms helplessly. "Why do I always have to remind you that we shouldn't be seeing each other? If this photo gets printed it'll be time for us to wake up."

"If this picture gets printed we'll just say it was a weak moment." She whips her head back and wraps her hair in a towel. "Doesn't that sound good.

"Jesus, baby, you've got people out there watching your apartment."

"I know." She beams into the mirror. "Isn't it cute?"

"Why do I always need to remind you that I'm basically still with, y'know, Chloe and you're still with Damien?"

She turns away from the mirror and leans against the sink. "If you dump me, baby, you'll be in a lot more trouble." She heads toward the closet.

"Why is that?" I ask, following her. "What do you mean, Alison?"

"Oh, let's just say rumor has it that you're looking at a new space." She pauses, holds up a pair of shoes. "And we both know that if Damien knew that you were even contemplating your own pathetic club-slash-eatery while you're currently being paid to run Damien's own pathetic club-slash-eatery, therefore insulting Damien's warped sense of loyalty, the term `you're fucked' comes vaguely to mind." She drops the shoes, leaves the closet.

"I'm not," I insist, following her. "I swear I'm not. Oh my god, who told you that?"

"Are you denying it?"

"N-no. I mean, I am denying it. I mean . . ." I stand there.

"Oh never mind." Alison drops the robe and puts on some panties. "Three o'clock tomorrow?"

"I'm swamped tomorrow, baby, so spare me," I stammer. "Now, who told you I'm looking at a new space?"

"Okay—three o'clock on Monday."

"Why three o'clock? Why Monday?"

"Damien's having his unit cleaned." She tosses on a blouse.

"His unit?"

"His"—she whispers—"extensions."

"Damien has—extensions?" I ask. "He's the grossest guy, baby. He is so evil."

She strides over to the armoire, sifts through a giant box of earrings. "Oh baby, I saw Tina Brown at 44 today at lunch and she's coming tomorrow sans Harry and so is Nick Scotti, who—I know, I know—is a has-been but just looks great."

I move slowly back toward the frost-covered window, peer past the venetian blinds at the Jeep on Park.

"I talked to Winona too. She is coming. Wait." Alison pushes two earrings into one ear, three into another, and is now pulling them out. "Is Johnny coming?"

"What?" I murmur. "Who?"

"Johnny Depp," she shouts, throwing a shoe at me.

"I guess," I say vaguely. "Yeah."

"Goody," I hear her say. "Rumor has it that Davey's very friendly with heroin—ooh, don't let Chloe get too close to Davey—and I also hear that Winona might go back to Johnny if Kate Moss disappears into thin air or a smallish tornado hurls her back to Auschwitz, which we're all hoping for." She notices the half-smoked cigarette floating in the Snapple bottle, then turns around, holding the bottle out to me accusingly, mentioning something about how Mrs. Chow loves kiwi-flavored Snapple. I'm slouching in a giant Vivienne Tam armchair.

"God, Victor," Alison says, hushed. "In this light"—she stops, genuinely moved—"you look gorgeous."

Gaining the strength to squint at her, I say, finally, "The better you look, the more you see."

30

Back at my place downtown getting dressed to meet Chloe at Bowery Bar by 10 I'm moving around my apartment cell phone in hand on hold to my agent at CAA. I'm lighting citrus-scented votive candles to help mellow the room out, ease the tension, plus it's so freezing in my apartment it's like an igloo. Black turtleneck, white jeans, Matsuda jacket, slippers, simple and cool. Music playing is low-volume Weezer. TV's on-no sound-with highlights from the shows today at Bryant Park, Chloe everywhere. Finally a click, a sigh, muffled voices in the background, Bill sighing again.

"Bill? Hello?" I'm saying. "Bill? What are you doing? Getting fawned over on Melrose? Sitting there with a headset on, looking like you belong in an air traffic controllers' room at LAX?"

"Do I need to remind you that I am more powerful than you?" Bill asks tiredly. "Do I need to remind you that a headset is mandatory?"

"You're my broker of opportunity, baby."

"Hopefully I will benefit from you."

"So baby, what's going on with Flatliners II? The script is like almost brill. What's the story?"

"The story?" Bill asks quietly. "The story is: I was at a screening this morning and the product had some exceptional qualities. It was accessible, well-structured and not particularly sad, but it proved strangely unsatisfying. It might have something to do with the fact that the product would have been better acted by hand puppets."

"What movie was this?"

"It doesn't have a title yet," Bill murmurs. "It's kind of like Caligula meets The Breakfast Club."

"I think I've seen this movie. Twice, in fact. Now listen, Bill—"

"I spent a good deal of lunch at Barney Greengrass today staring at the Hollywood Hills, listening to someone trying to sell me a pitch about a giant pasta maker that goes on some kind of sick rampage."

I turn the TV off, search the apartment for my watch. "And . . . your thoughts?"

"`How near death am I?' " Bill pauses. "I don't think I should be thinking things like that at twenty-eight. I don't think I should be thinking things like that at Barney Greengrass."

"Well, Bill, you are twenty-eight."

"Touching a seltzer bottle that sat in a champagne bucket brought me back to what passes for reality, and drinking half an egg cream solidified that process. The pitcher finally tried to make jokes and I tried to laugh." A pause. "Having dinner at the Viper Room started to seem vaguely plausible, like, i.e., not a bad evening."

I open the glass-door refrigerator, grab a blood orange and roll my eyes, muttering "Spare me" to myself while peeling it.

"At that lunch," Bill continues, "someone from a rival agency came up behind me and superglued a large starfish to the back of my head for reasons I'm still not sure of." Pause. "Two junior agents are, at this moment, trying to remove it."

"Whoa, baby," I cough. "You're making too much noise right now."

"As we speak I am also having my photo taken for Buzz magazine by Fahoorzi Zaheedi. . . ." Pause, not to me: "That's not how you pronounce it? Do you think just because it's your name that you know?"

"Billy? Bill-hey, what is this?" I'm asking. "Buzz, man? That's a magazine for flies, baby. Come on, Bill, what's going on with Flatliners II? I read the script and though I found structural problems and made some notes I still think it's brill and you know and I know that I'm perfect for the part of Ohman." I pop another slice of blood orange into my mouth and, while chewing, tell Bill, "And I think Alicia Silverstone would be perfect for the part of Julia Roberts' troubled sister, Froufrou."

I had a date with Alicia Silverstone last night," Bill says vacantly. "Tomorrow, Drew Barrymore." Pause. "She's between marriages."

"What did you and Alicia do?"

"We sat around and watched The Lion King on video while eating a cantaloupe I found in my backyard, which is not a bad evening, depending on how you define `bad evening.' I made her watch me smoke a cigar, and she gave me dieting tips, such as `Eschew hors d'oeuvres."' Pause. "I plan to do the same exact thing with Kurt Cobain's widow next week."

"That's really, uh, y'know, cutting edge, Bill."

"Right now while Buzz is taking my photograph I'm prepping the big new politically correct horror movie. We've just been discussing how many rapes should be in it. My partners say two. I say half a dozen." Pause. "We also need to glamorize the heroine's disability more."

"What's wrong with her?"

"She doesn't have a head."

"Cool, cool, that's cool."

"Add to this the fact that my dog just killed himself. He drank a bucket of paint."

"Hey, Bill, Flatliners II or not? Just tell me. Flatliners II or no Flatliners II. Huh, Bill?"

"Do you know what happens to a dog when he drinks a bucket of paint?" Bill asks, sounding vague.

"Is Shumacher involved or not? Is Kiefer on board?"

"My dog was a sex maniac and very, very depressed. His name was Max the Jew and he was very, very depressed."

"Well, I guess that's why, y'know, he drank the paint, right?"

"Could be. It could also be the fact that ABC canceled `My So- Called Life.'" He pauses. "It's all sort of up in the air."

"Have you ever heard the phrase `earn your ten percent'?" I'm asking, washing my hands. "Have you seen your mother, baby, standing in the shadows?"

"The center cannot hold, my friend," Bill drones on.

"Hey Bill—what if there's no center? Huh?" I ask, thoroughly pissed off.

"I'll pursue that." Pause. "But right now I am quietly seething that Firhoozi thinks the starfish is hip, so I must go. We will speak as soon as it's feasibly possible."

"Bill, I've gotta run too, but listen, can we talk tomorrow?" I flip frantically through my daybook. "Um, like at either three-twenty-five or, um, like . . . four or four-fifteen . . . or, maybe even at, oh shit, six-ten?"

"Between lunch and midnight I'm collecting art with the cast of 'Friends.'"

"That's pretty ultra-arrogant, Bill."

"Dagby, I must go. Firhoozi wants a profile shot sans starfish."

"Hey Bill, wait a minute. I just want to know if you're pushing me for Flatliners II. And my name's not Dagby."

"If you are not Dagby, then who is this?" he asks vacantly. "Who am I now speaking with if not Dagby?"

"It’s me. Victor Ward. I’m opening like the biggest club in New York tomorrow night."

Pause, then, "No . . . "

"I modeled for Paul Smith. I did a Calvin Klein ad."

Pause, then, "No. . ." I can hear him slouching, repositioning himself.

"I’m the guy who everyone thought David Geffen was dating but wasn't."

"That's really not enough."

"I date Chloe Byrnes," I'm shouting. "Chloe Byrnes, like, the super-model?"

"I've heard of her but not you, Dagby."

"Jesus, Bill, I'm on the cover of YouthQuake magazine this month. Your Halcion dosage needs trimming, bud."

"I'm not even thinking about you at this exact moment."

"Hey," I shout. "To save my life I dumped ICM for you guys."

"Listen, Dagby, or whoever this is, I can't really hear you since I'm on Mulholland now and I'm under a . . . big long tunnel." Pause. "Can't you hear the static?"

"But I just called you, Bill, at your office. You told me Firhoozi Zahidi was shooting you in your office. Let me talk to Firhoozi."

A long pause, then disdainfully Bill says, "You think you're so clever."

29

It's so diabolically crowded outside Bowery Bar that I have to climb over a stalled limo parked crookedly at the curb to even start pushing through the crowd while paparazzi who couldn't get in try desperately to snap my photo, calling out my name as I follow Liam Neeson, Carol Alt and Spike Lee up to Chad and Anton, who help pull us inside, where the opening riffs of Matthew Sweet's "Sick of Myself" start booming. The bar is mobbed, white boys with dreadlocks, black girls wearing Nirvana T-shirts, grungy homeboys, gym queens with buzz cuts, mohair, neon, Janice Dickerson, bodyguards and their models from the shows today looking hot but exhausted, fleece and neoprene and pigtails and silicone and Brent Fraser as well as Brendan Fraser and pom-poms and chenille sleeves and falconer gloves and everyone's smoochy. I wave over at Pell and Vivien, who are drinking Cosmopolitans with Marcus-who's wearing an English barrister's wig-and this really cool lesbian, Egg, who's wearing an Imperial margarine crown, and she's sitting next to two people dressed like two of the Banana Splits, which two I couldn't possibly tell. It's a kitsch-is-cool kind of night and there are tons of chic admirers.

While scanning the dining room for Chloe (which I realize a little too slowly is totally useless since she's always in one of the three big A booths), I notice Richard Johnson from "Page Six" next to me, also scanning the room, along with Mick and Anne Jones, and I sidle up to him and offer a high five.

"Hey Dick," I shout over the din. "I need to ask you about something, por favor."

"Sure, Victor," Richard says. "But I'm looking for Jenny Shimuzu and Scott Bakula."

"Hey, Jenny lives in my building and she's supercool and very fond of Häagen-Dazs frozen yogurt bars, preferably piña colada, not to mention a good friend. But hey, man, have you heard about a photograph that's gonna run in like the News tomorrow?"

"A photograph?" he asks. "A photograph?"

"B-b-baby," I stammer. "That sounds kind of sinister when you ask it twice. But it's, um, do you know Alison Poole?"

"Sure, she's Damien Nutchs Ross's squeeze," he says, spotting someone, giving thumbs-up, thumbs-down, then thumbs-up again. "How are things with the club? Everything nice and tidy for tomorrow night?"

"Cool, cool, cool: But it's like an, um, embarrassing photo like maybe of me?"

Richard has turned his attention to a journalist standing by us who's interviewing a very good-looking busboy.

"Victor, this is Byron from Time magazine." Richard motions with a hand.

"Love your work, man. Peace," I tell Byron. "Richard, about—"

"Byron's doing an article on very good-looking busboys for Time," Richard says dispassionately.

"Well, finally," I tell Byron. "Wait, Richard—"

"If it's an odious photograph the Post won't run an odious photograph, blah blah blah," Richard says, moving away.

"Hey, who said anything about odious?" I shout. "I said embarrassing."

Candy Bushnell suddenly pushes through the crowd screaming "Richard," and then when she sees me her voice goes up eighty octaves and she screams "Pony!" and places an enormous kiss on my face while slipping me a half and Richard finds Jenny Shimuzu but not Scott Bakula and Chloe is surrounded by Roy Liebenthal, Eric Goode, Quentin Tarantino, Kato Kaelin and Baxter Priestly, who is sitting way too close to her in the giant aquamarine booth and I have to put a stop to this or else deal with an unbelievably painful headache. Waving over at John Cusack, who's sharing calamari with Julien Temple, I move through the crowd toward the booth where Chloe, pretending to be engaged, is nervously smoking a Marlboro Light.

Chloe was born in 1970, a Pisces and a CAA client. Full lips, bone- thin, big breasts (implants), long muscular legs, high cheekbones, large blue eyes, flawless skin, straight nose, waistline of twenty-three inches, a smile that never becomes a smirk, a cellular-phone bill that runs $1,200 a month, hates herself but probably shouldn't. She was discovered dancing on the beach in Miami and has been half-naked in an Aerosmith video, in Playboy and twice on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimwear issue as well as on the cover of four hundred magazines. A calendar she shot in St. Bart's has sold two million copies. A book called The Real Me, ghostwritten with Bill Zehme, was on the New York Times best-seller list for something like twelve weeks. She is always on the phone listening to managers renegotiating deals and has an agent who takes fifteen percent, three publicists (though PMK basically handles everything), two lawyers, numerous business managers. Right now Chloe's on the verge of signing a multimillion-dollar contract with Lancôme, but a great many others are also in pursuit, especially after the "rumors" of a "slight" drug problem were quickly "brushed aside": Banana Republic (no), Benetton (no), Chanel (yes), Gap (maybe), Christian Dior (hmm), French Connection (a joke), Guess? (nope), Ralph Lauren (problematic), Pepe Jeans (are we kidding ?), Calvin Klein (done that), Pepsi (sinister but a possibility), et cetera. Chocolates, the only food Chloe even remotely likes, are severely rationed. No rice, potatoes, oils or bread. Only steamed vegetables, certain fruits, plain fish, boiled chicken. We haven't had dinner together in a long time because last week she had wardrobe fittings for the fifteen shows she's doing this week, which means each designer had about one hundred twenty outfits for her to try on, and besides the two shows tomorrow she has to shoot part of a Japanese TV commercial and meet with a video director to go over storyboards that Chloe doesn't understand anyway. Asking price for ten days of work: $1.7 million. A contract somewhere stipulates this.

Right now she's wearing a black Prada halter gown with black patent-leather sandals and metallic-green wraparound sunglasses she takes off as soon as she sees me approaching.

"Sorry, baby, I got lost," I say, sliding into the booth.

"My savior," Chloe says, smiling tightly.

Roy, Quentin, Kato and Eric split, all severely disappointed, muttering hey mans to me and that they'll be at the opening tomorrow night, but Baxter Priestly stays seated-one collar point sticking in, the other sticking out, from under a Pepto-Bismol-pink vest-sucking on a peppermint-NYU film grad, rich and twenty-five, part-time model (so far only group shots in Guess?, Banana Republic and Tommy Hilfiger ads), blond with a pageboy haircut, dated Elizabeth Saltzman like I did, wow.

"Hey man," I sigh while reaching over the table to kiss Chloe on the mouth, dreading the upcoming exchange of pleasantries.

"Hey Victor." Baxter shakes my hand. "How's the club going? Ready for tomorrow?"

"Do you have the time to listen to me whine?"

We sit there sort of looking out over the rest of the room, my eyes fixed on the big table in the center, beneath a chandelier made of toilet floats and recycled refrigerator wire, where Eric Bogosian, Jim Jarmusch, Larry Gagosian, Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, and oddly enough, Ricki Lake are all having salads, which touches something in me, a reminder to deal with the crouton situation before it gets totally out of hand.

Finally sensing my vibe, Baxter gets up, pockets his Audiovox MVX cell phone, which is sitting next to Chloe's Ericsson DF, and clumsily shakes my hand again.

"I'll see you guys tomorrow." He lingers, removes the peppermint from full pink lips. "Until then, um, I guess."

"Bye, Baxter," Chloe says, tired but sweet, as usual.

"Yeah, bye, man," I mutter, a well-practiced dismissal, and once he's barely out of earshot I delicately ask, "What's the story, baby? Who was that?"

She doesn't answer, just glares at me.

Pause. "Hey, honey, you're looking at me like I'm at a Hootie and the Blowfish concert. Chill."

"Baxter Priestly?" she says-asks morosely, picking at a plate of cilantro.

"Who's Baxter Priestly?" I pull out some excellent weed and a package of rolling papers. "Who the fuck is Baxter Priestly?"

"He's in the new Darren Star show and plays bass in the band Hey That's My Shoe," she says, lighting another cigarette.

"Baxter Priestly? What the fuck kind of name is that?" I mutter, spotting seeds that cry out for removal.

"You're complaining about someone's name? You hang out with Plez and Fetish and a person whose parents actually named him Tomato—"

"They conceded it might have been a mistake."

"—and you do business with people named Benny Benny and Damien Nutchs Ross? And you haven't apologized for being an hour late? I had to wait upstairs in Eric's office."

"Oh god, I bet he loved that," I moan, concentrating on the pot.

"Hell, baby, I thought I'd let you entertain the paparazzi." Pause. "And that's Kenny Kenny, honey."

"I did that all day," she sighs.

"Baxter Priestly? Why am I drawing a blank?" I ask earnestly, waving down Cliff the maître d' for a drink but it's too late: Eric has already sent over a complimentary bottle of Cristal 1985.

"I guess I'm used to your oblivion, Victor," she says.

"Chloe. You do fur ads and donate money to Greenpeace. You're what's known as a bundle of contradictions, baby, not this guy."

"Baxter used to date Lauren Hynde." She stubs her cigarette out, smiles thankfully at the very good-looking busboy pouring the champagne into flutes.

"Baxter used to date Lauren Hynde?"

"Right."

"Who's Lauren Hynde?"

"Lauren Hynde, Victor," she stresses as if the name means something. "You dated her."

"I did? I did? Yeah? Hmm."

"Good night, Victor."

"I just don't remember Lauren Hynde, baby. Solly Cholly."

"Lauren Hynde?" she asks in disbelief. "You don't remember dating her? My god, what are you going to say about me?"

"Nothing, baby," I tell her, finally done deseeding. "We're gonna get married and grow old together. How did the shows go? Look—there's Scott Bakula. Hey, peace, man. Richard's looking for you, bud."

"Lauren Hynde, Victor."

"That's so cool. Hey Alfonse—great tattoo, guy." I turn back to Chloe.

"Did you know Damien wears a hairpiece? He's some kind of demented wig addict."

"Who told you this?"

"One of the guys at the club," I say without pausing.

"Lauren Hynde, Victor. Lauren Hynde."

"Who's dat?" I say, making a crazy face, leaning over, kissing her neck noisily. Suddenly Patrick McMullan glides by, politely asks for a photo, complimenting Chloe on the shows today. We move in close together, look up, smile, the flash goes off. "Hey, crop the pot," I warn as he spots Patrick Kelly and scampers off.

"Do you think he heard me?"

"Lauren Hynde's one of my best friends, Victor."

"I don't know her, but hey, if she's a friend of yours, well, need I say anything but automatically?" I start rolling the joint.

"Victor, you went to school with her."

"I didn't go to school with her, baby," I murmur, waving over at Ross Bleckner and his new boyfriend, Mrs. Ross Bleckner, a guy who used to work at a club in Amagansett called Salamanders and was recently profiled in Bikini.

"Forgive me if I'm mistaken, but you went to Camden with Lauren Hynde." She lights another cigarette, finally sips the champagne.

"Of course. I did," I say, trying to calm her. "Oh. Yeah."

"Did you go to college, Victor?"

"Literally or figuratively?"

"Is there a difference with you?" she asks. "How can you be so dense?"

"I don't know, baby. It's some kind of gene displacement."

"I can't listen to this. You complain about Baxter Priestly's name and yet you know people named Huggy and Pidgeon and Na Na."

"Hey," I finally snap, "and you slept with Charlie Sheen. We all have our little faults."

"I should've just had dinner with Baxter," she mutters.

"Baby, come on, a little champagne, a little sorbet. I'm rolling a joint so we can calm down. Now, who is this Baxter?"

"You met him at a Knicks game."

"Oh my god that's right-the new male waif, underfed, wild-haired, major rehab victim." I immediately shut up, glance nervously over at Chloe, then segue beautifully into: "The whole grunge aesthetic has ruined the look of the American male, baby. It makes you long for the '80s."

"Only you would say that, Victor."

"Anyway, I'm always watching you flirt with John-John at Knicks games."

"Like you wouldn't dump me for Daryl Hannah."

"Baby, I'd dump you for John-John if I really wanted the publicity." Pause, mid-lick, looking up. "That's not, um, a possibility . . . is it?"

She just stares at me.

I grab her. "Come here, baby." I kiss her again, my cheek now damp because Chloe's hair is always wet and slicked back with coconut oil. "Baby? Why isn't your hair ever dry?"

Video cameras from Fashion TV sweep the room and I have to get Cliff to tell Eric to make sure they come nowhere near Chloe. M People turns into mid-period Elvis Costello which turns into new Better Than Ezra. I order a bowl of raspberry sorbet and try to cheer Chloe up by turning it into a Prince song: "She ate a raspberry sorbet . . . The kind you find at the Bowery Bar . . ."

Chloe just stares glumly at her plate.

"Honey, that's a plate of cilantro. What's the story?"

"I've been up since five and I want to cry."

"Hey, how was the big lunch at Fashion Café?"

"I had to sit there and watch James Truman eat a giant truffle and it really really bothered me."

"Because . . . you wanted a truffle too?"

"No, Victor. Oh god, you don't get anything."

"Jesus, baby, spare me. What do you want me to do? Hang around Florence for a year studying Renaissance pottery? You get your legs waxed at Elizabeth Arden ten times a month."

"You sit around plotting seating arrangements."

"Baby baby baby." I light up the joint, whining. "Come on, my DJ's missing, the club's opening tomorrow, I have a photo shoot, a fucking show and lunch with my father tomorrow." Pause. "Oh shit-band practice."

"How is your father?" she asks disinterestedly.

"A contrivance," I mutter. "A plot device."

Peggy Siegal walks by in taffeta and I duck under the table with my head in Chloe's lap, looking up into her face, grinning, while taking a deep toke. "Peggy wanted to handle the publicity," I explain, sitting up.

Chloe just stares at me.

"So-o-o anyway," I continue. "James Truman eating a giant truffle? The lunch? `Entertainment Tonight,' yes-go on."

"It was so hip I ate," I hear her say.

"What did you eat?" I murmur indifferently, waving over at Frederique, who pouts her lips, eyes squinty, like she was cooing to a baby or a very large puppy.

"I ached, ached, Victor. Oh god, you never listen to me."

"Joking, baby. I'm joking. I really see what you're saying."

She stares at me, waiting.

"Um, your hip ached and—have I got it?"

She just stares at me.

"Okay, okay, reality just zapped me. . . ." I take another toke, glance nervously at her. "So-o-o the video shoot tomorrow, um, what is it exactly?" Pause. "Are you, like, naked in it or anything?" Pause, another toke, then I cock my head to exhale smoke so it won't hit her in the face. "Er . . . what's the story?"

She continues to stare.

"You're not naked . . . or . . . you are, um, naked?"

"Why?" she asks curtly. "Do you care?"

"Baby baby baby. Last time you did a video you were dancing on the hood of a car in your bra. Baby baby baby . . ." I'm shaking my head woefully. "Concern is causing me to like pant and sweat."

"Victor, you did how many bathing suit ads? You were photographed for Madonna's sex book. Jesus, you were in that Versace ad where—am I mistaken? —we did or did not see your pubic hair?"

"Yeah, but Madonna dropped those photos and let's just say thank you to that and there's a major difference between my pubic hair—which was lightened—and your tits, baby. Oh Christ, spare me, forget it, I don't know what you call—"

"It's called a double standard, Victor."

"Double standard?" I take another hit without trying and say, feeling particularly mellow, "Well, I didn't do Playgirl."

"Congratulations. But that wasn't for me. That was because of your father. Don't pretend."

"I like to pretend." I offer an amazingly casual shrug.

"It's fine when you're seven, Victor, but add twenty years to that and you're just retarded."

"Honey, I'm just bummed. Mica the DJ has vanished, tomorrow is hell day and the Flatliners II thing is all blurry and watery—who knows what the fuck is happening there. Bill thinks I'm someone named Dagby and jeez, you know how much time I put into those notes to shape that script up and-"

"What about the potato chip commercial you were up for?"

"Baby baby baby. Jumping around a beach, putting a Pringle in my mouth and looking surprised because—why?—it's spicy? Oh baby," I groan, slouching into the booth. "Do you have any Visine?"

"It's a job, Victor," she says. "It's money."

"I think CAA's a mistake. I mean, when I was talking to Bill I started remembering that really scary story you told me about Mike Ovitz."

"What scary story?"

"Remember—you were invited to meet with all those CAA guys like Bob Bookman and Jay Mahoney at a screening on Wilshire and you went and the movie was a brand-new print of Tora! Tora! Tora! and during the entire movie they all laughed? You don't remember telling me this?"

"Victor," Chloe sighs, not listening. "I was in SoHo the other day with Lauren and we were having lunch at Zoë and somebody came up to me and said, `Oh, you look just like Chloe Byrnes.'"

"And you said, er, `How dare you!'?" I ask, glancing sideways at her.

"And I said, `Oh? Really?'"

"It sounds like you had a somewhat leisurely, um, afternoon," I cough, downing smoke with a gulp of champagne. "Lauren who?"

"You're not listening to me, Victor."

"Oh come on, baby, when you were young and your heart was an open book you used to say live and let live." I pause, take another hit on the joint. "You know you did. You know you did. You know you did." I cough again, sputtering out smoke.

"You're not talking to me," Chloe says sternly, with too much emotion. "You're looking at me but you're not talking to me."

"Baby, I'm your biggest fan," I say. "And I'm admitting this only somewhat groggily."

"Oh, how grown-up of you."

The new It Girls flutter by our booth, nervously eyeing Chloe—one of them eating a stick of purple cotton candy—on their way to dance by the bathroom. I notice Chloe's troubled glare, as if she just drank something black or ate a piece of bad sashimi.

"Oh come on, baby. You wanna end up living on a sheep farm in Australia milking fucking dingoes? You wanna spend the rest of your life on the Internet answering E-mail? Spare me. Lighten up."

A long pause and then, "Milking . . . dingoes?"

"Most of those girls have an eighth-grade education."

"You went to Camden College—same thing. Go talk to them."

People keep stopping by, begging for invites to the opening, which I dole out accordingly, telling me they spotted my visage last week at the Marlin in Miami, at the Elite offices on the hotel's first floor, then at the Strand, and by the time Michael Bergen tells me we shared an iced latte at the Bruce Weber/Ralph Lauren photo shoot in Key Biscayne I'm too tired to even deny I was in Miami last weekend and so I ask Michael if it was a good latte and he says so-so and it gets noticeably colder in the room. Chloe looks on, oblivious, meekly sips champagne. Patrick Bateman, who's with a bunch of publicists and the three sons of a well-known movie producer, walks over, shakes my hand, eyes Chloe, asks how the club's coming along, if tomorrow night's happening, says Damien invited him, hands me a cigar, weird stains on the lapel of his Armani suit that costs as much as a car.

"The proverbial show is on the proverbial road, dude," I assure him.

"I just like to keep—abreast," he says, winking at Chloe.

After he leaves I finish the joint, then look at my watch but I'm not wearing one so I inspect my wrist instead.

"He's strange," Chloe says. "And I need some soup."

"He's a nice guy, babe."

Chloe slouches in the booth, looks at me disgustedly.

"What? Hey, he has his own coat of arms."

"Who told you that?"

"He did. He told me he has his own coat of arms."

"Spare me," Chloe says.

Chloe picks up the check and in order to downplay the situation I lean in to kiss her, the swarming paparazzi causing the kind of disturbance we're used to.

28

Stills from Chloe’s loft in a space that looks like it was designed by Den Flavin: two Toshiyuki Kita hop sofas, an expanse of white-maple floor, six Baccarat Tastevin wineglasses–a gift from Bruce and Nan Weber-dozens of white French tulips, a StairMaster and a free-weight set, photography books-Matthew Rolston, Annie Leibovitz, Herb Ritts-all signed, a Fabergé Imperial egg-a gift from Bruce Willis (pre-Demi)-a large plain portrait of Chloe by Richard Avedon, sunglasses scattered all over the place, a Helmut Newton photo of Chloe walking seminude through the lobby of the Malperisa in Milan while nobody notices, a large William Wegman and giant posters for the movies Butterfield 8, The Bachelor Party with Carolyn Jones, Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's. A giant fax sheet taped above Chloe's makeup table lists Monday 9am Byron Lars, 11am Mark Eisen, 2pm Nicole Miller, 6pm Ghost, Tuesday 10am Ralph Lauren, Wednesday 11am Anna Sui, 2pm Calvin Klein, 4pm Bill Blass, 7pm Isaac Mizrahi, Thursday 9am Donna Karan, 5pm Todd Oldham and on and on until Sunday. Piles of foreign currency and empty Glacier bottles litter tables and countertops everywhere. In her refrigerator the breakfast Luna has already prepared: ruby-red grapefruit, Evian, iced herbal tea, nonfat plain yogurt with blackberries, a quarter of a poppy- seed bagel, sometimes toasted, sometimes not, Beluga if it's a "special day." Gilles Bensiníon, Juliette Lewis, Patrick Demarchelier, Ron Galotti, Peter Lindbergh and Baxter Priestly have all left messages.

I take a shower, rub some Preparation H and Clinique Eye Fitness under my eyes and check my answering machine: Ellen Von Unwerth, Eric Stoltz, Alison Poole, Nicolas Cage, Nicollette Sheridan , Stephen Dorff and somebody ominous from TriStar. When I come out of the bathroom with a Ralph Lauren fluffy towel wrapped around my waist, Chloe is sitting on the bed looking doomed, hugging her knees to her chest. Tears fill her eyes, she shudders, takes a Xanax, wards off another anxiety attack. On the large-screen TV is a documentary about the dangers of breast implants.

"It's just silicone, baby," I say, trying to soothe her. "I take Halcion, okay? I had half a bacon sandwich the other day. We smoke."

"Oh god, Victor." She keeps shuddering.

"Remember that period you chopped off all your hair and kept dyeing it different colors and all you did was cry?"

"Victor, I was suicidal," she sobs. "I almost overdosed."

"Baby, the point is you never lost a booking."

"Victor, I'm twenty-six. That's a hundred and five in model years."

"Baby, this insecurity you've got has to, like, split." I rub her shoulders. "You're an icon, baby," I whisper into her ear. "You are the guideline." I kiss her neck lightly. "You personify the physical ideal of your day," and then, "Baby, you're not just a model. You're a star." Finally, cupping her face in my hands, I tell her, "Beauty is in the soul."

"But my soul doesn't do twenty runway shows," she cries out. "My soul isn't on the cover of fucking Harper's next month. My soul's not negotiating a Lancôme contract" Heaving sobs, gasps, the whole bit, the end of the world, the end of everything.

"Baby . . ." I pull back. "I don't want to wake up and find you've freaked out about your implants again and you're hiding out in Hollywood at the Chateau Marmont, hanging with Kiefer and Dermot and Sly. So y'know, um, chill out, baby."

After ten minutes of silence or maybe two the Xanax kicks in and she concedes, "I'm feeling a little better."

"Baby, Andy once said that beauty is a sign of intelligence."

She turns slowly to look at me. "Who, Victor? Who? Andy who?" She coughs, blowing her nose. "Andy Kaufman? Andy Griffith? Who in the hell told you this? Andy Rooney?"

"Warhol," I say softly, hurt. "Baby . . ."

She gets up off the bed and moves into the bathroom, splashes water on her face, then rubs Preparation H under her eyes. "The fashion world is dying anyway," Chloe yawns, stretching, walking over to one of her walk-in closets, opening it. "I mean, what else can I say?"

"Not necessarily a bad thing, baby," I say vaguely, moving over to the television.

"Victor—whose mortgage is this?" she cries out, waving her arms around.

I'm looking for a copy of the Flatliners tape I left over here last week but can only find an old Arsenio that Chloe was on, two movies she was in, Party Mountain with Emery Roberts and Teen Town with Hurley Thompson, another documentary about breast-implant safety and last week's "Melrose Place." On the screen now, a commercial, grainy fuzz, a reproduction of a reproduction. When I turn around, Chloe is holding up a dress in front of a full-length mirror, winking at herself.

The dress is an original Todd Oldham wraparound: not-so-basic black-slash-beige dress, strapless, Navajo-inspired and neon quilted.

My first reaction: she stole it from Alison.

"Um, baby . . ." I clear my throat. "What's that?"

"I'm practicing my wink for the video," she says, winking again. "Rupert says I wasn't doing it right."

"Uh-huh. Okay, I'll take some time off and we'll practice." I pause, then carefully ask, "But the dress?"

"You like it?" she asks, brightening up, turning around. "I'm wearing it tomorrow night."

"Um . . . baby?"

"What? What is it?" She puts the dress back in the closet.

"Oh honey," I say, shaking my head. "I don't know about that dress."

"You don't have to wear it, Victor."

"But then neither do you, right?"

"Stop. I can't deal with—"

"Baby, you're gonna look like Pocahontas in that thing."

"Todd gave me this dress especially for the opening-"

"How about something simpler, less multicult? Less p.c., perhaps? Something closer to Armani-ish?" I move toward the closet. "Here, let me choose something for you."

"Victor." She blocks the closet door. "I'm wearing that." She suddenly looks down at my ankles. "Are those scratches?"

"Where?" I look down too.

"On your ankles." She pushes me onto the bed and inspects my ankles, then the red marks on my calves. "Those look like dogs did this. Were you around any dogs today?"

"Oh baby, all day," I groan, staring at the ceiling. "You don't even know."

"Those are dog scratches, Victor."

"Oh, those?" I say, sitting up, pretending to notice them too. "Beau and JD groveling, mauling at me . . . Do you have any, um, Bactine?"

"When were you around dogs?" she asks again.

"Baby, you've made your point."

She stares at the scratches once more, passively, then silently gets into her side of the bed and reaches for a script sent to her by CAA, a miniseries set on another tropical island, which she thinks is dreadful even though "miniseries" is not a dirty word. I'm thinking of saying something along the lines of Baby, there might be something in tomorrow 's paper that might, like, upset you. On MTV one uninterrupted traveling Steadicam shot races through an underfurnished house.

I scoot over, position myself next to her.

"It looks like we've got the new space," I say. "I'm meeting with Waverly tomorrow."

Chloe doesn't say anything.

"I could open the new place, according to Burl, within three months." I look over at her. "You're looking vaguely concerned, baby."

"I don't know how good an idea that really is."

"What? Opening up my own place?"

"It might destroy certain relationships."

"Not ours, I hope," I say, reaching for her hand.

She stares at the script.

"What's wrong?" I sit up. "The only thing I really want right now at this point in my life—besides Flatliners II—is my own club, my own place."

Chloe sighs, flips over a page she didn't read. Finally she puts the script down. "Victor—"

"Don't say it, baby. I mean, is it so unreasonable to want that? Is it really asking anyone too much? Does the fact that I want to do something with my life bore the shit out of you?"

"Victor—"

"Baby, all my life—"

Then, out of the blue: "Have you ever cheated on me?"

Not too much silence before "Oh baby." I lean over her, squeezing the fingers lying on top of the CAA logo. "Why are you asking me this?" And then I ask, but also know, "Have you?"

"I just want to know if you've always been . . . faithful to me." She looks back at the script and then at the TV, showcasing a lovely pink fog, whole minutes of it. "I care about that, Victor."

"Oh baby, always, always. Don't underestimate me."

"Make love to me, Victor," she whispers. I kiss her gently on the lips. She responds by pushing into me too hard and I have to pull back and whisper, "Oh baby, I'm so wiped out." I lift my head because the new Soul Asylum video is on MTV and I want Chloe to watch it too but she has already turned over, away from me. A photo of myself, a pretty good one, taken by Herb Ritts, sits on Chloe's nightstand, the only one I let her frame.

"Is Herb coming tomorrow?" I ask softly.

"I don't think so," she says, her voice muffled.

"Do you know where he is?" I ask her hair, her neck.

"Maybe it doesn't matter."

Arousal for Chloe: Sinead O'Connor CD, beeswax candles, my cologne, a lie. Beneath the scent of coconut her hair smells like juniper, even willow. Chloe sleeps across from me, dreaming of photographers flashing light meters inches from her face, of running naked down a freezing beach pretending it's summer, of sitting under a palm tree full of spiders in Borneo, of getting off an overnight flight, gliding across another red carpet, paparazzi waiting, Miramax keeps calling, a dream within the dream of six hundred interview sessions melding into nightmares involving white-sand beaches in the South Pacific, a sunset over the Mediterranean, the French Alps, Milan, Paris, Tokyo, the icy waves, the pink newspapers from foreign countries, stacks of magazines with her unblemished face airbrushed to death and cropped close on the covers, and it's hard to sleep when a sentence from a Vanity Fair profile of Chloe by Kevin Sessums refuses to leave me: "Even though we've never met she looks eerily familiar, as if we've known her forever."

27

Vespa toward the club to have breakfast with Damien at 7:30, with stops at three newsstands to check the papers (nothing, no photo, small-time relief, maybe something more), and in the main dining room, which this morning looks stark and nondescript, all white walls and black velvet banquettes, my line of vision is interrupted frequently by flashes from a photographer sent by Vanity Fair wearing a Thai-rice-field-worker hat, a video of Casino Royale on some of the monitors, Downhill Racer on others, while upstairs Beau and Peyton (ahem) man the phones. At our table Damien and me and JD (sitting by my side taking notes) and the two goons from the black Jeep, both wearing black Polo shirts, finish up breakfast, today's papers spread out everywhere with major items about tonight's opening: Richard Johnson in the Post, George Rush in the News (a big photo of me, with the caption "It Boy of the Moment"), Michael Fleming in Variety, Michael Musto plugging it in the Voice, notices in Cindy Adams, Liz Smith, Buddy Seagull, Billy Norwich, Jeanne Williams and A. J. Benza. I finish leaving a message under the name Dagby on my agent Bill's voice mail. Damien's sipping a vanilla hazelnut decaf iced latte, holding a Monte Cristo cigar he keeps threatening to light but doesn't, looking very studly in a Comme des Garçons black T-shirt under a black double- breasted jacket, a Cartier Panthere watch wrapped around a semi-hairy wrist, Giorgio Armani prescription sunglasses locked on a pretty decent head, a Motorola Stortac cell phone next to the semi-hairy wrist. Damien bought a 600SEL last week, and he and the goons just dropped Linda Evangelista off at the Cynthia Rowley show and it's cold in the room and we're all eating muesli and have sideburns and everything would be flat and bright and pop if it wasn't so early.

"So Dolph and I walk backstage at the Calvin Klein show yesterday-just two guys passing a bottle of Dewar's between them—and Kate Moss is there, no shirt on, arms folded across her tits, and I'm thinking, Why bother? Then I drank one too many lethal martinis at Match Uptown last night. Dolph has a master's in chemical engineering, he's married and we're talking wife in italics, baby, so there wasn't a bimbo in sight even though the VIP room was filled with eurowolves but no heroin, no lesbians, no Japanese influences, no British Esquire. We hung out with Irina, the emerging Siberian-Eskimo supermodel. After my fifth lethal martini I asked Irina what it was like growing up in an igloo." A pause. "The evening, er, ended sometime after that." Damien lifts off the sunglasses, rubs his eyes, adjusts them for the first time this morning to light, and glances at the headlines splashed over the various papers. "Helena Christensen splitting up with Michael Hutchence? Prince dating Veronica Webb? God, the world's a mess."

Suddenly Beau leans over me with the new revised guest list, whispers something unintelligible about the Gap into my ear, hands over a sample of the invitations, which Damien never bothered to look at but wants to see now, along with certain 8 x 10s and Polaroids of tonight's various waitresses, stealing his two favorites-Rebecca and Pumpkin, both from Doppelganger's.

"Shalom Harlow sneezed on me," Damien's saying.

"I've got chills," I admit. "They're multiplying."

I'm looking over the menu that Bongo and Bobby Flay have come up with: jalapeño-cured gravlax on dark bread, spicy arugula and mesclun greens, southwestern artichoke hearts with focaccia, porcini mushrooms and herb-roasted chicken breasts and/or grilled tuna with black peppercorns, chocolate-dipped strawberries, assorted classy granitas.

"Did anyone read the Marky Mark interview in the Times?" Damien asks. "The underwear thing is `semi-haunting' him."

"It's semi-haunting me too, Damien," I tell him. "Listen, here's the seating arrangements."

Damien studies Beau suspiciously for a reaction.

Beau notices this, points out certain elements about the menu, then carefully says, "I'm semi-haunted . . . too."

"Yesterday I wanted to fuck about twenty different strangers. Just girls, just people on the street. This one girl—the only one who hadn’t seen the 600SEL, who couldn’t tell Versace from the Gap, who didn’t even glance at the Patek Philippe—" He turns to the goons, one who keeps eyeing me in a fucked-up way. "That’s a watch you might never own. Anyway, she’s the only one who would talk to me, just some dumpy chick who came on to me in Chemical Bank, and I motioned sadly to her that I was mute, you know, tongueless, that I simply couldn't speak, what have you. But get this—she knew sign language."

After Damien stares at me, I say, "Ah."

"I tell you, Victor," Damien continues, "the world is full of surprises. Most of them not that interesting but surprising nonetheless. Needless to say, it was a mildly scary, humiliating moment. It actually bordered on the horrific, but I moved through it." He sips his latte. "Could I actually not be in vogue? I panicked, man. I felt . . . old."

"Oh man, you're only twenty-eight." I nod to Beau, letting him know that he can slink back upstairs.

"Twenty-eight, yeah." Damien takes this in, but instead of dealing he just waves at the stacks of papers on the table. "Everything going as planned? Or are there any imminent disasters I should be apprised of?"

"Here are the invites." I hand him one. "I don't think you ever had the time to see these."

"Nice, or as my friend Diane Von Furstenberg likes to say—nass."

"Yeah, they were printed on recycled paper with boy-based-I mean soy-based ink." I close my eyes, shake my head, clear it. "Sorry, those little mos upstairs are getting to me."

"Opening this club, Victor, is tantamount to making a political statement," Damien says. "I hope you know that."

I'm thinking, Spare me, but say, "Yeah, man?"

"We're selling myths."

"Mitts?"

"No, myths. M-y-t-h-s. Like if a fag was gonna introduce you to Miss America, what would he say?"

"Myth . . . America?"

"Right on, babe." Damien stretches, then slouches back into the booth. "I can't help it, Victor," he says blankly. "I sense sex when I walk around the club. I feel . . . compelled."

"Man, I'm so with you."

"It's not a club, Victor. It's an aphrodisiac."

"Here is the, um, seating arrangements for the dinner and then the list of press invited to the cocktail party beforehand." I hand him a sheaf of papers, which Damien hands to one of his goons, who stares at it, like duh.

"I just want to know who's at my table," Damien says vacantly.

"Um, here . . ." I reach over to grab the papers back, and for an instant the goon glares at me suspiciously before gradually releasing his grip. "Um, table one is you and Alison and Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger and Tim Hutton and Uma Thurman and Jimmy and Jane Buffett and Ted Field and Christy Turlington and David Geffen and Calvin and Kelly Klein and Julian Schnabel and Ian Schrager and Russell Simmons, along with assorted dates and wives."

"I'm between Uma Thurman and Christy Turlington, right?"

"Well, Alison and Kelly—"

"No no no no. I'm between Christy and Uma," Damien says, pointing a finger at me.

"I don't know how that is going to"—I clear my throat—"fly with Alison."

"What's she gonna do? Pinch me?"

"Cool cool cool." I nod. "JD, you know what to do."

"After tonight no one should get in for free. Oh yeah—except very good-looking lesbians. Anyone dressed like Garth Brooks is purged. We want a clientele that will up the class quotient."

"Up the class quotient. Yeah, yeah." Suddenly I cannot tear my eyes off Damien's head.

"Ground Control to Major Tom," Damien says, snapping his fingers.

"Huh?"

"What in the fuck are you looking at?" I hear him ask.

"Nothing. Go ahead."

"What are you looking at?"

"Nothing. Just spacing. Go ahead."

After a brief, scary pause Damien continues icily. "If I see anyone and I mean anyone unhip wandering around this party tonight I will kill you."

"My mouth suddenly is so dry I can't even like gulp, man."

Damien starts laughing and joking around, so I try to laugh and joke around too.

"Listen, bud," he says. "I just don't want the city's most bizarre bohemians or anyone who uses the term `fagulous' near me or my friends."

"Could you write that down, JD?" I ask.

"No one who uses the term `fagulous.'" JD nods, makes a note.

"And what's with the fucking DJ situation?" Damien asks disinterestedly. "Alison tells me someone named Misha's missing?"

"Damien, we're checking all the hotels in South Beach, Prague, Seattle," I tell him. "We're checking every rehab clinic in the Northeast."

"It's a little late, hmm?" Damien asks. "It's a little late for Misha, hmm?"

"Victor and I will be interviewing available DJs all day," JD assures him. "We've got calls in to everyone from Anita Sarko to Sister Bliss to Smokin Jo. It's happening."

"It's also almost eight o'clock, dudes," Damien says. "The worst thing in the world, guys, is a shitty DJ. I'd rather be dead than hire a shitty DJ."

"Man, I am so with you it's unbelievable," I tell him. "We have a hundred backups, so it's happening." I'm sweating for some reason, dreading the rest of this breakfast. "Damien, where can we find you if we need to get ahold of you today?"

"I'm in the Presidential Suite at the Mark while they finish doing something to my apartment. Whatever." He shrugs, chews some muesli. "You still living downtown?"

"Yeah, yeah."

"When are you gonna move uptown with everyone else-hey, leave the foot-shaking outside," he says, staring at a black lace-up from Agnès b. my foot happens to be in.

"Are you okay?"

"Fine. Damien, we've got—"

"What is it?" He stops chewing and is now carefully studying me.

"I was just gonna ask—" I breathe in.

"What are you hiding, Victor?"

"Nothing, man."

"Let me guess. You're secretly applying to Harvard?" Damien laughs, looking around the room, encouraging everyone else to laugh with him.

"Yeah, right." I laugh too.

"I just keep hearing these vague rumors, man, that you're fucking my girlfriend, but there's like no proof." Damien keeps laughing. "So, you know, I'm concerned."

The goons are not laughing.

JD keeps studying his clipboard.

I'm inadvertently doing Kegels. "Oh man, that's so not true. I wouldn't touch her, I swear to God."

"Yeah." You can see him thinking ..."

You can see him thinking things out. "You've got Chloe Byrnes. Why would you do Alison?" Damien sighs. "Chloe fucking Byrnes." Pause. "How do you do it, man?"

"Do . . . what?"

"Hey, Madonna once asked this guy for a date," Damien tells the bodyguards, who don't show it but in fact are impressed.

"I smile sheepishly. "Well, dude, you dated Tatjana Patitz."

"Who?"

"The girl who got fucked to death on the table in Rising Sun."

"Ri-i-ight. But you're dating Chloe fucking Byrnes," Damien, says, in awe. "How do you do it, man? What's your secret?"

"About . . . hey, um, I don't have any secrets."

"No, moron." Damien tosses a raisin at me. "Your secret with women."

"Um . . . never compliment them?" I squeak out.

"What?" Damien leans in closer.

"Not disinterested, exactly. If they ask tell them, y'know, their hair looks bleached. . . . Or if they ask tell them their nose is too wide. . . ." I'm sweating. "But, y'know, be careful about it . . . ." I pause faux- wistfully. "Then they're yours."

"Jesus Christ," Damien says admiringly, nudging one of the goons. "Did you hear that?"

"How's Alison?" I ask.

"Hell, you probably see her more than I do."

"Not really."

"I mean, don't you, Vic?"

"Oh, y'know, me and Chloe and, um, probably not, but whatever, never mind."

After a long and chilly silence, Damien points out, "You're not eating your muesli."

"Now I am," I say, lifting my spoon. "JD, some milk, please."

"Alison, oh shit;" Damien groans. "I don't know whether she's a sexpot or a crackpot."

A flash: Alison sneering at me while letting Mr. Chow lick her feet, punching open a coconut, listing her favorite male movie stars under twenty-four, including the ones she's slept with, slugging down Snapple after Snapple after Snapple.

"Both?" I venture.

"Ah hell, I love her. She's like a rainbow. She's like a flower. Oh god," he moans. "She's got that damn navel ring, and the tattoos need serious laser sessions."

"I . . . didn't know Alison had a, um, navel ring."

"How would you know that?" he asks.

"Anywa-a-a-ay—" JD starts.

"I also hear you're looking at your own space." Damien sighs, staring right at me. "Please say I'm hearing abstract, unfortunate rumors."

"A vicious rumor, my friend. I'm not into even contemplating another club, Damien. I'm looking at scripts now."

"Well, yeah, Victor, I know. It's just that we're getting a lot of press for this and I cannot deny that your name helps-"

"Thanks, man."

"—but I also cannot deny the fact that if you use this as-oh, what's a good phrase? oh yeah-a stepping-stone and will then dump all of us the minute this place is SRO and then with that cachet open up your own place—"

"Damien, wait a minute, this is a complex question, wait a minute—"

"—leaving me and several investors along with various orthodontists from Brentwood-one who happens to be part vegetable-who have placed big bucks into this—"

"Damien, man, where would I get the money to do this?"

"Japs?" He shrugs. "Some movie star you've boned? Some rich faggot who's after your ass?"

"This is what's known as big news to me, Damien, and I will ponder who leaked this rumor profusely."

"My heartfelt thanks."

"I just wanna put a smile back on clubland's face."

"I've gotta play golf," Damien says vacantly, checking his watch. "Then I'm having lunch at Fashion Café with Christy Turlington, who was just voted `least likely to sell out' in the new issue of Top Model. There's a virtual-reality Christy at Fashion Café-you should check it out. It's called a spokesmannequin. It looks exactly like Christy. She says things like `I look forward to seeing you here again soon, perhaps in person,' and she also quotes Somerset Maugham and discusses Salvadorian politics as well as her Kellogg cereal contract. I know what you're thinking, but she brings class to it."

Damien finally stands up, and the goons follow suit.

"Are you going to any of the shows today?" I ask. "Or is another Gotti on trial?"

"What? There's another one?" Damien realizes something. "Oh, you're kind of funny. But not really so much."

"Thank you."

"I'm going to shows. It's Fashion Week, what else does one do in this world?" Damien sighs. "You're in one, right?"

"Yeah. Todd Oldham. It's just guys who date models escorting them down the runway. Y'know, it's like a theme: Behind every woman-"

"There's a weasel? Ha!" Damien stretches.

"Sounds fan-fuckingtastic. So you're ready for tonight?"

"Hey man, I am a rock. I am an island."

"Who's gonna dispute that?"

"That's me, Damien. All dos, and no don'ts."

"Are you down with OPP?"

"Hey, you know me."

"Crazy kid," he chuckles.

"Lucidity. Total lucidity, baby."

"I wish I knew what that meant, Victor."

"Three words, my friend: Prada, Prada, Prada."

26

On a small soon-to-be-hip block in TriBeCa and up a flight of not-too-steep stairs and through a dark corridor: a long bar made of granite, walls lined with distressed-metal sconces, a medium-sized dance floor, a dozen video monitors, a small alcove that can easily convert into a DJ booth, a room off to the side cries out for VIPs, mirror balls hang from a high ceiling. In other words: The Fundamentals. You see a flashing light and you think you are that flashing light.

"Ah," I sigh, looking around the room. "The club scene."

"Yes." JD nervously follows me around, both of us guzzling bottles of Diet Melonberry Snapple he bought us.

"There's something beautiful about it, JD," I say. "Admit it, you little mo. Admit it."

"Victor, I—"

"I know just inhaling my manly scent must make you want to faint."

"Victor, don't get too attached," JD warns. "I don't need to tell you that this club's going to have a short life span, that this is all a short-term business."

"You're a short-term business." I run my hands along the smooth granite bar: chills.

"And you put a lot of energy into it, and all the people who made it beautiful and interesting—hey, don't snicker—in the first place go somewhere else."

I yawn. "That sounds like a homosexual relationship."

"Sorry, darling, we got lost." Waverly Spear—our interior designer, dead ringer for Parker Posey-sweeps in wearing sunglasses, a clingy catsuit, a wool beret, followed by a hip-hop slut from hell and this dreadfully gorgeous mope-rocker wearing an I AM THE GOD OF FUCK T-shirt.

"Why so late, baby?"

"I got lost in the lobby of the Paramount," Waverly says. "I went up the stairs instead of going down the stairs."

"Ooh."

"Plus, well . . ." She rummages through her black-bowed rhinestone -dotted Todd Oldham purse. "Hurley Thompson's in town."

"Continue."

"Hurley Thompson is in town."

"But isn't Hurley Thompson supposed to be shooting the sequel to Sun City 2? Sun City 3?" I ask, vaguely outraged. "In Phoenix?"

Waverly moves away from her zombies and motions me toward her, pulling me from JD.

"Hurley Thompson, Victor, is in the Celine Dion Suite at the Paramount trying to persuade someone not to use a rubber as we speak."

"Hurley Thompson is not in Phoenix?"

"Certain people know this information." She lowers her voice gravely. "They just don't know the why of it."

"Does someone in this room? And don't tell me one of the idiots you brought."

"Let's just put it this way: Sherry Gibson can't shoot any more 'Baywatch Nights' for a while." Waverly puffs greedily on her cigarette.

"Sherry Gibson, Hurley Thompson—I dig the connection. Friends, lovahs, great PR."

"He's been freebasing so much that he had to leave the set of SC3 after he beat Sherry Gibson up—yes, in the face—and Hurley is now registered under the assumed name Carrie Fisher at the Paramount."

"So he is quitting Sun City?"

"And Sherry Gibson resembles a weepy raccoon."

"Nobody knows this?"

"Nobody knows but moi."

"Who's Moi?"

"That means me, Victor."

"Our lips are sealed." I move away, clap my hands, startling the other people in the space, and walk toward the middle of the floor.

"Waverly, I want a minimal generic look. Sort of industrial-preppie."

"But with a touch of internationalism?" she asks, following, out of breath, lighting another Benson & Hedges Menthol 100.

"The '90s are honest, straightforward. Let's reflect that," I say, moving around. "I want something unconsciously classic. I want no distinctions between exterior and interior, formal and casual, wet and dry, black and white, full and empty—oh my god, get me a cold compress."

"You want simplicity, baby."

"I want a no-nonsense approach to nightlife." I light a Marlboro.

"Keep talking like that, baby, and we're on our way."

"To stay afloat, Waverly, you need to develop a reputation for being a good businessman and an all-around cool guy." I pause. "And I'm an all-around cool guy."

"And, ahem, a businessman?" JD asks.

"I'm too cool to answer that, baby," I say, inhaling. "Hey, did you see me on the cover of YouthQuake?"

"No, ah . . ." Waverly says, then realizes something and adds, "Oh, that was you? You looked great."

"Uh-huh," I say, somewhat dubiously.

"But I saw you at the Calvin Klein show, baby, and—"

"I wasn't at the Calvin Klein show, baby, and have you noticed that whole wall is the color of pesto, which is, like, a no-no, baby?"

"De rigueur," says the impeccably-put-together young thing behind her.

"Victor," Waverly says. "This is Ruby. She's a bowl designer. She makes bowls out of things like rice."

"A bowl designer? Wow."

"She makes bowls out of things like rice," Waverly says again, staring.

"Bowls made from rice? Wow." I stare back. "Did you hear me say ,`wow'?"

Mope-rocker wanders over to the dance floor and looks up at the dozen or so disco balls, trancing out.

"What's the story with goblin boy?"

"Felix used to work at the Gap," Waverly says, inhaling, exhaling. "Then he designed sets for `The Real World' in Bali."

"Don't mention that show to me," I say, gritting my teeth.

"Sorry, darling, it's so early. But please be nice to Felix—he's just out of rehab."

"What—he OD'd on stucco?"

"He's friends with Blowpop and Pickle and he just designed Connie Chung's, Jeff Zucker's, Isabella Rossellini's and Sarah Jessica Parker's, er, closets."

"Cool, cool." I nod approvingly.

"Last month he went and fucked his ex-boyfriend—Jackson—in the Bonneville salt flats and just three days ago they found Jackson's skull in a swamp, so, you know, let's be careful."

"Uh-huh. My god it's freezing in here."

"I see orange flowers, I see bamboo, I see Spanish doormen, I hear Steely Dan, I see Fellini." Waverly suddenly gasps, exhaling again, tapping her cigarette. "I see the '70s, baby, and I am wet."

"Baby, you're ashing on my club," I say, very upset.

"Now what about Felix's idea for a juice bar?"

"Felix is thinking about where he's going to score his next animal tranquilizer." I drop my cigarette carefully into the half-empty Snapple bottle JD holds out. "Plus—oh god, baby, I don't want to have to fret over a juice bar that serves only—what—oh god—juice? Do you know how many things I have to worry about? Spare me."

"So nix the juice bar?" Waverly asks, taking notes.

"Oh please," I moan. "Let's sell submarine sandwiches, let's sell pizza, let's sell fucking nachos," I sigh. "You and Felix are being muy muy drippy."

"Baby, you are so right," Waverly says, mock-wiping sweat from her forehead. "We need to get our shit together."

"Waverly, listen to me. The new trend is no trend."

"No trend's a new trend?" she asks.

"No, no trend is the new trend," I say impatiently.

"In is out?" Waverly asks.

I smack JD on the shoulder. "See, she gets it."

"Look—goose bumps," JD says, holding out an arm.

"Lemons, lemons everywhere, Victor," Waverly says, twirling around.

"And Uncle Heshy is not invited, right, baby?"

"Sweet dreams are made of this, huh, Victor?" JD says, watching vacantly as Waverly twirls around the room.

"Do you think we were followed here?" I ask, lighting another cigarette , watching Waverly.

"If you have to ask that question, don't you think that opening this behind Damien's back is not, like, such a good idea?"

"Nonresponsive answer. I move to strike," I say, glaring at him. "Your idea of hip is missing the boat, buddy."

"I just don't think it's hip to have your legs broken," JD says warily. "Over a club? Have you ever heard the phrase `Resist the impulse'?"

"Damien Nutchs Ross is a nonhuman primate," I sigh. "And your POV should be: sleeping person zzzzz."

"Why do you even want to open another club?"

"My own club."

"Let me guess. Bingo! Instant friends?" JD shivers, his breath steaming.

"Oh spare me. I see all this and think money-in-the-bank, you little mo."

"A guy needs a hobby, huh?"

"And you need some more Prozac to curb your homo-ness."

"And you need a major injection of reality."

"And you need coolin', baby, I'm not foolin'."

Victor. We're not playing games here," JD asks, "are we?"

"No," I say. "We're going to the gym."

25

At a gym in the Flatiron District, in what last week became the most fashionable stretch of lower Fifth Avenue, my trainer, Reed, is being filmed for a segment of Entertainment Tonight about trainers for celebrities who are more famous than the celebrities they train, and in the gym now—which has no name, just a symbol and below that the motto 'Weakness Is a Crime, Don't Be a Criminal'—beneath the row of video monitors showing episodes of The Flintstones and the low lighting from a crystal chandelier Matt Dillon, Toni Braxton, the sultan of Brunei's wife, Tim Jeffries, Ralph Fiennes — all in agony. A couple of male models, Craig Palmer and Scott Benoit, pissed off over something I said about Matt Nye's luck, semi-avoid me as they towel off in the Philippe Starck-designed changing room. Danny Errico from Equinox set the place up for Reed when the issue of Playgirl Reed appeared in sold something like ten million copies and he subsequently was dropped from the Gap's new ad campaign. Now Reed's costarring in a movie about a detective whose new partner is a pair of gibbons. Reed: $175 an hour and worth every goddamn penny (I stressed to Chloe), long blond hair never in a ponytail, light 'n' sexy stubble, naturally tan, silver stud in right ear, designer weight-belt, a body with muscles so well defined he looks skinned, license plate on his black BMW reads VARMINT, all the prerequisites. It's so freezing in the gym that steam rises from the lights the "ET" camera has set up.

The Details reporter arrives late. "Sorry, I got lost," she says vacantly, wearing a black cashmere sweater, white cotton shirt, white silk pants and, in true girl-reporter-from-Details fashion, tube-sock elbow pads and a bicycle-reflector armband. "I had to interview President Omar Bongo of Gabon and his cute nephew, um . . ." She checks her notepad. "Spencer."

"Ladies and gentlemen." Reed spreads his hands out, introducing me. "Victor Ward, the It Boy of the moment."

Mumbled "hey"s and a few "yeah"s come from the crew, who remain darkened behind the steaming lights set up in front of the StairMaster, and finally someone tiredly says, "We're rolling."

"Take those sunglasses off," Reed whispers to me.

"Not with those lights on, uh-uhn, spare me."

"I smell Marlboros," Reed says, pushing me toward the StairMaster. "You shouldn't smoke, baby, it takes years off your life."

"Yeah, my sixties, great. Don't wanna miss those."

"Ooh, you're tough. Come on—hop up here," Reed says, patting the side of the machine.

"I want calves and thighs and definitely abs today," I stress. "But no biceps," I warn. "They're getting too big."

"What? They're thirteen inches, baby." Reed sets the StairMaster to Blind Random, level 10.

"Isn't your T-shirt, uh, a little tight?" I ask, taunting.

"Arms are the new breasts," Reed intones.

"Oh, and look," I say, noticing a tiny blackhead. "You have a nipple."

"Cut," the segment director sighs.

"Victor," Reed warns. "Pretty soon I'm gonna bring up that bounced check of yours—"

"Hey, Chloe took care of the bill."

"This is a business, baby," Reed says, trying to smile. "Not a charity."

"Listen, if you need more work, I need bouncers."

"This is work, man."

"What? Being familiar with fitness equipment? Spare me."

"I already supplement my income, Victor."

"Listen, as long as the sex is safe I personally think being a male whore is cool—if it pays the bills."

Reed smacks me upside the head and growls, "We're doing squats today."

"And abs," I stress. "I have a photo shoot, baby."

"Okay," the director calls out. "We're running."

Automatically, without trying, Reed starts clapping his hands and shouts, "I want some strain, some pressure, some sweat, Victor. You're too tense, buddy. Out with that tension. In with some love."

"I've sworn off caffeine, Reed. I'm teaching myself how to relax by deep-sea visualization. I'm avoiding the urge to check my voice mail on a half-hourly basis. I'm hugging people left and right. And look." I reach under my CK T-shirt. "My new tranquillity beads."

"Far out, baby," Reed wails, clapping his hands together.

Looking into the camera, I say, "I've been to Radu and Pasquale Manocchia—that's Madonna's personal trainer, by the way, baby—and Reed is definitely the first name in celebrity training."

"I have an obsession with biceps, with triceps, with forearm flexors," Reed admits sheepishly. "I have a major sinewy-arm fetish."

"I have the endurance of a horse but my blood sugar's low and I need a Jolly Rancher badly."

"After the next song," Reed says, clapping endlessly. "PowerBar time, I promise."

Suddenly Primal Scream's "Come Together" blares out over the sound system. "Oh god," I moan. "This song is eight minutes and four seconds long."

"How do you know things like that?" the Details girl asks.

"The better you look, baby, the more you see," I pant. "Dat's my motto, homegirl." My beeper goes off and I check it: JD at the club.

"Reed, baby, hand me your cellular." I let go of the rails and dial, smiling into the camera. "Hey Leeza! Look, no hands!"

This causes Reed to push up the speed, which I thought was impossible because I didn't know StairMasters could go past level 10.

"Hey, am I invited to the dinner tonight?" Reed asks. "I didn't see my name mentioned in any of the columns."

"Yeah, you're at table 78 with the Lorax and Pauly Shore," I snap. "JD—talk to me."

"Now don't get too excited, Victor," JD says breathlessly. "But we've—myself, Beau and Peyton—set up an interview with DJ X."

"With who?"

"DJ X. You have a meeting with him at Fashion Café at five today," JD says. "He's willing to do the party tonight."

"I'm on a StairMaster now, baby." I'm trying not to pant. "What? Fashion Café?"

"Victor, DJ X is the hottest DJ in town," JD says. "Imagine the publicity and then come all over yourself. Go ahead-shoot that load."

"I know, I know. Just hire him," I say.

"Tell him we'll pay anything he wants."

"He wants to meet with you first."

"Oh dear god."

"He needs some kind of reassurance."

"Send him a bag of candy corn. Send him some cute, extrasuckable pacifiers. Tell him you give excellent head . . . do you?"

"Victor," JD says, exasperated. "He won't do it without meeting you first. We need him here tonight. Do it."

"I'm taking commands from someone who uses the word `dish' as a verb?" I yell. "Shut up."

"Fashion Café," JD says. "Five o'clock. I've checked your schedule. You can make it."

"JD, I'm in the middle of becoming some kind of brooding god," I groan. "I mean, is it too fucking much to ask—"

"Fashion Café at five. Bye, Victor." JD clicks off.

"JD—don't click off on me, don't you dare click off on me." I click off myself and blindly announce, "I'm suddenly seized by the need to climb."

"I think you've been doing that your whole life, buddy," Reed says sadly.

"You turned down a Reebok ad and that makes you tough?"

After "ET" films me doing a thousand crunches and I've moved over to the Treadwall, an indoor rock-climbing simulator where you stay in one place while climbing, I notice Details girl slouching against a wall, holding her pad under the debut issue of a new magazine called Bubble. It's so cold in the gym that it feels like I'm climbing a glacier.

"Jesus," I moan, noticing the magazine's cover. "Yeah, that's just great. Luke Perry's opinion of Kurt fucking Russell. We need more of that."

"So what's the story?" she asks vacantly. "Excited about tonight?"

"Remember what the dormouse said," I say cryptically, watching Dillon walk by slurping a powershake. "Hey Matt, rock on."

"You're really into this," Details girl says.

"What's wrong with looking good?"

She ponders this semi-thoughtfully. "Well, what if it's at the expense of something else? I'm not implying anything. It's just a hypothetical. Don't be insulted."

"I forgot the question."

"What if it's at the expense of something else?"

"What’s . . . something else?"

"I see." She attempts to complete a facial expression I'd hoped she wouldn't.

"Hey baby, we're all in this together," I grunt, my hands dusted with chalk. "Yeah, I wanna give this all up and feed the homeless. I wanna give this all up and teach orangutans sign language. I'm gonna bike around the countryside with my sketchbook. I'm gonna—what? Help improve race relations in this country? Run for fucking President? Read my lips: Spare me."

24

By the time I arrive at Industria for today's photo shoot I'm getting that certain feeling of being followed, but whenever I look behind me it's only bicycle messengers carrying models' portfolios for Click, Next, Elite, so to stamp out the paranoia I duck into Braque to grab a not-too- foamy decaf latte with skim milk and Alison keeps beeping me as I move through an enormous series of white empty spaces. The guys- nine of us, some already in bathing suits-are just hanging: Nikitas, David Boals, Rick Dean, newcomer Scooter, a couple of guys I'm not really sure about, including a waiter from Jour et Nuit, hunky with dreadlocks, who's being followed around by a camera crew from "Fashion File," a pair of twins who work at Twins on the Upper East Side, plus some European guy who has arguably the best body here but a face like a donkey. All the guys basically look the same: cute head (one exception), great body, high hair, chiseled lips, cutting edge, naughty or however you want us.

While waiting my turn for eyebrow tweezing I browse through the CD library and make time with this girl eating rice and broccoli while getting a pedicure and the only word she knows is "Blimey!" and all over the place I'm sensing a distinct laissez-faire attitude, no more so than when I'm handed a stick of Wrigley's Doublemint gum by Stanford Blatch. The Caesar haircut has made another comeback and cowlicks are in which infuriates Bingo and Velveteen and the photographer Didier, so a lot of PhytoPlage gel is brought out while opera plays and to endure all this some of the guys drink champagne, check their horoscopes in the Post, play cat's cradle with dental floss. Madonna's ex-party planner Ronnie Davis, someone from Dolce & Gabbana, Garren (who did the hair at Marc Jacobs' and Anna Sui's last shows) and Sandy Gallin are hanging out, staring at us impassively, like we're for sale or something, and let's just face it—as if.

Three setups: Bermudas, Madras shorts and Speedos. The guys will be positioned in front of a huge blue drape and later a beach will be superimposed by Japanese technicians to make it look like we were actually on a beach, "maybe even one in Miami," Didier promises. Fake tattoos are applied on biceps, pectorals, on three thighs. It's freezing.

Bingo slaps gel on my scalp, wetting my hair, runs it through to the ends as Didier paces nearby, inspecting my abs, twenty-two and sucking on a pacifier. Dazed-looking Scooter—studying for his SATs—sits next to me on a high stool, both of us facing giant oval mirrors.

"I want sideburns," Bingo moans. "I need elongation."

"Forget about natural, Bingo," Didier says. "Just go for the edge."

"Doesn't anyone shampoo anymore?" Velveteen shudders. "My god."

"I want a rough style, Bingo. I want a bit of meanness. A hidden anger. There has to be a hidden anger. I want the aggressive side to this boy."

"Aggressive?" Bingo asks. "He's a pastry chef at Dean & Deluca."

"I want the aggressive-pastry-chef look."

"Didier, this boy is about as aggressive as a baby manatee."

"Oh god, Bingo—you're such a fussbudget," Velveteen sighs.

"Am I being challenged?" Didier asks, pacing. "I think not, because I'm getting bored very quickly."

"Velveteen," Bingo shouts. "You're mushing Scooter's do."

"Bingo, you're being a wee bit off."

"I want extreme," Didier says. "I want Red Hot Chili Peppers. I want energy."

"I want a big fat spleef," Scooter mutters.

"I want garish and sexy," Didier says.

"Let's usher that combo in, baby."

"I'm fizzy with excitement," Didier murmurs thoughtfully. "But where are these boys' sideburns? I requested sideburns. Bingo? Bingo, where are you?"

"I have sideburns?" I offer, raising my hand. "Uh, dude, that's facial moisturizer," I have to point out to Bingo.

"Not too in-your-face. Right, Didier?" Velveteen asks sourly. "Not too much of that hot Mambo King look."

We're all in front of the big blue drape, some of us doing bicep curls with free weights, a couple of us on the floor crunching, and Didier wants cigars and passes them out and Didier wants glycerin because the guys in Bermuda shorts should be crying while smoking cigars because we are sad and smoking cigars in front of the big blue drape which will be the beach.

"Sad because we are smoking cigars?" I ask.

"Or sad because this is just too `Baywatch'?"

"Sad because you are all idiots and just now on this beach you have realized it," Didier says vaguely, ready to Polaroid.

Scooter looks at his cigar wonderingly.

"Do to that what you did to get this job," I tell him. "Suck on it."

Scooter goes pale. "How . . . did you know?"

"David—remove the nicotine patch," Didier calls out from behind the camera.

"My girlfriend sees this," Scooter moans, "and she's gonna think I'm gay."

"You still with Felicia?" Rick asks him.

"No, this is some girl I met in the bathroom in the lobby of the Principe di Savoia," Scooter says blankly. "I was lost and she looked like Sandra Bullock. Or so they say."

"What's her name?" David asks.

"Shoo Shoo."

"Shoo Shoo what?"

"No apparent last name."

"How did you lose the CK job, man?" Nikitas asks him.

"Calvin got pissed," Scooter says. "I cut my hair, but it's considerably more, er, complex than that."

Silence, a considerable pause, heavy nodding, the camera crew from "Fashion File" still circling.

"Believe me," I say, holding up my hands, "Calvin and I have tussled many a time." I do a few more bicep curls. "Many a time."

"He gave you pretty good seats for the show, though," David says, stretching his calf muscles.

"That's because Chloe was in it," Rick says.

"I wasn't at the Calvin Klein show," I say calmly, then shout, "I wasn't at the fucking Calvin Klein show."

"There's a picture of you at the show in WWD, baby," Rick says. "You're with David and Stephen. In the second row."

"Someone find me that photo and you shall be proven wrong," I intone, rubbing my biceps, freezing. "Second row my ass."

One of the twins is reading today's WWD and cautiously hands it to me. I grab it and find the photos taken at yesterday's shows. It's not a clear photograph: Stephen Dorff, David Salle and myself, all wearing '50s knit shirts and sunglasses, slouching in our seats, stone-faced. Our names are in bold type beneath the photo, and after mine, as if an explanation was necessary, the words "It Boy." A bottle of champagne topples from a table, someone calls out for a shawalla.

So what's the story, Victor?" David asks. "Let me get this straight. You weren't at the show? You're not in that photo? Let me guess—that's Jason Gedrick."

"Isn't anybody going to ask how the club's going?" I finally ask, thrusting the paper back at the twin, suddenly indignant over this fact.

"Um, how's the club going, Victor?" the other twin asks."

"I want to rock-'n'-roll all night and party every day."

"Why wasn't I invited to the opening?" Rick asks.

"I—want—to—rock-'n'-roll—all—night—and—party—everyday." I grab the WWD back from the twin and study the photo again. "This must be a mistake. This must be from another show. In fact, that must be Jason Gedrick."

"What other shows have you been to this week?" someone asks.

"None," I finally murmur.

"When you stop orbiting around Jupiter, let us know, okay?" David says, patting me on the back. "And Jason Gedrick's in Rome shooting Summer Lovers II, baby."

"I'm in the here and the now, baby."

"That's not what I hear," Nikitas says, crunching.

"I'm not really interested in what information you're able to process," I tell him.

"Everything cool with you and Baxter and Chloe?" David asks this casually and Nikitas and Rick manage sly grins, which of course I notice.

"It's so cool it's icy, baby." I pause. "Er . . . what do you mean, O Wise One?"

The three of them seem confused and their expressions lead me to believe that they expected an admission of some kind.

"Um, well . . . ," Rick stammers. "It's, well, y'know . . ."

"Please," I groan. "If you're going to hand out shitty gossip about me, at least make it fast."

"Did you ever see the movie Threesome?" David ventures.

"Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh."

"Story is that Chloe, Baxter and Victor are intrigued by that premise."

"We are not speaking of Baxter Priestly, are we, gentlemen?" I ask. "Surely we are not speaking of that little mo waif."

"He's the mo?"

"I mean, I know you're a hip guy, Victor," David says. "I think it's like cool, really cool."

"Wait a minute, wait a minute." I hold my hands up in front of me. "If you think for one second I'd share Chloe—Chloe Byrnes—with that pipsqueak . . . oh baby, spare me."

"Who said you're sharing anybody, Victor?" someone asks.

"What does that mean?"

"Who said it was your idea?" David asks. "Who said you were happy about it?"

"How can I not be happy about something that's not happening?" I glare.

"We're just telling you what's out on the street."

"What street? What street do you live on, David?"

"Uh . . . Ludlow."

"Uh . . . Ludlow," I mimic without trying.

"Victor, how can we believe you about anything?" Rick asks. "You say you weren't at the CK show, but there you were. Now you say you're not involved in a heavy ménage with Baxter and Chloe, yet word around town—"

"What else have you fucking heard?" I snap, waving a light meter out of my face. "I dare you, come on, I dare you."

"That you're fucking Alison Poole?" David shrugs.

I just stare for a couple seconds. "Enough, enough. I'm not seeing Alison Poole."

"The straight face is impressive, dude."

"I'm gonna ignore that because I don't fight with girls," I tell David. "Besides, that's a dangerous rumor for you to spread. Dangerous for her. Dangerous for me. Dangerous for—"

"Just go with it, Victor," David sighs. "Like I really even care."

"You'll be folding twenty-dollar sweaters at the Gap soon enough anyway," I mutter.

"My little minnows," Didier calls out. "It's time."

"Say, shouldn't David have like some beach moss or some kind of sand covering his face?"

"Okay, Victor," Didier calls out from behind the camera. "I'm looking at you like you're naked, baby."

"Didier?" one of the twins says. "I am naked."

"I'm looking at you like you're naked, Victor, and you love it." A longish pause while Didier studies the twin, then he decides something. "Make me chase you."

"Uh, Didier?" I call out. "I'm Victor."

"Dance around and yell `pussy.'"

"Pussy," we all mumble.

"Louder!" Didier shouts.

"Pussy!"

"Louder!"

"Pussy!"

"Fantastic yet not so good."

Speedos after Bermudas, baseball caps are positioned backward, lollipops are handed out, Urge Overkill is played, Didier hides the Polaroid, then sells it to the highest bidder lurking in the shadows, who writes a check for it with a quill pen. One of the boys has an anxiety attack and another drinks too much Taittinger and admits he's from Appalachia, which causes someone to call out for a Klonopin. Didier insist we cup our balls and finally incorporates the camera crew from "Fashion File" into the photo shoot and then everyone except me and the guy who fainted go off for an early lunch at a new spot in SoHo called Regulation.

23

Moving fast through autumn light up the stairs toward the offices at the top of the club, Rollerblades slung over my shoulder, a camera crew on the third floor from (unfortunately) VH 1 interviewing power-florist Robert Isabell and the way everyone dresses makes you realize that lime and Campbell's-soup orange are the most conspicuous new colors of the season and ultra-lounge music from the band I, Swinger floats around through the air like confetti saying "it's spring" and "time to come dancing" and violets and tulips and dandelions are everywhere and the whole enterprise is shaping up into everything one wants: cool without trying. In the office photos of pecs and tanned abs and thighs and bone-white butts are plastered over an entire wall along with an occasional face—everyone from Joel West to Hurley Thompson to Marky Mark to Justin Lazard to Kirk Cameron (for god's sake) to Freedom Williams to body parts that could or could not be mine—here in JD and Beau's inner sanctum, and though it seems like I'm tearing down Joey Lawrence 8 x 10s on a daily basis, they're always replaced, all the guys so similar-looking it's getting tougher and tougher to tell them apart. Eleven publicists will work this party tonight. I bitch to Beau about croutons for seven minutes. Finally JD walks in with E-mail printouts, hundreds of faxes, nineteen requests for interviews.

"Has my agent called?" I ask.

"What do you think?" JD snorts, and then, "Agent for what?"

"Loved that piece you wrote for Young Homo, JD," I tell him, going over the newly revised 10:45 guest list.

"Which one was that, Victor?" JD sighs, flipping through faxes.

"The one called `Help! I'm Addicted to Guys!'"

"Point being?" Beau asks.

"Just that you are both very unheterosexual," I say, stretching.

"I might be a homo, Victor." JD yawns. "But I'm still a man—a man with feelings."

"You are a homo, JD, and I don't want to hear another word about it." I'm shaking my head at the new pinups—of Keanu, Tom Cruise, various Bruce Weber shots, Andrea Boccaletti, Emery Roberts, Jason Priestley, Johnny Depp, my nemesis Chris O'Donnell—covering the wall above their desk. "Jesus, it takes nothing to get you little mos turned on. A good bod, a nice face—Christ."

"Victor," Beau says, handing me a fax. "I know for a fact that you’ve slept with guys in the past."

I move into my office, looking for some Snapple or a joint. "I dealt with that whole hip bi thing for about three hours back in college." I shrug. "Big deal. But now it’s strictly the furburger era for me."

"Like that plastic vagina Alison Poole's a big improvement over—who?—Keanu Reeves?" JD says, following me.

"Dude, Keanu and I have never gotten it on," I say, moving over to the stereo. "We're just `good friends.'" I'm scanning my CD rack: Elastica, Garbage, Filter, Coolio, Pulp. I slip Blur in. "Did you know that Keanu in Hawaiian means `cool ocean breeze' and he won the Japanese Oscar for his role as the FBI agent turned surfer in Point Break?" I preprogram tracks 2, 3 and 10. "Jesus—and we're afraid of the Japanese?"

"You have got to stop having sex with Damien's girlfriend, Victor," Beau blurts out, whimpering. "It makes us new—"

"Oh shit," I groan, throwing a CD case at him.

"If Damien finds out he will kill us, Victor."

"He'll kill you if he finds out I'm really opening up my own club," I say carefully. "You will be implicated no matter what. Just, um, slide into it."

"Oh Victor, your nonchalance is so cool."

"First of all I don't understand why you little mos think I'd be fucking Damien's girlfriend in the first—"

"And you lie so well too."

"Hey—who the hell's been listening to ABBA Gold? Oh wait—let me guess."

"Victor, we don't trust Damien," Beau says. "Or Digby or Duke."

"Shhh," I say, holding a finger up to my lips. "This place could be bugged."

"That's not funny, Victor," JD says grimly. "It could be."

"How many times do I have to tell you guys that this town is filled with horrible human beings?" I groan. "Get—used—to—it"

"Digby and Duke are cute, Victor, but so wasted on steroids that it would make them quite happy to beat the living shit out of you," Beau says, then adds, "As if you didn't need it."

I check my watch. "My father's gonna do that to me in about fifteen minutes, so spare me," I sigh, flopping onto the couch. "Listen, Digby and Duke are just Damien's, er, friends. They're like bouncers—What?"

"Mob, baby," JD says.

"Oh Jesus," I moan. "The mob? For who? Banana Republic?"

"Mob, Victor." Beau nods in agreement.

"Oh hell, they're bouncers, guys." I sit up. "Feel sorry for them. Imagine dealing with cokeheads and tourists for a living. Pity them."

Beau loses it. "Pity you, Victor, once Damien sees that goddamn photo of you—ouch!"

"I saw you step on Beau's foot," I say to JD very carefully, staring over at them.

"Who are you protecting, JD?" Beau gasps. "He should know. It's true. It's gonna happen."

I'm up off the couch. "I thought this was all taken care of, JD."

"Victor, Victor—" JD holds his hands up.

"Tell me now. What, where, when, who?"

"Did anyone catch that he didn't ask the most important question: why?"

"Who told you there's a photo? Richard? Khoi? Reba?"

"Reba?" JD asks. "Who in the fuck is Reba?"

"Who was it, JD?" I slap at one of his hands.

"It was Buddy. Get away from me."

"At the News?"

Beau nods solemnly. "Buddy at the News."

"And Buddy says . . ."

I motion for him to go on.

"Um, your fears about a certain photo are, um, `intact' and the, um . . ." JD squints at Beau.

"Probability rate," Beau says.

"Right. The probability rate is that it will, um . . ." JD squints over at Beau again.

"Be published," Beau whispers.

"Be published are, um . . ." JD pauses. "Oh yeah, `up there.'"

Silence, until I clear my throat and open my eyes. "How long were you going to wait until you fed me this tidbit of info?"

"I paged you the minute this rumor was verified."

"Verified by who?"

"I don't divulge my sources."

"When?" I'm groaning. "Okay? How about when?"

"There really is no when, Victor." JD swallows nervously. "I just confirmed what you wanted me to. The photo exists. Of what? I can only guess by your, um, description yesterday," JD says. "And here's Buddy's number."

A long pause, during which Blur plays and I'm glancing around the office, finally touching a plant.

"And, um, Chloe called and said she wants to see you before Todd's show," JD says.

"What did you tell her?" I sigh, looking at the phone number JD handed me.

"`Your poorly dressed bitter half is having lunch with his father at Nobu.'"

"I'm being reminded of a bad lunch I haven't even had yet?" I cringe. "Jesus, what a day."

"And she says thanks for the flowers."

"What flowers?" I ask. "And will you puh-leeze stop staring at my bulge?"

"Twelve white French tulips delivered backstage at the Donna Karan show."

"Well, thank you for sending them for me, JD," I mutter, moving back to the couch. "There is a reason I'm paying you two dollars an hour."

Pause. "I didn't . . . send the flowers, Victor."

Pause. My turn. "Well, I didn't send the flowers."

Pause. "There was a card, Victor. It said, 'Ain't no woman like the one I've got' and `Baby, I'm-a want you, Baby, I'm-a need you.'" JD looks at the floor, then back at me. "That sounds like you."

"I can't deal with this right now." I wave my arms around but then realize who might have sent the flowers. "Listen, do you know this kid named Baxter Priestly?"

"He's the next Michael Bergin."

"Who's the last Michael Bergin?"

"Baxter Priestly's in the new Darren Star show and in the band Hey That's My Shoe. He's dated Daisy Fuentes, Martha Plimpton, Liv Tyler and Glenda Jackson, though not necessarily in that order."

"Beau, I'm on a lot of Klonopin right now, okay, so nothing you're saying is really registering with me."

"Cool, that's cool, Victor."

"What do I do about Baxter Priestly?" I moan. "He of the faggy cheekbones."

"You jealous fuck," Beau hisses.

"What do you mean, what do you do about him?" JD asks. "I mean, I know what I'd do."

"Amazing cheekbones," Beau says sternly.

"Yeah, but what a lunkhead. And I don't want to suck him off," I mutter.

"Hand me that fax."

"What does Baxter Priestly have to do with anything?"

"Enrolling him in a total-immersion English course wouldn't hurt. Oh shit—I've got to get going. Let's get down to business." I squint at the fax. "Does Adam Horowitz go under Ad-Rock or Adam Horowitz?"

"Adam Horowitz."

"Okay, what's this? New RSVPs?"

"People requesting to be invited."

"Shoot. Run through 'em."

"Frank De Caro?"

"No. Yes. No. Oh god, I can't do this now."

"Slash and Lars Ulrich are coming together," JD says.

"And from MTV, Eric Nies and Duff McKagan," Beau adds.

"Okay, okay."

"Chris Isaak is a yes, right?" JD asks.

"The perfect cutie," Beau says.

"He's got ears like Dumbo, but whatever. I guess I'd do him if I was a fag," I sigh. "Is Flea under F or does he have like a real name?"

"It doesn't matter," JD says. "Flea's coming with Slash and Lars Ulrich."

"Wait a minute," I say. "Isn't Axl coming with Anthony?"

"I don't think so." Beau and JD look at each other uncertainly.

"Don't tell me Anthony Kiedis isn't coming," I groan.

"He's coming, Victor, he's coming," Beau says. "Just not with Axl."

"Queen Latifah? Under Q or L?" JD asks.

"Wait," I exclaim, while going over the Ls.

"Lypsinka's coming? What did I tell you guys: we don't want any drag queens."

"Why not?" "They're like the new mimes, that's why."

"Lypsinka is not a drag queen, Victor," Beau scolds me. "Lypsinka is a gender illusionist."

"And you're a little mo," I snarl, ripping down a photo of Tyson in a Ralph Lauren ad. "Did I ever tell you that?"

"And you're a fucking racist," Beau shouts, grabbing the crumpled page from me.

I immediately pull out a Malcolm X cap I got at the premiere— signed by Spike Lee—and shove it in JD's face. "See? Malcolm X cap. Don't accuse me of not being multicultural, you little mo."

"Paul Verhoeven said God is bisexual, Victor."

"Paul Verhoeven is a Nazi and not invited."

"You're a Nazi, Victor," Beau sneers. "You're the Nazi."

"I'm a pussy Nazi, you little mo, and you invited Jean-Claude Van Damme behind my back?!?"

"Kato Kaelin's publicist, David Crowley, keeps calling."

"Invite David Crowley."

"Oh, people like Kato, Victor."

"Have they seen his last movie, Dr. Skull?"

"It doesn't matter: people totally lock on to the hair."

"Speaking of: George Stephanopoulos."

"Who? Snuffleupagus?"

"No. George—"

"I heard you, I heard you," I groan dismissively. "Only if he's coming with someone recognizable."

"But Victor—"

"Only if"—I check my watch—"between now and nine he gets back together with Jennifer Jason Leigh or Lisa Kudrow or Ashley Judd or someone more famous."

"Um—"

"Damien will have a fit, JD, if he shows up solo."

"Damien keeps reminding me, Victor, that he wants a little politics, a little class."

"Damien wanted to hire MTV dancers and I talked him out of that," I shout. "How long do you think it'll take me to make him eighty-six that little Greek?"

JD looks at Beau. "Is this cool or useless? I'm not sure."

I clap my hands together. "Let's just finish the late RSVPs."

"Lisa Loeb?"

"Oh, this will certainly be a glittering success. Next."

"James Iha—guitarist from Smashing Pumpkins."

"Billy Corgan would've been better, but okay."

"George Clooney."

"Oh, he's so alive and wild. Next"

"Jennifer Aniston and David Schwimmer?"

"Blah, blah, blah."

"Okay, Victor—we need to go over the Bs, and Ds, and the Ss."

"Feed me."

"Stanford Blatch."

"Oh dear god."

"Grow up, Victor," JD says. "He owns like half of Savoy."

"Invite whoever owns the other half."

"Victor, the Weinstein brothers love him."

"That guy is so gross he'd work in a pet store just so he could eat free rabbit shit."

"Andre Balazs?"

"With Katie Ford, yes."

"Drew Barrymore?"

"Yes—and dinner too."

"Gabriel Byrne?"

"Without Ellen Barkin, yes."

"David Bosom?"

"Okay, but party only."

"Scott Benoit?"

"Party only."

"Leilani Bishop."

"Party."

"Eric Bogosian."

"Has a show. Can't make dinner. Will come to the party."

"Brandy."

"Jesus, Beau, she's sixteen."

"`Moesha' is a hit and the record's gone platinum."

"She's in."

"Sandra Bernhard."

"Party only."

"Billy, Stephen and/or Alec Baldwin."

"Dinner, party only, dinner."

"Boris Becker."

"Uh-huh. Oh my god, this is sounding more and more like a Planet Hollywood opening you'd never want to eat at," I sigh. "Am I reading this fax right? Lisa Bonet?"

"If Lenny Kravitz comes, she won't."

"Is Lenny Kravitz coming?"

"Yes."

"Cross her off."

"Tim Burton."

"Oh god I'm hot!"

"Halle Berry."

"Check."

"Hamish Bowles."

"Uh-huh."

"Toni Braxton."

"Yes."

"Ethan Brown?"

"Oh, I don't care what's real anymore," I moan, and then, "Party only."

"Matthew Broderick."

"Dinner if he's with Sarah Jessica Parker."

"Yes. Antonio Banderas."

"Do you know what Antonio said to Melanie Griffith when they first met?"

"` My deeck is beeger than Don's'?"

"`So you are Melanie. I am Antonio. How are you doing?'"

"He's got to stop telling interviewers that he's `not silly.'"

"Ross Bleckner."

"Check."

"Michael Bergin."

"Check it out—right, guys?"

"David Barton?"

"Oh, I do hope he comes with Suzanne wearing something cute by Raymond Dragon," I squeal. "Party only."

"Matthew Barney."

"Yes." "Candace Bushnell."

"Yes."

"Scott Bakula."

"Yes."

"Rebecca Brochman."

"Who's that?"

"The Kahlúa heiress."

"Fine."

"Tyra Banks." "It's all I can do to just hold myself until I calm down."

"Yasmine Bleeth."

"I am shuddering with pleasure."

"Christian Bale."

"Uh-huh."

"Gil Bellows."

"Who?"

"He's famous in a, um, certain universe."

"You mean area code."

"You mean zip code. Proceed."

"Kevin Bacon."

"Fine, fine. But please, where's Sandra Bullock?" I ask.

"Her publicist said . . ." Beau pauses.

"Yes, go on."

"She doesn't know," JD finishes.

"Oh Jesus."

"Victor, don't scrunch your face up," Beau says. "You've gotta learn that it's more important to these people to be invited than to actually show up."

"No," I snap, pointing a finger. "People just really need to learn how to embrace their celebrity status."

"Victor—"

"Alison Poole said Sandra Bullock was coming, is coming—"

"When did you talk to Alison?" JD asks. "Or should I even be asking?"

"Don't ask why, JD," Beau says.

"Oh shit." JD shrugs. "What could be cooler than cheating on Chloe Byrnes?"

"Hey, watch it, you little mo."

"Is it because Camille Paglia once wrote eight thousand words on Chloe and not once mentioned you?"

"That bitch," I mutter, shuddering. "Okay, let's do the Ds."

"Beatrice Dalle."

"She's shooting that Ridley Scott movie in Prussia with Jean-Marc Barr."

"Barry Diller."

"Yes."

"Matt Dillon."

"Yes."

"Cliff Dorfman."

"Who?"

"Friend of Leonardo's."

"DiCaprio?"

"He will be wearing Richard Tyler and red velvet slippers and bringing Cliff Dorfman."

"Robert Downey, Jr."

"Only if he does his Chaplin! Oh please please get Downey to do his Chaplin!"

"Willem Dafoe."

"Party."

"Michael Douglas."

"Not coming. But Diandra is."

"I have assiduously followed the shattered path of their marriage. Check."

"Zelma Davis."

"I do not think I can control myself much longer."

"Johnny Depp."

"With Kate Moss. Dinner, yes."

"Stephen Dorff"

"Stephen"—I start, hesitantly—"Dorff. I mean, why are these people stars?"

"DNA? Dumb luck?"

"Proceed."

"Pilar and Nesya Demann."

"Of course."

"Laura Dern."

"Yikes!"

"Griffin Dunne."

"No party is complete."

"Meghan Douglas."

"Somebody needs to hose—me—down."

"Patrick Demarchelier."

"Yes."

"Jim Deutsch."

"Who?"

"A.k.a. Skipper Johnson?"

"Oh right, right."

"Shannen Doherty is coming with Rob Weiss."

"A special couple." I'm nodding like a baby.

"Cameron Diaz."

"What about Michael DeLuca?"

"Yes."

"Great. Let's move on to the Ss."

"Alicia Silverstone is a yes."

"Fan-fucking-tastic."

"Sharon Stone is a maybe, though it `looks likely.'"

"On and on and on—"

"Greta Scacchi, Elizabeth Saltzman, Susan Sarandon—"

"Tim Robbins too?"

"Let me cross-reference—um, wait, wait—yes."

"Faster."

"Ethan Steifel, Brooke Shields, John Stamos, Stephanie Seymour, Jenny Shimuzu—"

"Okay, okay—"

"David Salle, Nick Scotti—"

"More, more, more—"

"Sage Stallone."

"Why don't we just invite the fucking Energizer bunny? Go on."

"Markus Schenkenberg, Jon Stuart, Adam Sandler—"

"But not David Spade."

"Wesley Snipes and Lisa Stansfield."

"Okay, my man."

"Antonio Sabato, Jr., Ione Skye—"

"She's bringing the ghost of River Phoenix with her," Beau adds. "I'm serious. She demanded that it be put on the list."

"That's so fucking hip I want it faxed to the News immediately."

"Michael Stipe—"

"Only if he doesn't keep flashing that damn hernia scar."

"Oliver Stone, Don Simpson, Tabitha Soren—"

"Oh boy, we're in the hot zone now."

"G. E. Smith, Anna Sui, Tanya Sama, Andrew Shue—"

"And Elisabeth Shue?"

"And Elisabeth Shue."

"Great. Okay, what are we playing during cocktails?" Beau asks as I start walking out the door.

"Start with something mellow. An Ennio Morricone soundtrack or Stereolab or even something ambient. Get the idea? Burt Bacharach. Then let's move on to something more aggressive but unobtrusive, though not elevator music."

"Space-age bachelor-pad Muzak?"

"Mood sounds?" I'm flying down to the fourth floor.

"Some Polynesia tiki-tiki or crime jazz." JD flies after me.

"Basically an ultralounge cocktail mix."

"Remember, you have a meeting with DJ X at Fashion Café," Beau calls down. "At five!"

"Any news from Mica?" I call up from the third floor, where it's freezing and a couple of flies merrily buzz past.

"No. But Fashion Café at five o'clock, Victor!" Beau shouts out.

"Why hasn't anyone found Mica yet?" I shout, moving farther down into the club.

"Victor," JD shouts from behind me. "Can you tell the difference between a platitude and a platypus?"

"One's a . . . beaver?"

"Which one?"

"Oh god, this is hard," I moan. "Where's my publicist?"

22

My father sent a car to "insure my presence" at lunch, so I'm now in the backseat of a Lincoln Town Car trying to get Buddy at the News on my cell phone, the driver traversing noontime traffic on Broadway, sometimes stuck in place, heading down to Nobu, passing another poster of Chloe in a bus shelter, an ad for some kind of Estée Lauder light-diffusing makeup, and the sun glints so hard off the trunk of a limousine in front of us that it traumatizes my eyes with a hollow pink burn and even through the tinted windows I have to slip on a pair of Matsuda sunglasses, passing the new Gap on Houston, adults playing hopscotch, somewhere Alanis Morissette sings sweetly, two girls drifting along the sidewalk wave at the Town Car in slow motion and I'm offering the peace sign, too afraid to turn around to see if Duke and Digby are following. I light a cigarette, then adjust a microphone that's hidden beneath the collar of my shirt.

"Hey, no smoking," the driver says.

"What are you gonna do? Just keep driving. Jesus."

He sighs, keeps driving.

Finally Buddy clicks on, sounds like accidentally.

"Buddy—Victor. What's the story?"

"Confirm this rumor for me: Are you dating Stephen Dorff?"

"Spare me, Buddy," I groan. "Let's make a deal."

"Shoot," he sighs.

I pause. "Wait. I just, um, hope I'm still not on your guys-I-wanna- fuck list."

"No, you already have a boyfriend."

"Stephen Dorff is not my goddamn boyfriend," I shout.

The driver eyes me in the rearview mirror. I lean forward and bang on the back of his seat. "Is there like a divider or partition or something that separates me from you?" The driver shakes his head.

"What have you got, Victor?" Buddy sighs.

"Baby, rumor has it that in your possession is a picture of, um, well, me."

"Victor, I've got about a million."

"No. A specific picture."

"Specific? A specific picture? I don't think so, pookie."

"It's of me and a, um, certain girl."

"Who? Gwyneth Paltrow? Irina? Kristin Herold? Cheri Oteri?"

"No," I shout. "Goddamnit—it's of me and Alison Poole."

"You and Alison Poole? Doing—ahem—what?"

"Having a little iced latte while playing footsie on the Internet, you raging fuckhead."

"Alison Poole—as in Damien Nutchs Ross's girlfriend? That Alison Poole?"

"She's also fucking like half the Knicks, so I'm not alone."

"A naughty boy. Living on the edge. Not so nice."

"What is that—Bon Jovi's greatest hits? Listen to—"

"I assume this photo was taken with Mr. Ross's and Miss Byrnes' permission and approval, you nonethical little bastard."

"Me nonethical?" I choke. "Whoa-wait a minute. You peddled Robert Maxwell's autopsy photos, you scumbag. You had fucking Polaroids of Kurt Cobain's blown-apart skull. You had shots of River Phoenix convulsing on Sunset. You—"

"I also gave you your first break in the media, you ungrateful little shit."

"And you're totally, totally right. Listen, I wasn't putting you down. I meant to say I was impressed."

"Victor, you get written about, mainly by me, for doing nothing."

"No, man, I mean it, take it to the limit, that's my motto, so y'know—"

"Successful sucking up requires talent. Or at least a species of charm that you simply do not possess."

"Bottom line: what can I give you in exchange for the photo?"

"What have you got? And let's make this fast. I'm about to be interviewed by `A Current Affair.'"

"Well, um, what do you want to, like, know?"

"Is Chloe dating Baxter Priestly and are you all involved in some kind of hot sicko threesome?"

"Oh shit, man—no. For the last time—no," I groan. And then, after Buddy's suspicious pause, "And I'm not dating Stephen Dorff."

"Why is Chloe doing so much runway work this season?"

"Oh, that's easy: it's her last year as a runway model. It's her big farewell, so to speak," I sigh, relieved.

"Why is Baxter Priestly at all her shows?"

I suddenly sit up and shout into the phone, "Who is this little shit?" Trying to relax, I shift modes. "Hey Buddy—what about, um, Winona?"

"What about Winona?"

"She's, um, y'know, coming to the opening tonight."

"Well, that's an auspicious start, Victor. Oh sorry, my ass just yawned. Who's she with?" he sighs.

"Dave Pirner and the Wrigley's Doublemint gum heiress and the bassist from Falafel Mafia."

"Doing what? Where?"

"At the Four Seasons, discussing why Reality Bites didn't open bigger.

"My ass is yawning again."

I pause, staring hard out the window. "Hurley Thompson," I finally say, hoping he'll let it pass.

"Now I'm vaguely enthralled."

"Um, oh shit, Buddy. . ." I stop. "This is totally not from me."

"I never reveal my sources, so please just tell your master what's going on.

"Just that, y'know, Hurley's, like, in town."

Pause. "I'm getting a little hot." The sound of computer keys clicking, and then, "Where?"

Pause. "Paramount."

"You're stroking my boner," Buddy says. "Why isn't he in Phoenix shooting Sun City 3 with the rest of the cast?"

Pause. "Um, Sherry Gibson . . ."

"I'm getting hot. You're getting me very very hot, Victor."

"She . . . dumped him . . ."

"I'm rock hard. Continue."

"Because of . . . a freebasing problem. His."

"You're gonna make me come."

"And he, um, beat . . . Sherry up."

"I'm coming, Victor—"

"And so Sherry had to drop out of `Baywatch Nights'—"

"I'm shooting my load—"

"Because her face is all messed up—"

"I'm coming I'm coming I'm—"

"And he is now looking for a rehab clinic in the Poconos—"

"Oh god, I've shot my load—"

"And Sherry resembles a, um, oh yeah, `weepy raccoon.'"

"I've shot my load. Can you hear me panting?"

"You motherfucker," I whisper.

"This is cosmic."

"Buddy, I feel like we've become very close."

"Where's Hurley's brother? Curley?"

"He hung himself."

"Who was at the funeral?"

"Julia Roberts, Erica Kane, Melissa Etheridge, Lauren Holly and, um, Salma Hayek."

"Didn't she date his dad?"

"Yeah."

"So he was in and out of the picture?"

"So no photo, Buddy?"

"The photo of you and Alison Poole has vanished."

"For the record, what was it of?"

"For the record? You don't want to know."

"You know, Buddy, Alison just lost the role in the film version of The Real Thing," I add, "for what it's worth."

"Which is nada. Thank you, Victor. `A Current Affair' has arrived."

"No—thank you, Buddy. And please, this was not from me." I pause, then realize something and shout, "Don't say it, don't—"

"Trust me." Buddy clicks off.

21

Nobu before noon and I'm biting off half a Xanax while passing what's got to be Dad's limo parked out front, and inside: various executives from MTV, a new maitre d' being interviewed by "The CBS Morning News," Helena Christensen, Milla Jovovich and the French shoe designer Christian Louboutin at one table, and at another Tracee Ross, Samantha Kluge, Robbie Kravitz and Cosima Von Bulow, and Dad is the thin Waspish dude wearing the navy-blue Ralph Lauren suit sitting in the second booth from the front doodling notes on a yellow legal pad, a folder lying thick and suspicious next to a bowl of sunomono. Two of his aides have the front booth. He should look middle-aged but with the not-too-recent facelift and since according to my sister he's been on Prozac since April (a secret), everything is vaguely cool. For relaxation: hunting deer, an astrologer to deal with those planetary vibes, squash. And his nutritionist has stressed raw fish, brown rice, no tempura but hijiki is okay and I'm basically here for some toro sashimi, some jokey conversation and a charming inquiry about some cash. He smiles, bright caps.

"Sorry, Dad, I got lost."

"You look thin."

"It's all those drugs, Dad," I sigh, sliding into the booth.

"That's not funny, Victor," he says wearily.

"Dad, I don't do drugs. I'm in great shape."

"No, really. How are you, Victor?"

"I'm a knockout, Dad. A total knockout. I'm rippin'. Things are happening. I'm in control of all the elements. You are laughing somewhat jaggedly, Dad, but I am in continuous flux."

"Is that right?"

"I'm staking out new territory, Dad."

"Which is?"

I stare straight ahead. "The future."

Dad stares glumly back, gives up, looks around, smiles awkwardly. "You've become much more skillful, Victor, at expressing, um, your ambitions."

"You bet, Dad. I'm streamlined and direct."

"That's wonderful." He motions to Evett, the waiter, for more iced tea. "So where are you coming from?"

"I had a photo shoot."

"I hope you're not doing any more of those naked Webster shots or whatever. Jesus."

"Near naked. Bruce Weber. I'm not trying to freak you out, Dad."

"Wagging your ass around like—"

"It was an Obsession ad, Dad. You're acting like it was some kind of porno movie."

"What's your point, Victor?"

"Dad, the point is: the—column—blocked—my—crotch."

He's already flipping through his menu. "Before I forget, thank you for the, um, Patti Lupone CD you sent me for my birthday, Victor. It was a thoughtful gift."

I scan the menu too. "No sweat, dude."

Dad keeps glancing uneasily over at the MTV table, some of the executives probably making wisecracks. I resist waving.

Dad asks, "Why are they staring over here like that?"

"Maybe because you have `lost white guy' written all over you?" I ask. "Christ, I need a glass of bottled water. Or a dry beer."

Evett comes over with the iced tea and silently takes our order, then moves uncertainly toward the back of the restaurant. "Nice-looking girl," my dad says, admiringly.

"Dad," I start.

"What?"

I can't really look at him.

"That's a guy, but whatever."

"You're kidding me."

"No, that is a guy. He has that whole, y'know, boy-girl thing going."

"You've forgotten to take off your sunglasses."

"I haven't forgotten." I take them off, blinking a couple of times. "So what's the story, morning glory?"

"Well, I've been keeping tabs on you." He taps the folder ominously. "And whenever I think about my only son, my thoughts drift back to that conversation we had last summer about perhaps returning to school?"

"Oh shit, Dad," I groan. "I went to Camden. I barely graduated from Camden. I don't even know what I majored in."

"Experimental Orchestra, as I recall," Dad says dryly.

"Hey, don't forget Design Analysis."

My father's gritting his teeth, dying for a drink, his eyes roaming the room. "Victor, I have contacts at Georgetown, at Columbia, at NYU for Christ sakes. It's not as difficult as you might think."

"Oh shit, Dad, have I ever used you?"

"I'm concerned about your career and—"

"You know, Dad," I interrupt, "the question that I always dreaded most at Horace Mann was whenever my counselor would ask me about my career plans."

"Why? Because you didn't have any?"

"No. Because I knew if I answered him he'd laugh."

"I just remember hearing about you being sent home for refusing to remove your sunglasses in algebra class."

"Dad, I'm opening this club. I'm doing some modeling." I sit up alittle for emphasis."'Hey—and I'm waiting to hear if I have a part in Flatliners II."

"This is a movie?" he asks dubiously.

"No—it's a sandwich," I say, stunned.

"I mean, my god," he sighs. "Victor, you're twenty-seven and you're only a model?"

"Only a model?" I say, still stunned. "Only a model? I'd rethink the way you phrased that, Dad."

"I'm thinking about you working hard at something that—"

"Yeah, Dad, I've really grown up in an environment where hard work is the way people get rich. Right."

"Just don't tell me you're looking for, um, artistic and personal growth through—let me get this straight—modeling?"

"Dad, a top male model can get eleven thousand dollars a day."

"Are you a top male model?"

"No, I'm not a top male model, but that's not my point."

"I lose a lot of sleep, Victor, trying to figure just what your point is."

"I'm a loser, baby," I sigh, slumping back into the booth. "So why don't you kill me?"

"You're not a loser, Victor," Dad sighs back. "You just need to, er, find yourself." He sighs again. "Find—I don't know—a new you?"

"`A new you'?" I gasp. "Oh my god, Dad, you do a great job of making me feel useless."

"And opening this club tonight makes you feel what?"

"Dad, I know, I know—"

"Victor, I just want—"

"I just want to do something where it's all mine," I stress. "Where I'm not ... replaceable."

"So do I." Dad flinches. "I want that for you too."

"A model . . . modeling is . . . I'm replaceable," I sigh. "There are a thousand guys who've got pouty lips and nice symmetry. But opening something, a club, it's . . ." My voice trails off.

After a longish silence Dad says, "A photo of you in People magazine last week was brought to my attention."

"What issue? I didn't see this. Who was on the cover?"

"I don't know," he says, glaring. "Someone on my staff brought it to my attention."

"Goddamnit!" I slam my hand down on the table. "This is why I need a publicist."

"The point being, Victor, that you were at a fairly lavish hotel somewhere—"

"A fairly lavish hotel somewhere?"

"Yes. In Miami."

"I was at a hotel? Somewhere in Miami?"

"Yes. A hotel. In Miami. Wearing—barely—a bathing suit made of white linen and very, very wet—"

"Did I look good?"

"Sunglasses. Smoking what I can only hope was a cigarette, your arms around two nubile well-oiled Penthouse Playmates—"

"I really need to see this, Dad."

"When were you in Miami?"

"I haven't been to Miami in months," I stress. "This is so sad—mistaking your own flesh and blood, your own son, a—"

"Victor," my father says calmly, "your name was in the caption below the photo."

"I don't think that was me, dude."

"Well," he starts lightly, "if it wasn't you, Victor, then who was it?"

"I will have to check this out, baby."

"And what's with your last name?" he asks. "You're still sticking with Ward?"

"I thought changing my last name was your idea, bro."

"It seemed like a good idea at the time," he murmurs, delicately opening a folder containing press clippings, faxes of press clippings, photos of me.

"This is a quote from"—my father turns a blurry fax over—"from the New York Times Styles section, actually. A smallish article about you, and this pull quote: `In the uterus of love we are all blind cave fish.' Is this true, Victor? Could you please explain the term `uterus' in the context of that sentence? And also if blind cave fish actually exist?"

"Oh boy—a two-parter. Dude, this is so bogus," I sigh. "The press always distorts what I say."

"Well, what are you saying?"

"Why are you so literal-minded?"

"A CK One ad. Here it looks as if there are two guys—though what the hell do I know, it could be two gals—and yes, they're kissing each other and you're looking on with your hands down the front of your pants. Why are your hands down the front of your pants? Is this gesture supposed to tell us that CK One is a reliable product?"

"Sex sells, dude."

"I see."

"The better you look, the more you see."

"Here's an interview from, um, YouthQuake—and by the way, congratulations on making the cover, wearing an eye shadow that's a lovely shade of brown—"

"It's terra-cotta," I sigh. "But whatever."

"—and they ask you who you would most like to have lunch with, and your answers are: the Foo Fighters, astrologist Patric Walker—who is dead, incidentally—and (this isn't a misprint, right?) the Unabomber?"

I stare back at him. "So?"

"You want to have lunch with . . . the Unabomber?" he asks. "Is this valuable information? Do we really need to know this about you?"

"What about my fans?"

"Another quote attributed to you, unless this is another distortion: `Washington, D.C., is the stupidest city in the world, with the, like, dumbest people in it.'"

"Oh Dad—"

"I work and live in Washington, D.C., Victor. What you say and do actually affects my life, and because of what my life is like, it can be acutely embarrassing for me."

"Dad—"

"I just wanted to point this out."

"Spare me, please."

"It also says here that you're in a band called Pussy Beat, which used to be called"—he gulps—"Kitchen Bitch."

"We've changed the name. We're the Impersonators now."

"Oh Jesus, Victor. It's just that whole crowd—"

"Dad, I freaked out when Charlie and Monique tattooed their baby. Jeez—what? You think I'm some kind of delinquent?"

"Add to this that your sister says outtakes of you from that Madonna book are showing up on the Internet—"

"Dad, it's all under control."

"How can you say that?" he asks. "It's just tacky, Victor. Very tacky."

"Dad, life is tacky."

"But you don't need to win first prize."

"So what you're saying, basically, is that I'm a mixed bag."

"No," he says. "Not exactly."

"So I guess more cash is out of the question?"

"Victor, don't do this. We've been over that many, many times."

I pause. "So I guess more cash is out of the question?"

"I think the trust should suffice."

"Hey, New York's expensive—"

"Then move."

"Oh my god, get real."

"What are you trying to tell me, Victor?"

"Dad." I breathe in. "Let's face it. I'm broke."

"You have a check coming in a couple of days."

"It's gone."

"How can the check be gone if you haven't even received it yet?"

"Believe me, I find it a total mystery too."

"Your monthly check is it, Victor," Dad stresses. "No more. No less. Understood?"

"Well, I guess I'll just have to max out my Visa."

"Really smart idea, son."

Amanda deCadenet stops by the table and kisses me hard on the mouth and says she'll see me tonight and leaves without being introduced to Dad.

"How's Chloe?" he asks.