Namedropper (21 page)

“Yes.”

She opened her green eyes wide and said, “Cool!” like she was in a 7 UP advert, and then she closed them again and fell fast asleep.

Ray was understandably edgy over breakfast. All he ate was some sliced grapes, but he swallowed each one with a gulp and a bulge of his eyeballs, as if he were actually eating syringes with spiders in them. I had a Chateau Marmont French Toast, which was divine. He didn't look at Treena, and I thought, “I'll be fucking furious if you finish with her, after all this, on the third day of bringing her over.” Old Treena could have hitched her way around the country and got an airfare home without taking off her clothes, but spinach Treena was inevitably going to get fucked over by men. She'd
take her clothes off and wouldn't ever see the money. As soon as she excused herself to go to the toilet, I told him that.

I said, “I forgive you, but now you've started, don't you dare give up. She's still my best friend. Don't break her heart. That would be embarrassing for all of us. That would make me hate you.”

I was angry, but I was also intrigued to see how he acted with women he felt romantic towards. I had seen him chat up a girl only a couple of times and he had always been extremely drunk and useless. I wanted to see them holding hands, sharing cappuccinos, and whispering into each other's ears at concerts. I asked him how long he had felt this way about Treena, and he told me from the first moment he saw her. I thought back to when that was. It was a year ago, in my kitchen. He had come to return the video of
My Favorite Year
that he had borrowed from Manny. Treena and I had been up all night eating toffee popcorn and drinking Archers and orange. She had thrown up around dawn, and was now on the counter, wearing a long turquoise T-shirt, sipping Yop and trying to pull the congealed vomit out of her hair. She didn't acknowledge his presence. It was love at first sight.

I didn't laugh at him. I tried, but I couldn't do it. He's a phoney and he has a lot of faults, but in that instance he was not being treacly or untruthful.

“So do stuff together. Don't mind me. Be a couple.”

“Oh, for God's sake, Viva. You're my two favourite girls. I want it to be all of us together.”

“No you don't. Don't lie. You want me to sit on the end of the bed whilst you fuck? Okay, Captain Dostoevsky, tell me this. What do you talk about, when you're not having surreptitious
sex, that is? Does Treena like to talk about Woody Allen with you? Because she doesn't to me.”

He hung his head.

“And tell me one more thing. When you asked me to come here with you, what would have happened if I hadn't wanted to invite Treena? If I had asked to bring Manny instead? Would you have slept with him?”

Tears welled in his eyes and I let it go. Because he could not take it. We two ultra-strong people had sapped each other. Instead of combining their strength, they brought out these terrible characteristics in each other, traits from which they were previously immune. Treena had become boring and subservient, and Ray had become happy-go-lucky.

That night I told her it was okay if she wanted to go to Ray's bed, which she did. I ordered a typewriter to the room and wrote a really bad poem about Drew. I knew, as I was typing the words, that it was bad. I rifled through the fridge. Everything in it cost about five dollars. It was all being charged back to Ray, so I opened everything and licked it, then put it back. It was 11 P.M.

I rummaged through my wardrobe, but felt too lacklustre to dress up as anyone special. I put on my one pair of jeans, sneakers, and a T-shirt and went outside the hallowed doors of the hotel, out into the real world. The real world is no good, I thought, and stood rooted to the spot for a couple of minutes. People stared as they walked past me, in and out of reception, swinging delicate evening bags and smoking cigars. I looked left and right. Left was some road and right was some more road. I went right and found myself, after a few minutes, at the Comedy Store. After a little hassle with the doorman over my
age, I paid to get in and saw Richard Pryor do a spot. He was shaky but absolutely brilliant. It was too smoky. I didn't feel scared. Part of that has left me forever and it makes me very sad. Now I think, if someone wants to shoot me and kill me, they can, so long as I don't see it happening.

I felt itchy and restless when I got back, so I had a cranberry and vodka and a Valium. It did the trick and I sunk into sleep. It pulled me down like quicksand. I held my breath and let go. The next day I felt like shit.

When I met them for breakfast, Ray and Treena had already been to the gym.

Treena was all excited, for the first time in forever. “I saw Leonardo DiCaprio.”

I rolled my eyes. “I'll get the medal ready.”

They were trying to be nice because they knew what they had done was shitty, and I was trying to be nice because I knew that Ray had paid for everything. They were better at it than me, which I found extremely insulting, considering they were clearly worse people.

I went out by the pool and waited until no one was looking and then pulled off my dress and jumped in the water. I was wearing a white one-piece with a keyhole cut beneath the bust, exactly like Liz in
Suddenly, Last Summer
. I knew it looked really good and, frankly, I was a bit embarrassed. When I pulled myself over the side, I saw that Dillon from Skyline was lying on a chair watching me. I adjusted my swimsuit and he waved me over.

“You're Ray's friend, aren't you?” He had a whiney voice for such a good singer.

“Yes. But not like that. God, no.”

I slicked my hair back from my eyes. He grinned and clicked his fingers. “You look like Elizabeth Taylor in
Suddenly, Last Summer
.”

“I do.”

I meant to say “I do?” but I was so shocked that he could tell who I was dressed as that it came out all wrong. Like when you mean to say “Hello, how are you?” and it comes out “Hello, I hate you.” I was standing over him and he had one hand over his eyes. Attack of the fifty-foot swimsuit.

“So, Dillon, what have you been up to?”

“I saw Leonardo DiCaprio having breakfast. I was going to twat the cunt.”

“My best girlfriend is having an affair with my best boyfriend.”

“Oh.” He clicked his fingers again. “You win.”

I felt really stupid, standing there having a conversation with a guy in an anorak whilst I was wearing a white swimsuit rendered see-through by the water. And I was dripping on his sneakers. I tried to think of some way to get away. “Where's your girlfriend?”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Which one?”

“The one from Brighton who was on the cover of Italian
Vogue
.”

“Brighton, Brighton, Brighton …” he repeated, as if it were the chorus in a techno anthem. “Oh, she's not my girlfriend. Rather, I have a girlfriend and it is not she. Nah, she's just a bird I know. Do you wanna grab a chair?”

Not especially. But, let's face it, I didn't have anyone else to talk to. No one had tried to be my sugar daddy or put me in their film yet. So I sat down and attempted to arrange myself
so my thighs looked good, but whichever way I put them, they looked like they were about to take over the world. So I pushed the seat into a reclining position, lay down next to him, and pulled a towel over the whole of me, right up to my neck. His anorak was zipped up to the top, even though it was at least eighty-five degrees. I hoped he was topless underneath. He had on long shorts, which made him look double funny.

He fiddled with the zip. “I was just going to order from the menu. Do you want to have a look?”

I peered at it cautiously. Salads of baby tomatoes. Steamed vegetables. Fruit purée. Extra-creamy carrot cake. Oh, fuck it, I thought, I don't fancy him. I'll have what I want. “I like carrot cake.”

“So do I.”

“And chocolate cake.”

“Cool.” He beamed. “Let's have 'em both.”

To be polite, I asked him about his various girlfriends, which, when I thought about it later, was not really very polite at all. He didn't care.

“I bet your friend from Italian
Vogue
doesn't eat chocolate cake.”

“Nah, she doesn't. Boring bitch. But my proper girlfriend does. Tons of it. Eats it every minute of the day.”

I was intrigued by his notion of “proper” and “not proper” girlfriends, like the latter category all had green slime instead of blood.

“I've been with my real girlfriend for five years. She's great. I completely dig her and respect her and want to spend the
rest of my life with her. But I can't say I've ever been in love at any point in my life.”

I wondered why he was telling me this and could only assume he must be very drunk. He kept wiping his nose with his sleeve.

“You sleep around, I take it?” I made it sound like “You have sugar with your tea, I take it?” He responded appropriately.

“Oh yes. Definitely. All the time.”

What a freak. I wanted to get up and leave, but I found him quite compelling. Here was a pop star in excelsis. Telling a complete stranger his life story, as if everyone cared, not just his manager, accountant, drummer, and lawyer. Although I could see how he got confused. As we waited for our cake, Dillon told me that his girlfriend was a nursery school teacher and the first girl he'd ever kissed. They didn't live together—she still lived with her mother, to whom he felt very close. She hardly ever bothered to watch Skyline play because it wasn't her kind of music. He swore he would stop fooling around the minute he married her and that he would marry her in a flash if she would only agree.

“You see? I get infatuated with people and then I feel guilty. She doesn't know. I'll never leave her, but I have to be with other women. It makes our relationship stronger. I'm weak.” He smiled, as if it were something to be proud of.

How very Victorian. One kind of sex that you have with fans and models, and one kind that you have with your girlfriend. What a sickening idea. By the time my two cakes arrived, I could barely swallow a mouthful.

“Eat up,” he said, motioning to the cake. “I'm disappointed in you.”

I squinted at him. “How can you be disappointed in me? If you don't know me, how can you expect anything of me? We only just met.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “I'm easily disappointed.”

“So am I,” I said, starting to like him a little more than I had planned to, and suddenly determined to eat as much cake as I could. “So, let me get this straight. You get to sleep with hundreds of beautiful women and then you say, ‘Hey, babe, sorry, but I can't give you my number because I've got a girlfriend who I love and adore.' Jesus. How cunning. And how much I admire you for it.”

He started to laugh, a big booming, forgiving laugh. And I looked at him, in his zipped-up anorak and knee-length shorts, with his multitude of flings and his faithful long-term girlfriend, and I started to giggle uncontrollably. Our laughs mingled like a Mamas and Papas harmony. As we were hitting a high note, Ray came clomping along with his Ray-Bans perched on his nose. I was shocked at how American he looked.

He looked at us curiously, then turned away from me and said, “All right, Dillon? I'm staying in John Belushi's room.”

“No you're not,” I barked. “You're staying next door to where John Belushi died. Tell the truth. Next you'll be saying you are John Belushi.” In light of recent events, I felt it my duty to become the guardian of justice. Dillon and I started laughing again.

That night Ray had a dinner with his U.S. press officer and Treena and I were forced to spend more quality time together.
I wanted to ask her sex questions: What was it like? What was he like? Didn't she find the hair on his neck a turnoff? How big was it? How did it happen? Was she in love? But I didn't. I asked her what she thought of the lipstick I had on, and she asked me if I wanted a stick of chewing gum.

I pulled on a cardigan and, in homage to Dillon, did it up to the top. We walked silently to the gigantic Virgin Megastore ten minutes up the road. It was so big it even housed a five-screen cinema. I wanted to see a film, but Treena said she was too jet-lagged to sit through anything. But not too jet-lagged to have animal sex all night. I bit my tongue. I really did and blood trickled down my chin. We went to the restroom and I stuffed my mouth with tissue. I knew she was ashamed to be seen with me. I wanted to stick a note in her mouth that read: “Really, she deserves to be seen with me because she stole my best friend.” We bought a couple of CDs for the player in the room. Me: Cat Stevens, Kris Kristofferson, the soundtrack to
On the Town
. She: Toni Braxton.

“Be sure to play that to Ray when we get back. He loves Toni Braxton.”

Treena turned her full attention on me for the first time in forever. “Does he?” She beamed hopefully.

I very slowly placed my hand on her shoulder and fixed her with my worst Nurse Ratchett face. “No.”

I bought seven videos, even though I knew I wouldn't be able to watch them on my tape recorder at home. I liked the boxes. I like American lighting. It's always much too bright. Such forced hope. By the time I finished picking out my films, Treena was standing sullenly in the magazine section and my tummy was rumbling like an earthquake in a disaster movie.

We asked the twelve-year-old boy on checkout if he knew of a good restaurant nearby, thinking we could use Ray's credit card to get fancy. He directed us to Carney's, an enormous trailer with a café inside. I should have known from the name that it wasn't going to be contemporary French cuisine or raw fish. Thank God. Instead, we got enormous platefuls of chili, cheeseburgers, wet fries, and chocolate shakes in tall glasses. The food was brilliant. I kept nudging Treena and murmuring, “Isn't this incredible?” She nodded halfheartedly.

People have a hard time accepting that the best is the best, no matter what it's at: whether it's the best spit bubble, the best burp, the best graffiti, or the best handstand. If I had done a handstand in my History exam instead of just sitting there, I hope the adjudicator would have had the class to say: “Viva, you're clearly failing in History, but that is the best handstand I've ever seen.” The best cheeseburger and fries is every bit as worthy as the best grilled swordfish.