Glamorama (62 page)

Wearing an Armani suit lined with Kevlar, I usher Jamie past the metal barricades the police erected in front of the Ritz because certain Japanese diplomats are staying at the hotel this week and even with my invitation and Jamie’s appearance in the show, “for precautions” we still need to produce our passports so they can be compared with our names on lists that are scanned at three separate checkpoints by the time we get backstage. Metal detectors supply totally inadequate protection, as Jamie slips through them effortlessly.

Backstage is freezing, camcorders surrounding everyone, personal trainers are French-inhaling sloppily wrapped joints and a very mean-streaky teenager who starred in
Poltergeist 5: The Leg
stands, debating, by a table lined with champagne bottles. I’m vaguely listening as Jamie talks with Linda Evangelista about how neither one of them was cast in the latest blockbuster, about a sunrise in Asia, about Rupert Murdoch. Barely able to smile when Linda taps my shoulder and says, “Hey Vic, cheer up,” I down another glass of champagne, concentrating on the models rushing around us, the smell of shit again rising up everywhere, my arm and one side of my neck falling asleep.

A runway has been set up over the downstairs swimming pool for a fashion show by a famous Japanese designer just out of rehab and the show opens with a video of the designer’s boyfriend’s last trip to Greenland, a voice-over blah-blahs about his communion with nature and then the sounds of cold, icy winds are whooshing behind us, melding into Yo La Tengo, and as all the lights become very white the models, led by Jamie, start strolling barefoot down the catwalk toward a giant gray screen and I’m watching her on a small video monitor backstage along with Frédéric Sanchez and Fred Bladou, who produced the music for the show, and to communicate my appreciation I’m tapping a foot. They don’t notice.

At the party afterwards I’m posing for the paparazzi—as instructed—with Johnny Depp and then Elle Macpherson and then Desmond Richardson and Michelle Montagne and then I’m sandwiched between Stella Tennant and Ellen Von Unwerth, a strained goofy expression
lining my features. I even give a brief interview to MTV Taipei but the smell of shit is causing my eyes to water, a black stench filling my nose, and I have to break away from the photo ops to down another glass of champagne, and when my vision returns to normal and I’m able to breathe calmly through my mouth I spot the actor playing the French premier’s son.

He’s lighting a cigar with a very long match, waving away a fly while chatting with Lyle Lovett and Meg Ryan, and without really even trying I find myself approaching him, suddenly aware of just how completely tired I am. One brief movement—I reach out and touch his shoulder, quickly withdrawing the hand.

He turns laughing, in the middle of a joke he’s telling, the smile turning hard when he sees it’s me.

“What do you want?” he asks.

“I need to talk to you,” I say quietly, trying to smile.

“No you don’t.” He turns away, starts gesturing.

“Yeah man, I do,” I say, touching his shoulder again. “I think it’s important that we talk.”

“Get out of here,” he says impatiently. Having lost Lyle and Meg to their own conversation, he says something harsh in French.

“I think you’re in danger,” I say quietly. “I think if you keep seeing Tammy Devol you will be in danger. I think you’re already in danger—”

“I think
you
are an idiot,” he says. “And I think
you
are in danger if you don’t leave here now.”

“Please—” I reach out to touch him again.

“Hey,” he exclaims, finally facing me.

“You’ve got to stay away from them—”

“What? Did Bruce send you?” He sneers. “How pathetic. Tell Bruce Rhinebeck to be a man and talk to me himself—”

“It’s not Bruce,” I’m saying, leaning into him. “It’s all of them—”

“Get the fuck away from me,” he says.

“I’m trying to help you—”

“Hey, did you hear me?” he spits. “Is anybody there?” He taps a finger rudely against my temple with such force that my eyes flutter and I have to lean up against a column for support.

“Just fuck off,” he says. “Get the fuck out of here.”

Suddenly Jamie grabs my arm and pulls me away from the actor, hissing into my ear “That was stupid, Victor” as we move through the crowd.

“Au revoir, dude,” the actor calls out, mimicking the clichéd accent of a young American.

“That was so stupid,” Jamie hisses again, keeps repeating it as she pulls me through the crowd, stopping three, four, eleven times to pose for photos.

Outside the Ritz the Christian Bale guy is at the base of the verdi-grised column in the Place Vendome but I don’t say anything to Jamie, just nod sadly at him as he glares at us. I follow Jamie as we walk along the iron gate leading to the Cour Vendome. A policeman says something to Jamie and she nods and we turn along the south edge of the plaza. She’s cursing, unable to get to our car, and I’m trailing behind her, swallowing constantly, eyes tearing up, my chest sore and constricted. The Christian Bale guy is no longer at the base of the column. Finally Jamie leans into the window of a nondescript black BMW that brought us here and lets it go.

Bobby left this morning holding a boarding pass for a British Airways Paris-to-London shuttle. Our instructions: arrive at the Ritz, appear in fashion show, poison pool with LiDVl96# caplets, let our photos be taken, order drinks in the Ritz bar, wait twenty minutes, leave laughing. Gossip that Jamie Fields might be dating Victor Ward while Bobby Hughes is away might be—as per Bobby’s notes—“an excellent distraction.”

A montage of Jamie and Victor walking along Quai de la Tournelle, staring up at the turrets of Notre Dame, looking out at barge traffic on the Seine, Jamie trying to calm me down as I freak out, clawing at my face, hyperventilating, wailing “I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die,” and she maneuvers us to a walled-off area somewhere on Boulevard Saint-Michel and we end up shooting my breakdown again, near Quai de Montebello, where I’m fed more Xanax. Then a cab takes us to Boulevard Saint-Germain and we’re sitting at a sidewalk table at Les Deux Magots, where I concede, “I’m just wearing uncomfortable socks I bought at the Gap.” I blow my nose, laughing miserably.

“It’ll be okay,” she says, handing me another Kleenex.

“Don’t you want me, baby?” I’m asking.

Jamie nods. “Even though I think you tipped that cabdriver a hundred dollars?” Pause. “Sure.”

“No wonder he whistled at me.”

At the room we always share in Hôtel Costes our bed is already turned down and sprinkled lightly with confetti and I place a .25-caliber Walther automatic on the nightstand and while I’m fucking Jamie she positions herself so that it’s easier for me to look at the videos flashing by on the TV screen, to which with both hands she keeps directing my attention, because even with her eyes closed, Jamie says, she can sense my yearning, can feel the need radiating out of my eyes, the unbearableness of it. She might have felt a spark, she might have wept. I might have said “I love you.”

Afterwards, slouching in a chair across from the bed, naked, smoking a cigarette, I ask her, “What was Bertrand talking to you about?”

“Where?” she asks without pausing. “Who?”

“At Natacha the other night,” I say, exhaling. “Bertrand. He said something to you. You pushed him away.”

“I did?” she says, lighting a cigarette dreamily. “Nothing. Forget about it.”

“Do you remember him from Camden?” I ask.

“I think so,” she answers carefully. “Camden?”

“He was Sean Bateman’s roommate—”

“Baby, please,” she says, her breath steaming. “Yes. Bertrand from Camden. Yes. At Natacha. Okay.”

After I put out the cigarette, washing another Xanax down with a glass of champagne, I ask, “Is Bertrand involved?”

“Is Bertrand involved?” she asks, repeating the question slowly, writhing on the bed, her long tan legs kicking at the sheets.

“Is Bertrand involved in the ‘Band on the Run’ project?” I ask.

“No,” she says clearly. And then, “That’s Bobby’s game.”

“Jamie, I—”

“Victor, why were you in London?” she asks, still staring away from me. “What were you doing there?” Then, after a long pause, closing her eyes, just the word “Please?”

Breathing in, answering without hesitation, I say, “I was sent to look for you.”

A long pause, during which she stops kicking at the sheets. “By who, Victor?”

“By a man who said your parents were looking for you.”

Jamie sits up, covering her breasts with a towel. “What did you say?” With a trembling hand she puts out the cigarette.

I breathe in. “A man named Palakon offered me money to come and find—”

“Why?” she asks, suddenly alert, gazing at me maybe for the first time since we entered the hotel room.

“So I could bring you back to the States,” I sigh.

“This—” She stops, checks herself. “This was in the script? This Palakon was in the script?”

“I don’t know anymore,” I say. “I’ve lost touch with him.”

“He … told you my
parents
were looking for me?” she asks, sitting up, panicking. “My parents? That’s crazy, Victor. Oh god, Victor—”

“He offered me money to find you,” I sigh.

“To find me?” she asks, clutching herself. “To find me? Why did you do it? What are you talking about?”

“I had to get out of town, I had to—”

“Victor, what happened?”

“I came on the QE2,” I say. “He offered me money to sail across the ocean to find a girl I went to school with. I wasn’t even going to come to London. I met a girl on the ship. I was going to Paris with her.” I stop, not knowing where to go with this.

“What happened?” Jamie asks. “Why didn’t you?”

“She … disappeared.” I suddenly can’t catch my breath and everything starts tumbling out of me: Marina’s disappearance, our scenes together, the photos of the boy who looked like me I found in the Prada bag, at the Wallflowers concert, at the Sky Bar, at the Brigitte Lancome photo shoot, the teeth embedded in the bathroom wall, the trace of blood behind the toilet, her name missing on the passenger manifest, the altered photographs of the dinner with the Wallaces.

Jamie’s not looking at me anymore. “What was the date?”

“The date of … what?”

Jamie clarifies. The night I met Marina in the fog. The night when we stumbled back to my room. The night when I was too drunk. The night the figure moved through my room opening drawers as I slowly passed out. I give her a date.

“What was her name, Victor?”

“What?” I’m suddenly lost, far away from Jamie.

“What was her name, Victor?” Jamie asks again.

“It was Marina,” I sigh. “What does it matter, Jamie?”

“Was her name …” Something in Jamie’s voice catches and she breathes in and finishes the sentence: “Marina Cannon?”

Thinking about it, hearing someone else say her name, clarifies something for me. “No. It wasn’t Cannon.”

“What was it?” she asks, fear vibes spreading out.

Which causes me to answer, enunciating clearly, “Her name was Marina Gibson.”

Jamie suddenly holds out a hand and turns her head away, a gesture we haven’t rehearsed. When I move unsurely toward the bed and gently pull her face to mine, an enormity in her expression causes me to reel back. Jamie scrambles out of bed and rushes into the bathroom, slamming the door. This is followed by the sounds of someone muffling screams with a towel. Empty spaces on the bed allow me to lie back and contemplate the ceiling, lights from a Bush video flashing across my face in the dark. Turning up the volume eliminates the noise coming from the bathroom.

30

Tammy and I sit on a bench outside the Louvre next to the glass pyramid at the main entrance where right now a line of Japanese students files by. From somewhere lounge music plays and we’re both wearing sunglasses and Tammy has on Isaac Mizrahi and I’m dressed in Prada black and while waiting for the director we light cigarettes and guardedly mention a trendy restaurant, a place where we drank Midori margaritas together. I’m on a lot of Xanax and Tammy’s hungover from the heroin she did last night and her hair’s peroxided and when someone from the crew asks me a question as we’re both handed steaming cups of cappuccino, I say, “I have no opinion on that.”