Glamorama (37 page)

The first couple days “at sea” I was in a stupor, still recovering. Was it Saturday? Was it Tuesday? Was I disappointed either way? I compensated by sleeping all the time until alarms blared late one morning and
I woke up, panicking, the reality that the
Details
piece was never going to run hitting hard, and I vaguely remembered something about a lifeboat drill—a reminder I barely noticed had been slipped under my door the night before when I came back from a crummy dinner in the Queen’s Grill. Exhausted, I found the life jacket locked in some kind of coffin in my bathroom, grabbed my sunglasses and ran-walked, hungover, along dozens of empty corridors and down two flights of stairs trying to follow the directions on a badly Xeroxed map until I found a deck filled with old people who were huddled in masses and staring rudely, annoyed by my tardiness as I muttered “Oh, give me a break” and muttered and muttered. “It’s backwards, son,” I was told by an officer, who struggled, fumbling, to untie the life jacket I had sloppily put on. While I stood there, the officer said, “Don’t worry”—patting me on the shoulder as I flinched a dozen times—“you probably won’t need it.” I offered him a Mentos, told him he was a dead ringer for Kurt Loder, which he wasn’t.

I wandered around on what was left of my Xanax and made an appointment for a massage that I actually kept. I did a little rehearsing, nailed a couple of scenes down, but they had already been shot, someone had already commented favorably on the dailies, so that whole enterprise could be construed as kind of a waste. The elderly and Japanese were everywhere, surrounded me at miserable dinners I ate alone in the Queen’s Grill while staring at an issue of last month’s
Interview
magazine because there were new photos by Jurgin Teller of Daniela Pestova contemplating a plate of spring rolls and a Corrine Day photo essay on martini glasses and the entire issue was filled with bruises and scars and underarm hair and beautiful, shiftless-looking guys lounging improbably in front of empty 7-Elevens at dusk somewhere in the “heartland” and all I could think about, holding back tears and wincing, was: that should have been me.

Jurassic Park
was the only movie playing in the ship’s Dolby-equipped auditorium so I ended up in the casino a lot, uselessly gambling away the money Palakon had left me, dropping a thousand dollars’ worth of chips at the 21 table in what seemed like a matter of minutes. In the Queen’s Lounge old couples sat on long couches everywhere, trying to complete massive jigsaw puzzles that they were getting absolutely nowhere with, and I was always getting lost and I
couldn’t find anything anywhere. I’d finally locate one of the ship’s many bars and sit down, knock back a Mai Tai or four and smoke a pack of cigarettes until the strength to resume looking for my cabin wandered back to me. At one of these bars I was so bored I even flirted with a young German guy who in hushed tones kept inviting me to accompany him the next day to the gym—“da voorkoot stashoon”—and I politely declined by telling him that I had just recovered from a humongous heart attack. His response: “
Ja
?”

The next time I saw the German guy I was floating near the rim of the huge whirlpool bath in the spa and after that I sluggishly moved to the thalassotherapy pool and when I saw him saunter over, wearing a silver thong a little too confidently, I bolted toward a private inhalation booth, where I daydreamed about what I was going to do with the $300,000 F. Fred Palakon had offered me to find Jamie Fields. I came up with so many things that I almost passed out and had to be revived with a facial and an aromatherapy session administered by someone who looked like the Crypt-Keeper, as a Muzak version of “Hooked on a Feeling” was piped through the spa’s sound system.

Occasionally the crew converged and the camera would follow me at a discreet distance, shots mainly of Victor on the upper-deck starboard railing, trying to light cigarettes, some rolled with marijuana, sunglasses on, wearing an oversized Armani leather jacket. I was told to look sad, as if I missed Lauren Hynde, as if I regretted my treatment of Chloe, as if my world were falling apart. I was encouraged to try and find Lauren in Miami, where she was staying with Damien, and I was given the name of a famous hotel, but I feigned seasickness and those scenes were scrapped since they really weren’t in character anyway.

The Dave Matthews Band’s “Crash into Me” played over the montage, not that the lyrics had anything to do with the images the song was played over but it was “haunting,” it was “moody,” it was “summing things up,” it gave the footage an “emotional resonance” that I guess we were incapable of capturing ourselves. At first my feelings were basically so what? But then I suggested other music: “Hurt” by Nine Inch Nails, but I was told that the rights were sky-high and that the song was “too ominous” for this sequence; Nada Surf’s “Popular” had “too many minor chords,” it didn’t fit the “mood of the piece,” it was—again—“too ominous.” When I told them I seriously did not
think things could get any more fucking ominous than they already were, I was told, “Things get very much more ominous, Victor,” and then I was left alone.

“I’m … a party person,” I muttered to no one.

Innumerable old people passed by, limped through miles of corridors, slowly lifted themselves up dozens of broad staircases, the lost wandered the decks pretending they weren’t, the ship sailed on.

13

The second night of the voyage I had another boring dinner in the Queen’s Grill. The sommelier I’d befriended by ordering a $200 bottle of semi-decent red wine asked if I wanted to join the Mashioki family at the captain’s table instead of sitting alone and I told Bernard that I simply couldn’t, hinting at an indiscretion I’d committed with the Mashiokis’ eldest daughter, a fat, dour teenager who was always wandering near the ship’s kennels wearing an up
WITH LIFE
T-shirt, visiting her “cat.” The sommelier nodded gravely, brought me another small tin of Beluga, recommended the foie gras, went back to the business of his life while I slipped into my noncommittal dining mode. Afterwards, I dropped another grand of Palakon’s at the 21 table and found the cinematographer, Felix, at the Captain’s Bar, hunched over a giant snifter of brandy and chain-smoking Gauloises. I sidled up next to him and we had the obligatory “ominous” conversation.

“What’s the story?” I asked, after ordering a split of champagne, maybe my tenth on that particular evening. “You’re the guy shooting this, right?”

“You could say that,” Felix said in a thick, not-quite-traceable accent.

“I just did,” I pointed out. “How’s it going? I just want your professional opinion.”

“It is going better than the last one I did,” Felix muttered.

“Which one was that?”

“A picture called
Shh! The Octopus.”
He paused. “It was the third part of a soon to be completed quartet funded by Ted Turner that
began with
Beware! The Octopus
, which was followed by
Watch Out! The Octopus
. The fourth part is called, tentatively,
Get the Hell Away from That Octopus.”
Felix sighed again, distracted, and stared into his snifter. “The third one had a good cast. A very bitter Kristin Scott Thomas, an equally bitter Alan Alda, and Al Sharpton had signed on to play Whitney Houston’s extremely bitter father—the bitter harpoonist.” Felix paused. “David Hasselhoff is the first victim of the octopus.” Pause. “Isn’t it ironic, huh?”

A long pause occurred while I tried to process this information. Confused, I broke it hesitantly. “So-o-o … the octopus’s name was … Shh?”

Felix glared at me, then finally sighed, waved to the bartender for another, even though he hadn’t finished the brandy sitting in front of him.

“How am I doing?” I asked expectantly.

“Oh, you’ll do,” he sighed and then paused before phrasing carefully: “You have a … kind of … nonspecific … fabulosity—oh my god …” He groaned as his head dropped onto the bar.

I was looking around, not paying attention to all the faux-angst emanating from the cinematographer. “This isn’t exactly what you’d call Babesville, huh?”

“It’s about time you gave up your foolish dreams, Victor,” Felix said sternly, lifting his head. “Your world’s a little limited.”

“Why’s that, bro?”

“Haven’t you read the rest of the script?” he asked. “Don’t you know what’s going to happen to you?”

“Oh man, this movie’s so over.” A semi-restlessness was settling in and I wanted to take off. “I’m improvising, man. I’m just coasting, babe.”

“Just be prepared,” Felix said. “You need to be prepared.” He gulped down the rest of his brandy and watched intently as the bartender set the new snifter in front of him. “You
need
to pay attention.”

“This really isn’t happening,” I yawned. “I’m taking my champagne elsewhere.”

“Victor,” Felix said. “Things get mildly … er, hazardous.”

“What are you saying, Felix?” I sighed, sliding off the barstool. “Just make sure I’m lit well and don’t play any colossal tricks on me.”

“I’m worried that the project is … ill-conceived,” he said, swallowing.

“The writers seem to be making it up as it goes along, which normally I’m used to. But here …”

“I’m taking my champagne elsewhere,” I sighed, tossing him a $100 chip from the casino.

“I think things will be getting out of hand,” he said faintly before I wandered away.

In bed I finally had the sense to just smoke a large joint while listening on my Walkman to a bootleg Nirvana tape that Jerry Harrington had loaned me, and the live feed of the ship heading straight into darkness on the TV was the only light in the cabin as a dead guy sang me to sleep, dreams intervening, peaking with a voice shouting out, then fading,
hello? hello? hello?

12

Just another sunny day and semi-balmy but with a constant headwind and I’m at the pool deck holding a towel, wandering around, amiably spacey with rock-star stubble, wearing a tight Gap tank top, sunglasses lowered at the girl with the total Juliette-Binoche-if-Juliette-Binoche-were-blond-and-from-Darien-Connecticut look lying on a chaise longue in a row of twenty: tall, statuesque, killer abs, a little too muscular maybe but the hardness offset by large, soft-looking breasts straining against a white gauzy half-shirt, the prerequisite curvy legs outlined beneath leopard-print Capri pants. On the table next to her, copies of
Vogue, Details
, a
W
Chloe and I are in,
Vanity Fair
and
Harper’s Bazaar
are kept from flying overboard by a small pitcher of iced tea placed on top of them and I’m instinctively moving into frame, hitting my mark. The girl suddenly rummages through an enormous Chanel tote bag—and then—a mascara wand falls from her hand which I gracefully stoop down to pick up—a rehearsed gesture I’m pretty good at.