Glamorama (34 page)

Chloe actually lets the doorman buzz me up after the director tells Ashton to give me the rundown so that I’m prepared for the following scene, which is basically that when Chloe skipped the shows she was supposed to do today it caused some kind of horrible ruckus and since
“Hard Copy,” “Inside Edition,” “A Current Affair,” “Entertainment Tonight” and “Nightline” have been calling all morning Chloe is heading to Canyon Ranch for two weeks with Baxter Priestly and in the elevator the director, getting fed up with me, hisses “Look anguished” and I try to but I’m just vaguely unhappy and when I glance uncertainly at the camera it rises up as the elevator doors open and follows me into the darkness of the hallway that leads to Chloe’s loft.

Inside the apartment it’s freezing, even with all the lights burning; the windows are covered with huge sheets of ice, and frost layers the kitchen cabinets and the giant glass coffee table, the floor slippery in places. The phone keeps ringing, competing with the TV in Chloe’s bedroom, and as I walk in to turn it down a promo for this afternoon’s “Patty Winters Show” appears, the host cradling a severely deformed four-year-old while Bette Midler sings “From a Distance” on the sound track, and then it’s back to a soap opera, where a character says to another character, “That wasn’t nice,” and I move slowly over to the bathroom but Chloe isn’t in there. The tub is full of suds and there are two empty containers of Ben & Jerry’s Chubby Hubby ice cream sitting by the sink, next to the retainer Chloe uses to bleach her teeth, which sits beside a large hand mirror that with a twinge of panic I’m about to inspect, but then Chloe walks into the bedroom and I whirl around and the phone keeps ringing.

She’s on a cellular, listening to someone, and looking remarkably composed, she glances over at me as she walks toward the bed, on top of which sits the set of Gucci luggage Tom Ford sent for her birthday, and she says something into the phone I can’t hear, then clicks off, and I reconsider opening my arms and saying “Ta-da!” but instead ask “Who was that?” and then, when there isn’t an answer, “That’s not your phone.”

“It’s Baxter’s,” she says. “He gave it to me.” Pause. “Since I can’t answer my own.”

“Baby,” I start. “Are you okay?” I’m thinking about the hand mirror in the bathroom behind me, wondering if there was anything on it. “You’re not back into …” I let my voice drift off.

It takes longer than I want for her to realize what I’m referring to and she says “No, Victor” but she flinches when she says this so I’m not too relieved.

The phone keeps ringing and Chloe keeps lifting sweaters out
of her armoire and placing them in the suitcases on the bed and she’s moving slowly, deliberately, nodding to herself, every move seemingly mapped out, only slightly distracted by my presence, but then she sighs and stops moving. She looks over at where I’m shivering, slumped in a giant white chair. In a mirror across the room I can make out my reflection and my face isn’t as bruised as I feared. Chloe’s asking “Why?” and the phone keeps ringing, a reminder.

“Why … what?”

“Just
why
, Victor.”

“Baby,” I say, holding my hands up, about to offer an explanation. “You’re a, um, great source of … inspiration to, um, me.”

“I want some kind of answer from you,” she says calmly. “Don’t free-associate. Just tell me why.”

I take this in. “I can dig that, baby.”

“If there was just some speck of feeling in you, Victor,” she sighs, padding over to the closet.

“Oh please, baby—”

“Why, Victor?” she asks again.

“Baby, I—”

“I’m not going to cry. I cried all night,” she says. “I’m not going to cry while you’re here so just be straight with me.”

“Baby, I need … I need …” I sigh, then start again. “Baby, see, this thing—”

“You never really answer a question directly if you can help it, do you?”

“Um …” I look up at her, confused. “What was the question?”

She’s carefully placing T-shirts and panties on one side of the largest suitcase. She wraps the cord of a hair dryer around its handle, then places it in a smaller bag. “It’s taken me a long time to like myself, Victor,” she says, gliding by me. “I’m not going to let you change that.”

“But you don’t like yourself,” I mutter wearily, shaking my head. “Not really,” and then, “Baby, please stop moving around.”

Baxter’s cell phone rings. She picks it up off the bed and listens to whoever’s calling, studying me until she finally turns away and says, “Yeah, okay .… I’ll be ready .… I just need to meet with someone .… Okay, thanks .… Hugh Grant and Elizabeth Hurley? … Okay, great .… No, I’ll be fine .… Yeah, he’s here right now .… No, no, no—it’s okay,
don’t
. I’m fine, really .… I’ll see you then.”

She clicks off, moves directly into the bathroom and closes the door. The toilet flushes twice and then she walks back into the bedroom. I want to ask her who was on the phone so she’ll have to say his name but I already know who it was and in the end I don’t really want to hear her say his name.

“So can you tell me why, Victor?” she asks. “Why did all this happen?”

“Because, baby …” I swallow. “This is hard .… Come on, baby .… This is … all I know? … It’s all … I am?” I say, hoping it’s the right way of explaining.

“Everything you know is wrong,” she says. “Everything you know is
wrong.”

“Oh man,” I sigh.

“Just look at your life, Victor. You’re going nowhere. You know girls named Vagina—”

“Hey, her name was
Yanni
, baby. It just
means
vagina.”

“How many thousands of nightclub booths can you hang out in?” she’s asking. “You just sit around Bowery Bar or Pravda or Indochine complaining about how much it sucks.” She pauses, waiting. “And you do this four times a week?”

“I’m … pretty much exhausted, baby.”

“No, you’re sick,” she says, staring deeply into the luggage, contemplating the arrangement of clothes, hands on hips. “You’re soul sick, Victor.”

“Baby, it’s just”—I raise my head to look at her, confused—“Some bad coke, but whatever.” I sigh, giving up. “It’s irrelevant.”

“Everything is irrelevant with you.”

“I’m … baffled. Why is everyone dissing me?”

“You spend your life trying to impress people you’re impressed with, that’s why.”

“Why should I try to impress people who
don’t
impress me, baby?”

“Because the people you want to impress aren’t worth it?”

After taking this in, I clear my throat. “My … emotions at the moment are a little, um, mixed up,” I whimper.

“You cater to people who don’t really give a damn.”

“Oh come on, baby,” I exclaim. “They just pretend not to give a damn—”

She cuts me off with a look of total disbelief. “Do you actually listen to yourself?”

I shrug, miserably.

“I know it’s difficult for you to adjust to reality, but isn’t it time?” She zips one bag up, contemplates another.

“Baby, baby, this has been like the most difficult week, I think, of my life and”—I breathe in—“this has been so scary, so—”

“Oh, this tiny little world of yours,” she says, waving me away.

“No, no, really, I’m sick of it, I’m sick of it all too, baby,” I say, panting, sitting up in the giant white chair. “I’m sick of being friendly with like people who either hate me or or or are planning to kill me or—”

“Did you actually think you’d get away with this?” she asks, cutting me off.

I sigh, then pause for the appropriate amount of time before asking, “Why not?”

She stares at me, expressionless.

“People get away with more,” I mutter.

“That’s because everyone’s smarter than you,” she says. “That’s because everything you know is wrong and everyone is smarter than you.”

“Baby, that picture … I don’t know what it was but that didn’t happen, that never happened—”

“What never happened?” she asks, suddenly interested.

“What that photo showed,” I say.

“You didn’t have sex with or attempt to have sex with or kiss Lauren Hynde?” she asks. “Is that what you’re saying?”

I consider this, reword what she asked me, then blurt out, “I’m saying that—”

She moves away from me. “Maybe you come to life when I’m not around—who knows?”

I’m gesturing with my hands, trying to make some kind of point, attempting to form even a sentence. “Didn’t you like, um, didn’t you
talk
to Lauren? Didn’t she explain?” I ask hopefully.

“No,” she says. “I like Lauren. I just never want to see her again.” Chloe checks her watch, mumbles an inaudible curse.

I lift myself up from the chair and move toward the bathroom where Chloe’s placing jars filled with creams and oils and powders into
another Gucci bag. I notice that the hand mirror I saw by the sink isn’t there anymore. A razor blade and a small transparent straw sit by a bottle of perfume and I am not imagining this.

“What?” she asks suddenly, turning around. “Why are you still here?”

“Because …” I smile sadly. “You’re … my ideal mate?”

“A mirror’s your ideal mate.”

“Maybe … ,” I start, haltingly. “Maybe if you didn’t expect so much from me you might not be so … disappointed,” I finally admit, and then, watching her reflection in the mirror, “Don’t cry.”

“I’m not crying,” she says, surprised. “I’m yawning.”

And back down in the lobby, on my way outside, dazed, shuffling across the marble floor, I bump into Tristan, an ex-model who deals drugs, chatting with Ashton, and Tristan’s magnetic in a gorgeous kind of way and though I’m totally absent right now I’m able to instinctively shake his hand, make the prerequisite small talk, avoid the obvious (Buddy Seagull’s column, the stains on my shirt, the bruise above my eyebrow), trade compliments about our hair, recommend one or two cool foreign movies, a new band from Nevada (“a really happening state,” Tristan assures me), and then we move on.

Outside, on the steps leading down to the sidewalk, I turn around, and through the lobby doors I see Tristan getting into the elevator and I want to ask him who he’s going to see and then maybe buy a couple of grams but instead I start panicking because I make a connection and Tristan spots me staring at him and he gives a little wave just as the elevator doors close and a horrible vision breaks open in front of me of Chloe in an ambulance, another detox center in the desert somewhere, another series of failed suicide attempts followed up with a successful one and I cry out and try to run back into the lobby but crew members are struggling to hold me back and I’m crying out “No but
why
but
why
this wasn’t in the script” until I collapse and a technician props me up on the steps where I’m still freaking out and shouting “But you don’t understand you don’t understand” and suddenly the director kneels beside me and gently tells the two crew members to let go, that it’s okay,
shhh
.

I’m shaking so hard the director has to hold my face in his hands, steadying it, before he can talk to me.

Basically summing things up, he asks, “Do you really want to go back up there?”

I’m shaking so hard I can’t answer him.

“Do you really want to go back up there?” he asks again. “Is this something your character would do?”

I’m inhaling and exhaling so hard I can’t catch my breath and slowly people start moving away from me.

After what seems like hours I finally stand up when the urge to go back up to the apartment recedes (not all that unexpectedly, really) and over the sounds of construction and traffic I’m still hearing sleigh bells and someone from wardrobe is brushing off my jacket as I head down the steps leading to the sidewalk and the black sedan waiting for me at the curb which will take me back to my apartment where my viewpoint of this project will be, if not exactly clarified, then at least placed in some kind of perspective.

2

Outside my apartment building the
Details
reporter is playing hopscotch, wearing a citrus-colored catsuit, a white leather jacket, platform sneakers, braids held in place by plastic barrettes, and she’s dialing a number on a cell phone, her fingernails half-covered with chipped brown polish. I trudge by her without saying a word, gingerly stepping over the remains of my crushed and mangled Vespa, which lies crumpled by the trash lining the curb, a cigarette dangling from my lips, my sunglasses on.