I click off, finally push in my card, punch in the code (COOLGUY) and wait, thinking about the seating arrangements at tables 1 and 3, and then green words on a black screen tell me that there is no cash left in this account (a balance of minus $143) and so therefore it won’t give me any money and I blew my last cash on a glass-door refrigerator because Elle Decor did a piece on my place that never ran so I slam my fist against the machine, moan “Spare me” and since it’s totally useless to try this again I rustle through my pockets for a Xanax until someone pushes me away and I roll the moped back outside, bummed.
Cruising up Madison, stopping at a light in front of Barneys, and Bill Cunningham snaps my picture, yelling out, “Is that a Vespa?” and I give him thumbs-up and he’s standing next to Holly, a curvy blonde who looks like Patsy Kensit, and when we smoked heroin together last week she told me she might be a lesbian, which in some circles is pretty good news, and she waves me over wearing velvet hot pants, red-and-white-striped platform boots, a silver peace symbol and she’s ultra-thin, on the cover of Mademoiselle this month, and after a day of doing shows at Bryant Park she’s looking kind of frantic but in a cool way.
“Hey Victor!” She keeps motioning even when I’ve pulled the Vespa up to the curb.
“Hey Holly.”
“It’s Anjanette, Victor.”
“Hey Anjanette, what’s up pussycat? You’re looking very Uma-ish. Love the outfit.”
“It’s retro-gone-wacko. I did six shows today. I’m exhausted,” she says, signing an autograph. “I saw you at the Calvin Klein show giving Chloe moral support. Which was so cool of you.”
“Baby, I wasn’t at the Calvin Klein show but you’re still looking very Uma-ish.”
“Victor, I’m positive you were at the Calvin Klein show. I saw you in the second row next to Stephen Dorff and David Salle and Roy Liebenthal. I saw you pose for a photo on 42nd Street, then get into a black scary car.”
Pause, while I consider this scenario, then: “The second fucking row? No way, baby. You haven’t started your ignition yet. Will I see you tomorrow night, baby?”
“I’m coming with Jason Priestley.”
“Why aren’t you coming with me? Am I the only one who thinks Jason Priestley looks like a little caterpillar?”
“Victor, that’s not nice,” she pouts. “What would Chloe think?”
“She thinks Jason Priestley looks like a little caterpillar too,” I murmur, lost in thought. “The fucking second row?”
“That’s not what I meant,” Anjanette says. “What would Chloe think of—”
“Spare me, baby, but you’re supergreat.” I start the Vespa up again. “Take your passion and make it happen.”
“I’ve heard you’ve been naughty anyway, so I’m not surprised,” she says, tiredly wagging her finger at me, which Scooter, the bodyguard who looks like Marcellus from Pulp Fiction, interprets as “move closer.”
“What do you mean by that, pussycat?” I ask. “What have you heard?”
Scooter whispers something, pointing at his watch, while Anjanette lights a cigarette. “There’s always a car waiting. There’s always a Steven Meisel photo shoot. Jesus, how do we do it, Victor? How do we survive this mess?” A gleaming black sedan rolls forward and Scooter opens the door.
“See you, baby.” I hand her a French tulip I just happen to be holding and start pulling away from the curb.
“Oh Victor,” she calls out, handing Scooter the French tulip. “I got the job! I got the contract.”
“Great, baby. I gotta run. What job, you crazy chick?”
“Guess?.”
“Matsuda? Gap?” I grin, limousines honking behind me. “Baby, listen, see you tomorrow night.”
“No. Guess?.”
“Baby, I already did. You’re mind-tripping me.”
“Guess?, Victor,” she’s shouting as I pull away.
“Baby, you’re great,” I shout back. “Call me. Leave a message. But only at the club. Peace.”
“Guess?, Victor!” she calls out.
“Baby, you’re a face to watch,” I say, already putting a Walkman on, already on 61st. “A star of tomorrow,” I call out, waving. “Let’s have drinks at Monkey Bar after the shows are over on Sunday!” I’m speaking to myself now and moving toward Alison’s place. Passing a newsstand by the new Gap, I notice I’m still on the cover of the current issue of YouthQuake, looking pretty cool—the headline 27 AND HIP in bold purple letters above my smiling, expressionless face, and I’ve just got to buy another copy, but since I don’t have any cash there’s no way.
31
From 72nd and Madison I called Alison’s doorman, who has verified that outside her place on 80th and Park Damien’s goons are not waiting in a black Jeep, so when I get there I can pull up to the entrance and roll my Vespa into the lobby, where Juan—who’s a pretty decent-looking guy, about twenty-four—is hanging out in uniform. As I give him the peace sign, wheeling the moped into the elevator, Juan comes out from behind the front desk.
“Hey Victor, did you talk to Joel Wilkenfeld yet?” Juan’s asking, following me. “I mean, last week you said you would and—”
“Hey baby, it’s cool, Juan, it’s cool,” I say, inserting the key, unlocking the elevator, pressing the button for the top floor.
Juan presses another button, to keep the door open. “But man, you said he’d see me and also set up a meeting with—”
“I’m setting it up, buddy, it’s cool,” I stress, pressing again for the top floor. “You’re the next Markus Schenkenberg. You’re the white Tyson.” I reach over and push his hand away.
“Hey man, I’m Hispanic—” He keeps pressing the Door Open button.
“You’re the next Hispanic Markus Schenkenberg. You’re the, um, Hispanic Tyson.” I reach over and push his hand away again. “You’re a star, man. Any day of the week.”
“I just don’t want this to be like an afterthought—”
“Hey man, spare me.” I grin. “‘Afterthought’ isn’t in this guy’s vocabulary,” I say, pointing at myself.
“Okay, man,” Juan says, letting go of the Door Open button and offering a shaky thumbs-up. “I, like, trust you.”
The elevator zips up to the top floor, where it opens into Alison’s penthouse. I peer down the front hallway, don’t see or hear the dogs, then quietly wheel the Vespa inside and lean it against a wall in the foyer next to a Vivienne Tam sofa bed.
I tiptoe silently toward the kitchen but stop when I hear the hoarse breathing of the two chows, who have been intently watching me from the other end of the hallway, quietly growling, audible only now. I turn around and offer them a weak smile.
I can barely say “Oh shit” before they both break out into major scampering and rush at their target: me.
The two chows—one chocolate, one cinnamon—leap up, baring their teeth, nipping at my knees, pawing at my calves, barking furiously.
“Alison! Alison!” I call out, trying desperately to bat them away.
Hearing her name, they both stop barking. Then they glance down the hallway to see if she’s coming. After a pause, when they hear no sign of her—we’re frozen in position, red chow standing on back legs, its paws in my groin, black chow down on its front paws with Gucci boot in mouth—they immediately go to work on me again, growling and basically freaking out like they always do.
“Alison!” I scream. “Jesus Christ!”
Gauging the distance from where I’m at to the kitchen door, I decide to make a run for it, and when I bolt, the chows scamper after me, yelping, biting at my ankles.
I finally make it into the kitchen and slam the door, hear both of them skidding across the marble floor into the door with two large thumps, hear them fall over, then scamper up and attack the door. Shaken, I open a Snapple, down half of it, then light a cigarette, check for bites. I hear Alison clapping her hands, and then she walks into the kitchen, naked beneath an open Aerosmith tour robe, a cell phone cradled in her neck, an unlit joint in
her mouth. “Mr. Chow, Mrs. Chow, down, down, goddamnit, down.”
She hurls the dogs into the pantry, pulls a handful of colored biscuits from the robe and throws them at the dogs before slamming the pantry door shut, the sounds of the dogs fighting over the biscuits cut mercifully short.
“Okay, uh-huh, right, Malcolm McLaren … Yeah, no, Frederic Fekkai. Yeah. Everybody’s hung over, babe.” She scrunches up her face. “Andrew Shue and Leonardo DiCaprio? … What? … Oh baby, no-o-o way.” Alison winks at me. “You’re not at a window table at Mortimer’s right now. Wake up! Oh boy … Ciao, ciao.” She clicks off the cellular and carefully places the joint on the counter and says, “That was a three-way with Dr. Dre, Yasmine Bleeth and Jared Leto.”
“Alison, those two little shits tried to kill me,” I point out as she jumps up and wraps her legs around my waist.
“Mr. and Mrs. Chow aren’t little shits, baby.” She clamps her mouth onto mine as I stumble with her toward the bedroom. Once there she falls to her knees, rips open my jeans and proceeds to expertly give me head, deep-throating in an unfortunately practiced way, grabbing my ass so hard I have to pry one of her hands loose. I take a last drag off the cigarette that I’m still holding, look around for a place to stub it out, find a half-empty Snapple bottle, drop in what’s left of the Marlboro, hear it hiss.
“Slow down, Alison, you’re moving too fast,” I’m mumbling.
She pulls my dick out of her mouth and, looking up at me, says in a low, “sexy” voice, “Urgency is my specialty, baby.”
She suddenly gets up, drops the robe and lies back on the bed, spreading her legs, pushing me down onto a floor littered with random issues of WWDs, my right knee crumpling a back-page photo of Alison and Damien and Chloe and me at Naomi Campbell’s birthday party, sitting in a cramped booth at Doppelganger’s, and then I’m nibbling at a small tattoo on the inside of a muscular thigh and the moment my tongue touches her she starts coming—once, twice, three times. Knowing where this will not end up, I jerk off a little until I’m almost coming and then I think, Oh screw it, I don’t really have time for this, so I just fake it, moaning loudly, my head between her legs, movement from my right arm giving the impression from where she lies that I’m actually doing something. The music in the background is mid-period Duran Duran. Our rendezvous spots have included the atrium at Remi, room 101 at the Paramount, the Cooper-Hewitt Museum.
I climb onto the bed and lie there, pretending to pant. “Baby, where did you learn to give head like that? Sotheby’s? Oh man.” I reach over for a cigarette.
“So wait. That’s it?” She lights a joint, sucks in on it so deeply that half of it turns to ash. “What about you?”
“I’m happy.” I yawn. “Just as long as you don’t bring out that, um, leather harness and Sparky the giant butt plug.”
I get off the bed and pull my jeans and Calvins up and move over to the window, where I lift a venetian blind. Down on Park, between 79th and 80th, is a black Jeep with two of Damien’s goons sitting in it, reading the new issue of what looks like Interview with Drew Barrymore on the cover, and one looks like a black Woody Harrelson and the other like a white Damon Wayans.
Alison knows what I’m seeing and from the bed says, “Don’t worry, I have to meet Grant Hill for a drink at Mad.61. They’ll follow and then you can escape.”
I flop onto the bed, flip on Nintendo, reach for the controls and start to play Super Mario Bros.
“Damien says that Julia Roberts is coming and so is Sandra Bullock,” Alison says vacantly. “Laura Leighton and Halle Berry and Dalton James.” She takes another hit off the joint and hands it to me. “I saw Elle Macpherson at the Anna Sui show and she says she’ll be there for the dinner.” She’s flipping through a copy of Detour with Robert Downey, Jr., on the cover, legs spread, major crotch shot. “Oh, and so is Scott Wolf.”
“Shhh, I’m playing,” I tell her. “Yoshi’s eaten four gold coins and he’s trying to find the fifth. I need to concentrate.”
“Oh my god, who gives a shit,” Alison sighs. “We’re dealing with a fat midget who rides a dinosaur and saves his girlfriend from a pissed-off gorilla? Victor, get serious.”
“It’s not his girlfriend. It’s Princess Toadstool. And it’s not a gorilla,” I stress. “It’s Lemmy Koopa of the evil Koopa clan. And baby, as usual, you’re missing the point.”
“Please enlighten me.”
“The whole point of Super Mario Bros. is that it mirrors life.”
“I’m following.” She checks her nails. “God knows why.”
“Kill or be killed.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Time is running out.”
“Gotcha.”
“And in the end, baby, you … are … alone.”
“Right.” She stands up. “Well, Victor, that really captures the spirit of our relationship, honey.” She disappears into a closet bigger than the bedroom. “If you had to be interviewed by Worth magazine on the topic of Damien’s Nintendo stock, you’d want to kill Yoshi too.”
“I guess this is all just beyond the realm of your experience,” I murmur. “Huh?”
“What are you doing tonight for dinner?” she calls out from the closet.
“Why? Where’s Damien?”
“In Atlantic City. So the two of us can go out since I’m sure Chloe is très exhausted from all dat wittle modeling she had to do today.”
“I can’t,” I call back. “I’ve got to get to bed early. I’m skipping dinner. I’ve got to go over—oh shit—seating arrangements.”
“Oh, but baby, I want to go to Nobu tonight,” she whines from the closet. “I want a baby shrimp tempura roll.”
“You are a baby shrimp tempura roll,” I whine back.
The phone rings, the machine picks up, just new Portishead, then a beep.
“Hi, Alison, it’s Chloe calling back.” I roll my eyes. “Amber and Shalom and I have to do something for Fashion TV at the Royalton and then I’m having dinner with Victor at Bowery Bar at nine-thirty. I’m so so tired … did shows all day. Okay, I guess you’re not there. Talk to you soon—oh yeah, you have a pass backstage for Todd’s show tomorrow. Bye-bye.” The machine clicks off.
Silence from the closet, then, low and laced with fury, “Seating arrangements? You—have—to—go—to—bed—early?”
“You can’t keep me in your penthouse,” I say. “I’m going back to my plow.”
“You’re having dinner with her?” she screams.
“Honey, I had no idea.”
Alison walks out of the closet holding a Todd Oldham wraparound dress in front of her and waits for my reaction, showing it off: not-so-basic black-slash-beige, strapless, Navajo-inspired and neon quilted.
“That’s a Todd Oldham, baby,” I finally say.
“I’m wearing it tomorrow night.” Pause. “It’s an original,” she whispers seductively, eyes glittering. “I’m gonna make your little girlfriend look like shit!”
Alison reaches over and slaps the controls out of my hand and turns on a Green Day video and dances over to the Vivienne Tam-designed mirror, studying herself holding the dress in it, and then completes a halfhearted swirl, looking very happy but also very stressed.
I check my nails. It’s so cold in this apartment that frost accumulates on the windows. “Is it just me or am I getting chilly in here?”
Alison holds the dress up one more time, squeals maniacally and rushes back into the closet. “What did you say, baby?”
“Did you know vitamins strengthen your nails?”
“Who told you that, baby?” she calls out.
“Chloe did,” I mutter, biting at a hangnail.
“That poor baby. Oh my god, she’s so stupid.”
“She just got back from the MTV awards. She had a nervous breakdown before it, y’know, so be reasonable.”
“Major,” Alison calls out. “Her smack days are behind her, I take it.”
“Just be patient. She’s very unstable,” I say. “And yes
, her smack days are behind her.”
“No help from you, I’m sure.”
“Hey, she got a huge amount of help from me,” I say, sitting up, paying more attention now. “If it wasn’t for me she might be dead, Alison.”
“If it wasn’t for you, pea brain, she might not have shot up the junk in the first fucking place.”
“She didn’t ‘shoot’ anything,” I stress. “It was a purely nasal habit.” Pause, check my fingernails again. “She’s just very unstable right now.”
“What? She gets a blackhead and wants to kill herself?”
“Hey, who wouldn’t?” I sit up a little more.
“No Vacancy. No Vacancy. No Vac—”
“Axl Rose and Prince both wrote songs about her, may I remind you.”
“Yeah, ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ and ‘Let’s Go Crazy.’” Alison walks out of the closet wrapped in a black towel and waves me off. “I know, I know, Chloe was born to model.”
“Do you think your jealousy’s giving me a hard-on?”
“No, only my boyfriend does that.”
“Hey, no way do I want to get it on with Damien.”
“Jesus. As usual, you’re so literal-minded.”
“Oh god, your boyfriend’s a total crook. A blowhard.”
“My boyfriend is the only reason, my little himbo, that you are in business.”
“That’s bullshit,” I shout. “I’m on the cover of YouthQuake magazine this month.”
“Exactly.” Alison suddenly relents and moves over to the bed and sits down next to me, gently taking my hand. “Victor, you auditioned for all three ‘Real World’s, and MTV rejected you all three times.” She pauses sincerely. “What does that tell you?”
“Yeah, but I’m one fucking phone call away from Lorne Michaels.”
Alison studies my face, my hand still in hers, and smiling, she says, “Poor Victor, you should see just how handsome and dissatisfied you look right now.”
“A hip combo,” I mutter sullenly.
“It’s nice that you think so,” she says vacantly.