Vanity (8 page)

Damian ordered another Manhattan. It seemed appropriate.

‘I've got a tab. Um. It's in my wife's name. She's the member.'

Was the bartender ostentatiously hiding a smirk?

‘And your wife's name, sir?'

‘Poppy Evans-Wallace.'

He knew he was being childish. Poppy had insisted on keeping her maiden name for anything professional, which he was fine with really. That was how she was known in the TV world, after all. As it happened, the barman didn't even seem to notice the insertion of Evans, as he gave a little yelp.

‘Poppy Wallace? Omigod, I just love her, she's so cute. They were filming here just a couple weeks back. That show's gonna be a cult classic, y'know. Have the drink with the compliments of the house, sir.'

‘Thank you.' Damian smiled, his heart swelling with pride. Even he, who probably loved and admired Poppy more than anybody in the world, hadn't foreseen her new show being quite such a success. All he had to do was emulate some of that success himself and they'd be sorted. He took his drink from the bartender, thanking him again, and walked back to his sun lounger, fired up and full of fresh resolve to crack New York.

Opening his emails again, he saw there was a new one from Simon Snell, from his
Esquire
address. His heart quickened as he opened it. Surely, Simon, of all people, would respond positively to at least one of the pitches Damian had sent him?

I'm really sorry mate, but with this bloody recession we're just not commissioning from freelancers at the minute. Of course we've got to fill the mag somehow, so everybody with a salary is working twice as hard for their filthy lucre – I haven't left the office before 9 since I started here. Not that that's much comfort to you, I imagine. They were fucking good ideas though. Have you tried
GQ
? Their budget is massive compared to ours. Hope you're having fun in NY – I see it's 90 in the shade today. It's raining here. Plus ça change. BTW I've heard Poppy's show's going down a storm – please give her my congratulations. Sorry about the feature ideas, but I'm sure something will come up soon. Courage, mon ami and au revoir x

Damian took a large swig of his Manhattan, mulling everything over. Of course he'd tried
GQ
– UK
and
US versions. Simon must have realized that. Also, since Poppy's fling with Ben last year, it was very unlike Simon to say anything nice about her – though his Best Man's speech, delivered through gritted teeth, Damian suspected, had been charm itself. His professional situation had to be bad, he concluded. So what to do? If even Simon couldn't pull any freelancing strings for him, he needed another project to get his teeth into. Hmmm. Maybe he could write a screenplay?

Excited now as much by his new idea as the two Manhattans and blazing sunshine, Damian opened a new document in Word and saved it as SCREENPLAY. Then he stared at the empty page for a few minutes. Hmmm, he thought again. He probably needed another drink for inspiration. He drained the dregs of his Manhattan and made his way back to the bar for the third time that hour.

‘Same again, sir?' The bartender was positively effusive this time, flashing Damian a cheeky grin as he started preparing another Manhattan. ‘Hey,' he added, to an enormous blond man standing next to Damian, ‘this lucky guy is married to that cute Brit chick with the new TV show. Y'know, Poppy Wallace? The one they were all raving about last night?'

‘Dude, that is cool,' said the Viking in a clearly Scandinavian accent, turning to pump Damian by the hand so hard his teeth rattled. ‘She is one hot chick. I'm Larsh.'

‘Damian.' He shook back enthusiastically. ‘And thanks for the comments, both of you. Poppy's even more gorgeous in the flesh. She's really clever too.' He was starting to feel a tad sentimental. This bartender mixed his drinks strong.

‘I'm sure she ish, man, sure she ish.' Lars was slurring a little and Damian realized he was in the company of a fellow boozer. Excellent. Damian himself wasn't generally a lunchtime drinker, but with so much time on his hands he was finding it very easy to slip into, and curiously enjoyable. He looked properly at his new companion for the first time.

Everything about Lars was huge, from his head to his hands to his feet, but he wasn't fat. Just … HUGE. Piercing blue eyes looked out from a good-natured, square face, with a beaming smile that revealed big, square teeth.

‘Let me get you a drink,' said Damian. ‘What are you having?'

‘Thank you, man.' Lars slapped Damian on the back, nearly propelling him over the bar. ‘I am drinking schnapps.'

‘Sounds great. I think I'll join you. Two very large schnapps, please, and have one for yourself, mate,' Damian added to the barman. ‘It's on my wife's tab.' All three men roared with laughter at this. The barman gave Damian the Manhattan he'd just mixed (which Damian proceeded to down in one, belching slightly), then swiftly poured three absurdly large tumblers of neat schnapps.

Lars raised his glass and bellowed, ‘SKOL!'

‘SKOL!' shouted Damian and the barman. They poured the drinks down their throats and the barman happily started to prepare another round.

‘So if you want your eggs sunny-side up in east Manhattan, I couldn't recommend a better place.' Poppy winked at the camera. ‘And I have to say this
sunny-side
East Side is an awful lot more sunny – and, dare I say it –
up
than the grey old East End I left behind me in London. They have
jellied eels
in the East End of London, you know, and they are just as revolting as they sound!'

She felt a bit guilty about her disloyalty to her beloved 'hood, but hey. Business was business. And jellied eels
were
revolting. She'd tried them once, for a bet, pissed as a fart as she staggered home from Dalston to Hoxton, clad only in a shocking-pink leotard and laddered purple tights; she'd managed somehow to lose her boots, hat and skirt en route. Poppy had, with an effort, kept the eels down; her fellow reveller, a minor rock star used to three grams of coke and a bottle of JD a night, had puked his guts up.

‘It's a wrap!' said Marty, the director.

‘Really?' Poppy beamed at him. This was only her second take.

‘You're a natural, honey. Go have some fun now. And don't forget – eight p.m. at L'Ambassadeur tonight.'

‘How could I forget?'

As it was Thursday and they'd finished for the week, Marty had suggested that Poppy and Damian join him and his wife for drinks and dinner that evening at the hottest new restaurant in town. The assistant director and his boyfriend were going to be there too. ‘Thanks for this morning, Marty, you're a star.' Poppy kissed him on the cheek and Marty blushed, unable to know how to take this gorgeous yet apparently unaffected English girl, their new star in the making. She was a breath of fresh air, of that he was certain.

Once Poppy had wiped her face clean of the make-up (it might have looked natural on screen, but it felt beyond disgusting in this heat), she decided to go to Greenwich Village and hit all the vintage shops she'd been filming in last week. It was about time she bought some presents for her loved ones, and unless she was very much mistaken, the shops would be falling over themselves to give her a discount.

‘Poppy Wallace!' Sandra, a 65-year-old ex-rock chick with madly teased peroxide hair, a ton of black eyeliner and a treasure trove of a clothes shop, greeted her warmly. She was wearing an original Biba minidress, turquoise tights and purple PVC over-the-knee boots. She looked rather wonderful. ‘Welcome back, doll! Since your show aired on Monday, I've quadrupled my takings!'

‘Really?' Poppy's delight was genuine. All she had done, after all, was get some cameramen in there, while Sandra had been building up this Aladdin's cave for the last twenty years or so. ‘Oh, I'm so pleased for you. You deserve it. This place is to die for.'

The shop's interior was a fabulous juxtaposition of rock chick and over-the-top girly. The walls were painted a grungy matte black and hung with framed album covers from the sixties and seventies – the Stones, Led Zep, Velvet Underground, New York Dolls. (‘It only goes on the wall if I screwed one of the band,' Sandra had confided to camera last week, much to the entire production team's delight.) Mingling with the album covers were beautifully stylized
Vogue
fashion illustrations from the twenties to the fifties.

The matte-black walls were offset by floorboards painted a glossy white and strewn with thick, fluffy sheepskin rugs. Either side of the shop window, sumptuously thick pale pink velvet curtains pooled luxuriously to the floor. Two ornate antique chandeliers glittered overhead, their light refracted against the black ceiling in ever-changing swirls by the disco glitter-ball rotating slowly over the pale pink painted Louis XVI escritoire that acted as the cash desk. Faux-French armchairs and chaises longues had been upholstered in animal print (leopard, zebra and cow), and the two longest walls were lined with rail upon rail of exquisite vintage clothes, ranging from Victoriana to the nineties – almost a century's worth.

Overgrown exotic plants lurked in every corner, except for the one that housed the single, very comfortably sized changing room, curtained off in the same sumptuous pale pink velvet. Inside, a huge Venetian mirror was propped against one black wall and a leopard-print upholstered chaise longue lounged alluringly against the other.

‘Thanks, honey. Ya want some pot?' Sandra offered Poppy
the spliff she held between age-spotted, scarlet-tipped fingers.

‘Thanks, but I think I'll pass today. I'm on a mission to shop! And not even for myself, which makes it so much better. Guilt free!'

‘I get where you're coming from, baby doll. But surely you'll want a couple pieces for yourself too?' Sandra looked at Poppy in an almost coquettish manner and Poppy laughed.

‘Oh, go on, twist my arm then. Seriously though, I really want to get something nice for my best friend Bella. I put her through hell last year and she didn't deserve it.'

Sandra knew better than to enquire further, except to ask about Bella's size, shape and colouring. She rummaged amongst the rails and after some deliberation emerged with a Halston silk empire-line maxidress, circa 1977. It was a deep emerald green, with jewelled peacock feathers creeping up both the floor-sweeping hem and the thick halterneck ties.

‘Oh, my bloody God, you are a genius, Sandra! Really! I didn't even tell you that all Bella's favourite dresses have halternecks! She's got lovely shoulders. She'll absolutely love it!' Poppy flung her arms around Sandra's neck, and it had the same effect as it always did, on everybody. Sandra would be a little bit in love with Poppy for the rest of her life from now on.

‘Yessssshhhh, that is right, David.' Lars tried to focus on his new best mate, his blue eyes substantially more glassy than piercing now.

‘Damian.' Damian tried to pronounce his own name correctly.

It transpired that Lars had been living in the Big Apple for five years, ever since he'd been headhunted from Merrill Lynch in Stockholm at the age of 29. The previous year, along with about half of his fellow emerging market traders, he'd been unceremoniously dumped by the bank. And even less ceremoniously dumped by his girlfriend, a stunning 21-year-old Romanian, who, in retrospect, he realized, ‘loved the banker, not the man'. He repeated this phrase several times to Damian and the bartender.

‘She sounds like a complete bitch, dude,' said Damian. ‘What you need is a proper woman with her own mind, and her own job, like my wife.' He went all misty eyed for a second.

‘Wow, man, you are one lucky guy,' said Lars. He put his enormous arms around Damian in the biggest, strangest (but somehow loveliest) man hug Damian had ever experienced.

‘More schnapps!' shouted Damian, aware that there was something he was meant to be doing today, but not till an awful lot later. It was still broad daylight, so he had plenty of time …

‘Schnapps!
Skol alcohol fer dom som tol!
' shouted Lars.

‘
Skol alcohol … der molisotito … fom!
' shouted Damian and the barman.

After a moment's thought, ‘Hey, dude?' the bartender asked mildly. ‘What does that mean?'

At that the enormous Swede started to laugh so much he was crying, wiping his eyes with his oversized fingers. ‘It means … it means … cheers, alcohol … for those who can take it!'

Damian and the barman also started to laugh so much that great salty tears were pouring down their cheeks. Another macho group hug was in order.

After a bit, Lars said decisively, ‘And now we must shing. Ssshurely, you shing, my brotherssh?'

‘Karaoke? Hey, man, why not? I've finished my shift and probably lost my job anyway!' said the good-natured barman, who Damian thought was called Tom or Tim (or possibly Jim). So they all piled into a great big limo ordered by the equally great big Swede, Damian and the Swede singing ‘New York, New York' at the tops of their voices. Soon they drew up at a seedy-looking place with blacked-out windows and
KARAOKE
in neon letters above the door. The sun was still blazing overhead.

‘It's not the toniest joint in town, but it's the only one in the neighbourhood where you can sing karaoke in daytime. Most of them don't open till seven,' said the omniscient barman. But Damian and Lars weren't listening, as they shouted the final chorus of ‘New York, New York' into the bouncer's face.

‘It's OK, dude, they're with me,' said the barman. Lars, still singing, shoved some 100-dollar bills into his hand.

The karaoke bar gave new meaning to the word dingy, but that bothered none of them. There were only a few other punters, and although it was hard to tell in the gloom, it was fair to say that they were probably in a similar condition to Damian and his new chums.