Last Night at Chateau Marmont (39 page)

“Brooke! Did you throw Julian out?”

“Did you know your husband was having an affair?”

“Why hasn’t your husband come home yet?”

Good question,
Brooke thought to herself.
That makes two of us wondering the exact same thing.
They shouted and shoved cameras in her face, but she refused to make eye contact with any of them. Feigning a calmness she didn’t feel at all, she first unlocked the outer door, pulled it closed behind her, and then unlocked the door to the lobby. The flashbulbs continued until the elevator closed behind her.

The apartment was eerily quiet. To be honest, she had allowed herself to hope against hope that Julian would drop everything and fly home to talk things through. She knew his days were jam-packed and nonnegotiable—as an approved member of the “cc” list, she received his daily schedules, contact info, and travel plans by e-mail every morning—and she
knew
he couldn’t very well cancel any of the post-Grammy press opportunities to come home a couple days early. But it didn’t change the fact that she desperately
wanted
him to do
it anyway. As it stood now, he was scheduled to land at JFK in two more days, on Thursday morning, to do another round of New York media and talk shows, and she was trying not to think about what would happen then.

She only managed a quick shower and a bag of microwave popcorn before the buzzer rang. Nola and Walter burst through into the tiny foyer in a happy entanglement of leashes and coats, and Brooke laughed for the first time in days when Walter jumped vertically four feet in the air and tried to lick her face. When she finally caught him in her arms, he squealed like a piglet and covered her mouth in kisses.

“Don’t expect the same greeting from me,” Nola said, scrunching her face in disgust. Then she relented and hugged Brooke hard, and together with Walter, the three of them made a funny little tepee. Nola kissed Brooke on the cheek and Walter on the nose and then headed straight for the kitchen to pour vodka over ice with some olive juice.

“If what’s going on outside your apartment right now is any indication of how it was in Los Angeles, I think you might need this,” Nola said, handing a glass of cloudy vodka to Brooke. She sat opposite Brooke on the sofa. “So . . . you ready to tell me what happened?” she asked.

Brooke sighed and sipped her drink. The liquid was sharp, but it warmed her throat and hit her stomach in a surprisingly pleasant way. She couldn’t bring herself to relive the whole thing again, point by miserable point, and she knew that although Nola would be sympathetic, she could never really understand what the night had been like.

So she told Nola about all the assistants swarming, the gorgeous hotel suite, the gold Valentino. She made her laugh with the story of the Neil Lane security guard and bragged about how perfect her hair and nails had been. She glossed over the call from Margaret, saying only that the hospital higher-ups were crazy and she really had missed a lot of work, and waved off the look of shock on Nola’s face
with a laugh and a sip of her drink. She dutifully provided details on what the red carpet was like (“so much hotter than I thought—you don’t realize until you’re there how many lights are beating down”) and what the stars looked like in person (“thinner, for the most part, than in their photos, and almost universally older”). She answered Nola’s questions about Ryan Seacrest (“charming and adorable, but you know I’m a Seacrest lover and apologist”), whether or not John Mayer was cute enough in real life to warrant all the women he cycled through (“I honestly think Julian is cuter, which, now that I think of it, really doesn’t bode well”), and offered a highly unhelpful opinion on whether Taylor Swift looked better or worse than Miley Cyrus (“I’m still not positive I can tell them apart”). Not really knowing why, she deliberately omitted the Layla Lawson meeting, the women in the bathroom, and the lecture from Carter Price.

What she didn’t tell Nola was how thoroughly devastated she’d been when she hung up the phone after being fired. She didn’t describe how icy Julian had been when he told her about the pictures, how it was Julian’s focus on “managing their impact” and “staying on message” that upset her the most. She left out the part where, as they strolled the red carpet, the paparazzi hounded them with humiliating questions about the pictures and screamed insults, hoping to make them turn toward the camera. How could she explain to anyone the way she felt listening to Carrie Underwood perform “Before He Cheats,” wondering if every single person in the auditorium was staring at them and chuckling to themselves—then trying not to remain stony-faced when Carrie delivered the song’s refrain, “Cause the next time that he cheats / Oh, you know it won’t be on me.”

She omitted the parts about sobbing in the car on the way to the airport and praying Julian would beg her to stay, absolutely
forbid
her from leaving, how his tepid, halfhearted protestations were devastating. Brooke couldn’t admit that she was the last to board the flight in the pathetic hope that Julian would come sprinting to the gate, like in every movie, and plead with her to stay, or how, when she finally
walked the jetway and watched the door close behind her, she hated him more for letting her go than whatever idiotic crime he’d committed in the first place.

When she finally finished, she turned to Nola and looked at her expectantly. “Was that a good summary?”

Nola just shook her head. “Come on, Brooke. What’s the
real
story?”

“The real story?” Brooke laughed, but it sounded hollow, miserable. “You can read the real story on page eighteen of this week’s
Last Night.
” Walter jumped up on the couch and rested his chin on Brooke’s thigh.

“Brooke, have you even considered that there’s a logical explanation?”

“It gets harder and harder to blame it on the tabloids when your husband actually confirms it.”

The expression on Nola’s face was one of disbelief. “Julian admitted . . .”

“He did.”

Nola set her drink down and stared at Brooke.

“I think the exact quote was ‘there was the removal of clothes.’ Like, he has no idea how
that
happened, but ‘removal’ took place.”

“Oh my.”

“He claims he didn’t sleep with her. As if I’m supposed to believe that.” Her cell phone rang but she immediately silenced it. “Oh, Nola, I just can’t get the picture of the two of them
naked
together out of my mind! And you want to know the weirdest part? The fact that she is ordinary looking makes me feel even worse. Like, he can’t even claim he was sooo wasted and this hot model just fell into his bed.” She held up a copy of
Last Night
and shook it. “I mean, she’s average. At best! And let’s not lose sight of the fact that he spent the entire evening
courting
her. Seducing her. You expect me to believe he didn’t actually sleep with her?”

Nola looked down at her lap.

“Even if he didn’t, he was obviously trying.” Brooke stood up and paced the room. She felt exhausted and keyed up and nauseated at the same time. “He’s having an affair, or wants to be. I’d be an idiot not to accept that.”

Nola remained silent.

“We hardly see each other, and when we do, we fight. We barely ever have sex anymore. While he’s traveling, he’s always out somewhere, with girls and music in the background, and I never even know where. There have been
so many rumors.
I know every jilted wife on the planet wants to believe her situation is different, but I’d be a fool to think this couldn’t happen to me.” She exhaled and shook her head. “My god, we’re just like my parents. I always thought we’d be different, and here we are. . . .”

“Brooke, you need to talk to him.”

Brooke threw her hands up. “I couldn’t agree more, but where is he? Grabbing sushi in West Hollywood before his late-night-talk-show circuit? Isn’t it hard to ignore the small, simple fact that if he really
wanted
to be, he would be here right now?”

Nola swirled the contents of her glass and appeared to think about that. “
Could
he be?”

“Of course he could! He’s not the president, he’s not performing life-saving surgery, and he’s not guiding the shuttle through the atmosphere to a safe landing. He’s a
singer,
for chrissake, and I think he could figure it out.”

“Well, when
will
he be back?”

Brooke shrugged and scratched Walter’s neck. “The day after tomorrow. Not for me, mind you. New York is already on the schedule. Apparently the dissolution of your marriage doesn’t warrant a line on the itinerary.”

Nola set her drink down and turned to Brooke. “
The dissolution of your marriage?
Is that really what’s happening here?”

That phrase hung in the air. “I don’t know, Nola. I really hope not. But I don’t know how we’re going to get over this.”

Brooke tried to suppress the nausea that washed over her. For all her talk the last couple days of “taking time” and “needing space” and “figuring things out,” she’d never allowed herself to really consider the possibility that she and Julian wouldn’t make it through this.

“Look, Nol, I hate to do this, but I’m kicking you out now. I need to sleep.”

“Why? You’re unemployed. What in the world do you have to do tomorrow?”

Brooke laughed. “Thanks for the sensitivity. I’ll have you know, I’m not unemployed, just
under
employed. I still have the twenty hours a week at Huntley.”

Nola poured herself another inch of vodka and didn’t bother with the olives this time. “You don’t have to be there until tomorrow afternoon. You really need to go to sleep this minute?”

“No, but I need a couple hours to sob in the shower, try not to Google the Chateau girl, and then cry myself to sleep when I do it anyway,” Brooke answered. She was mostly joking, of course, but it didn’t end up sounding that way.

“Brooke . . .”

“I’m kidding. I’m not really a shower sobber. Besides, I’ll probably take a bath.”

“I’m not leaving you like this.”

“Well then you’re sleeping on my couch, because I’m headed to bed. Seriously, Nola, I really am fine. I think I could use a little time alone. My mother was shockingly nonintrusive, but I haven’t had a second to myself yet. Not that there won’t be plenty of time for that . . .”

It took another ten minutes to convince Nola to leave, and when she finally did, Brooke wasn’t as relieved as she’d predicted. She took a bath and put on her coziest cotton pajamas and her rattiest robe and climbed on top of the covers, yanking her laptop into bed with her. They’d agreed early on in their marriage never to have a television in the bedroom—which they carried over to computers as well—
but considering Julian was nowhere to be found, it felt almost right for her to download
27 Dresses
or something equally chick-flickish and zone out. She briefly entertained the idea of bringing in some ice cream but decided it was just too Bridget Jones. The movie proved an excellent distraction, due mostly to her discipline in keeping focused on the screen and not allowing her mind to wander, but as soon as it ended, she made a crucial mistake. Two, actually.

Her first disastrous decision was to listen to her voice mail. It took almost twenty minutes to get through the thirty-three messages that had been left since the day of the Grammys. The shift from Sunday, when friends and family were calling to wish her good luck, to today—when nearly every message sounded like a condolence call—was astonishing. The majority were from Julian, and all included some halfhearted version of “I can explain.” While they were appropriately pleading, none, noticeably, included an “I love you.” There was one each from Randy, her father, Michelle, and Cynthia, all offering support and encouragement; four from Nola at various times wanting to know what was happening and giving updates on Walter; and one from Heather, the guidance counselor at Huntley she’d run into at the Italian bakery. The rest were from old friends, (ex) colleagues, and random acquaintances, and each made it sound as though someone had died. Although she hadn’t felt like crying before she listened, there was a knot in her throat when she finished.

Her second, and possibly worse, amateur move was to check Facebook. She’d predicted that many of her friends would have posted excited status updates about Julian’s performance—it wasn’t every day someone they knew from high school or college performed at the Grammys. What she hadn’t anticipated, perhaps naively, was the outpouring of support directed in
her
direction: her wall was papered with everything from “You’re strong, you’ll get through this” from one of her friends’ mothers to “it just goes to show that all men are as*holes. don’t worry, mrs. a, we r all rooting for u!!!” from Kaylie. Under any other, less humiliating circumstances, it would’ve been
wonderful to feel so much love and encouragement, but this was just plain mortifying. With it came the incontrovertible proof that her private misery was being conducted very publicly, and not just in front of strangers. In a way she couldn’t quite explain, it had been easier to think of the masses of nameless, faceless Americans examining the pictures of her husband and the Chateau girl, but the moment she realized it was also her friends and family, coworkers and acquaintances, it became almost unbearable.

The double dose of Ambien she took that night prophylactically was sufficient to make her groggy and hungover the next day but not quite strong enough to launch her into the blackout sleep she desperately wanted. The morning and early afternoon passed by in a fog with only Walter and the constantly ringing (but ignored) phone punctuating it, and were she not terrified of losing the Huntley job, too, she would have seriously considered calling in sick. Instead, she forced herself to shower, eat a peanut butter sandwich on whole wheat toast, and move toward the subway in plenty of time to get to the Upper East Side by three thirty. She arrived at the school fifteen minutes early and, after admiring for just a moment the ivy-covered stone facade of the town house, noticed a giant ruckus to the left of the entrance.

There was a small cluster of photographers and what looked like two reporters (one with a microphone, the other with a notebook), and they were surrounding a petite blond woman wearing an ankle-length shearling coat, a neat bun, and an ugly grimace. The photographers were so focused on the woman they didn’t notice Brooke.