“I met him after I was chased,” I try to explain. “I met him at Fashion Café after I was chased by the black Jeep? F. Fred Palakon?”
Felix turns to me, looking more worried than bemused, and finally says, “We didn’t shoot a chase scene, Victor.” A long pause. “We didn’t shoot anything in Fashion Café.”
While staring back at the photo, I feel something in me collapse.
“There’s no Palakon in the shooting script,” Felix murmurs, also staring at the photo. “I’ve never heard of him.”
While I’m breathing erratically, another drink is placed in front of me, but my stomach sours up and I push the drink toward Felix.
“I think this is the logical cutting-off point,” Felix says, slipping away.
0
On deck the air felt damp, the sky got unusually dark, almost black, clouds were bulging, distorted, a monster behind them, then thunderclaps, which merited some attention and made everyone feel vaguely apprehensive, and past that darkness, below that sky, land was waiting. On deck I lit a cigarette, the camera circling me, newly supplied Xanax eliminating nausea and distracting tics, and I kept my Walkman on, the Dave Matthews Band’s “Crash into Me” buzzing in my ears through the headphones, spilling over onto the sound track. I sat on a bench, sunglasses on, blinking frantically, gripping a new magazine Gail Love started called A New Magazine until I couldn’t sit still anymore. Images of Marina plunging into the black water, sinking leagues to the calm, sandy bottom, swallowed up without a trace, jumped playfully around the back of my mind, teasing me, or maybe she was leaping off the ship because there were worse things waiting. The hat Lauren Hynde gave me in New York and that Palakon told me to bring was missing, was confirmed “disappeared” after I tore my cabin apart looking for it, and though this shouldn’t be a problem, I somehow knew that it was. I was told by the director that what I didn’t know was what mattered most.
On deck I was aware of my feet moving listlessly past a cotton-candy kiosk opened for “the kids.” On deck the Wallaces drifted by, intent on not dealing with me, and I was unable to interpret the signals their false smiles gave off and my heart continued pounding uneasily but really I was drawn out and apathetic and even that feeling seemed forced and I didn’t fight it and there was nothing I could do. For courage I just kept telling myself that I was a model, that CAA represented me, that I’m really good in bed, that I had good genes, that Victor ruled; but on deck I started to semi-seriously doubt this. On deck the gay German youth passed by, ignoring me, but he never really fit into the story and my scenes with him were discarded and it didn’t fuck up continuity. On deck members of the film crew were dismantling fog machines, placing them in crates.
Europe moved toward me, the ocean flowing darkly around us, clouds were dispersing, specks of light in the sky were growing wider until daylight reappeared. On deck I was gripping the railing, adding up the hours I had lost, depth and perspective blurring then getting sharper and someone was whistling “The Sunny Side of the Street” as he passed behind me but when I turned around, predictably, no one was there. Looking down at my feet, staring blankly, I noticed, next to my shoe, a stray piece of confetti, then I noticed another.
3
14
A street in Notting Hill. In a row: a new Gap, a Starbucks, a McDonald’s. A couple walks out of the Crunch fitness center, carrying Prada gym bags, appearing vaguely energized, Pulp’s “Disco 2000” blaring out of the gym behind them as they pass a line of BMWs parked tightly along the curb on this street in Notting Hill.
A group of teenagers, thin-hipped, floppy-haired, wearing T-shirts with ironic slogans on them, hang out in front of the Gap comparing purchases, someone’s holding an Irvine Welsh paperback, they pass around a cigarette and in the overall void comment unfavorably about a motorbike roaring down the street and the motorbike slows down for a stoplight, then brakes.
Someone who looks like Bono walks a black Lab, snapping back its leash as the dog lunges for a piece of stray garbage it wants to devour—an Arch Deluxe wrapper.
A businessman strides by the Bono look-alike, frowning while he studies the front page of the Evening Standard, a pipe gripped firmly in his mouth, and the Bono look-alike walks past a fairly mod nanny wheeling a designer baby carriage and then the nanny passes two art students sharing a bag of brightly colored candy and staring at the mannequins in a store window.
A Japanese tourist videotapes posters, girls strolling out of Starbucks, the black Lab being walked by the Bono look-alike, the mod nanny, who has stopped wheeling the designer baby carriage since, apparently, the baby needs inspecting. The guy on the motorbike still sits at the light, waiting.
Pulp turns into an ominous Oasis track and everyone seems to be wearing Nikes and people aren’t moving casually enough—they look coordinated, almost programmed, and umbrellas are opened because the sky above the street in Notting Hill is a chilly Dior gray, promising impending rain, or so people are told.
Over a significant period of time the following occurs:
Jamie Fields emerges on the street in Notting Hill, running out of an alley, desperately waving her arms, yelling garbled warnings at people, an anguished expression ruining (or adding to?) the beauty of her face, which is covered with brown streaks of grime.
A cab moving slowly down the street in Notting Hill almost slams into Jamie Fields and she throws herself, screaming, against it, and the driver, appropriately petrified, rolls up his window and speeds away, swerving past the guy on the motorbike, and the black Lab begins barking wildly and the two art students turn away from the mannequins and the fairly mod nanny starts wheeling the carriage in the opposite direction and the nanny bumps into the businessman, knocking the pipe from his mouth, and he turns around, miffed, mouthing What the hell? And then buildings start exploding.
First the Crunch gym, seconds later the Gap and immediately after that the Starbucks evaporate and then, finally, the McDonald’s. Each of the four separate explosions generates a giant cumulus cloud of roaring flames and smoke that rises up into the gray sky and since the carefully planted bombs have caused the buildings to burst apart outward onto the walkways bodies either disappear into the flames or fly across the street as if on strings, their flight interrupted by their smashing into parked BMWs, and umbrellas knocked out of hands are lifted up by the explosions, some on fire, swinging across the gray sky before landing gently on piles of rubble.
Alarms are going off in every direction and the sky is lit up orange, colored by two small subsequent explosions, the ground continually vibrating, hidden people yelling out commands. Then, at last, silence, but only for maybe fifteen seconds, before people start screaming.
The group of teenagers: incinerated. The businessman: blown in half by the Starbucks explosion.
There is no sign of the Japanese tourist except for the camcorder, which is in pristine condition.
The guy on the motorbike waiting at the stoplight: a charred skeleton hopelessly tangled in the wreckage of the motorbike, which he has now melded into.
The fairly mod nanny is dead and the designer baby carriage she was wheeling looks like it was smashed flat by some kind of giant hand.
The black Lab has survived but the Bono look-alike isn’t around. His hand—blown off at the wrist—still clutches the leash, and the dog, covered in ash and gore, freaked out, dashes madly toward a camera its trainer is standing behind.
And on the street in Notting Hill, a dazed Jamie Fields falls slowly to her knees while gazing up at the gray sky and bows her head guiltily, convulsing in horror and pain as a strange wind blows smoke away, revealing more rubble, more body parts, bathroom products from the Gap, hundreds of blackened plastic Starbucks cups, melted Crunch gym membership cards, even fitness equipment—StairMasters, rowing machines, a stationary bike, all smoldering.
The initial damage behind Jamie Fields seems terrible but after a certain amount of time has passed the street really doesn’t look destroyed—just sort o
f vaguely wrecked. Only two BMWs have toppled over—corpses hanging out of the shattered windshields—and where mangled bodies lie, the gore surrounding them looks inauthentic, as if someone had dumped barrels containing smashed tomatoes across sidewalks, splattered this mixture on top of body parts and mannequins still standing behind decimated storefront windows—the blood and flesh of the art students—and it just seems too red. But later I will find out that this particular color looks more real than I could ever have imagined standing on the street in Notting Hill.
If you’re looking at Jamie Fields right now, you’ll notice that she’s laughing as if relieved, even though she’s surrounded by disconnected heads and arms and legs, but these body parts are made of foam and soon crew members are picking them up effortlessly. A director has already yelled “Cut” and someone is wrapping a blanket around Jamie and whispering something soothing in her ear, but Jamie seems okay and as she bows the sound of applause takes over, rising up to dominate the scene that played itself out on the street in Notting Hill on this Wednesday morning.
It’s windier after the explosions and extras are letting makeup assistants wipe fake blood off their faces and a helicopter flies noisily over the scene and an actor who looks like Robert Carlyle shakes the director’s hand and dollies are dismantled and stuntmen congratulate one another while removing earplugs and I’m following Jamie Fields to her trailer, where an assistant hands her a cell phone and Jamie sits down on the steps leading up into the trailer and lights a cigarette.
My immediate impressions: paler than I remember, still dazzling cheekbones that seem even higher, eyes so blue they look like she’s wearing fake contacts, hair still blond but shorter now and slicked back, body more defined, chic beige slacks stretching over legs that seem more muscular, breasts beneath a simple velour top definitely implants.
A girl from Makeup wipes strategically placed smudges off Jamie’s face, forehead and chin with a large wet cotton ball and Jamie, trying to talk into the cell phone, waves the girl away and growls “Later” as if she really means it. Trying to smile, the girl slinks away, devastated.
I position myself on the sidelines, leaning sexily against a trailer parked across from Jamie’s so she’ll have no problem immediately spotting me when she looks up: me grinning, my arms crossed, coolly disheveled in casual Prada, confident but not cocky. When Jamie actually does look up, irritably waving away another makeup girl, my presence—just feet away—doesn’t register. I take off the Armani sunglasses and, simulating movement, pull out a roll of Mentos.
“Been there, done that,” Jamie whispers tiredly into the cell phone, and then, “Yeah, seeing is believing,” which is followed by “We shouldn’t be talking on a cell phone,” and finally she mutters “Barbados,” and by now I’m standing over her.
Jamie glances up and without any warning to the person on the other end angrily snaps the cell phone shut and stands so quickly that she almost falls off the stairs leading into the compact white trailer with her name on the door, the expression on her face suggesting: Uh-oh, major freak-out approaching, duck.
“Hey baby,” I offer gently, holding my arms out, head tilted, grinning boyishly. “Like, what’s the story?”
“What the hell are you doing here?” she growls.
“Uh, hey baby—”
“Jesus Christ—what are you doing here?” She’s glancing around, panicked. “Is this a fucking joke?”
“Hey, cool it, baby,” I’m saying, moving closer, which causes her to move up the stairs backward, grabbing onto the railing in order not to trip. “It’s cool, it’s cool,” I’m saying.
“No, it’s not cool,” she snaps. “Jesus, you’ve got to get the hell out of here—now.”
“Wait a minute, baby—”
“You’re supposed to be in New York,” she hisses, cutting me off. “What are you doing here?”
I reach out to calm her down. “Baby, listen, if you—”
She slaps my hands away and backs up onto another stair. “Get away from me,” and then, “What the hell were you doing at Annabel’s last night?”
“Baby, hey, wait—”
“Stop it,” she says, glancing fearfully behind me, causing me to turn around too, then I’m looking back at her. “I mean it—leave. I can’t be seen here with you.”
“Hey, let’s discuss this in your trailer,” I’m suggesting gently. “Let’s talk in the trailer.” Pause. “Would you like a Mentos?”
Incredulous, she pushes my hand away again. “Get the fuck off this set or I’ll call Bobby, okay?”
“Bobby?” I’m asking. “Hey baby—”
“You’re supposed to be in fucking New York—now goddamnit get the hell out of here.”
I hold my hands up to show her I’m not hiding anything and back away. “Hey, it’s cool,” I murmur, “it’s cool, I’m cool.”
Jamie whirls around and before disappearing into the trailer turns back to shoot me an icy glare. The trailer door slams shut. Inside, someone fiddles with a lock. Then silence.
The smell of burning rubber is suddenly everywhere, causing a major coughing fit that I ease out of with the help of a couple of Mentos, then I bum a Silk Cut from another cute makeup girl, who looks like Gina Gershon, and then I’m lingering next to other people who might not have noticed me at first, until I move down Westbourne Grove, then down Chepstow Road, then I stop in at a really cool shop called Oguri and after that I spot Elvis Costello at the corner of Colville Road exiting a neo-Deco, turquoise-tiled public rest room.
13
Feeling really injured, trying to formulate a new game plan in order to halt vacuous wandering, I proceed to various newsstands in desperate need of a New York Post or a New York News to check out what course my life is taking back in Manhattan, but I can’t find any foreign papers anywhere, just typical British rags with headlines blaring LIAM: MAN BEHIND THE MYTH or A DAY IN THE LIFE OF BIJOU PHILLIPS (an article I may or may not appear in, depending on what day) or CHAMPAGNE SALES SOAR AS SWINGING LONDON LEARNS TO PARTY. I stop by a Tower Records after downing a so-so iced decaf grande latte at one of the dozens of Starbucks lining the London streets and buy tapes for my Walkman (Fiona Apple, Thomas Ribiero, Tiger, Sparklehorse, Kenickie, the sound track of Mandela) and then walk outside into the stream of Rollerbladers gliding by in search of parks.
Rugby players and the whole rugby-player look are definitely in, along with frilly chiffons, neo-hippie patchworks and shaved heads; because of Liam and Noel Gallagher, I notice beards are more in vogue than they were last time I was here, which causes me to keep touching my face vacantly, feeling naked and vulnerable and so lost I almost step on two Pekingese puppies a bald neo-hippie rugby player with a beard is walking when I collide with him on Bond Street. I think about calling Tamara, a society girl I had a fling with last time she was in the States, but instead debate the best way of putting a positive spin on the Jamie Fields situation if F. Fred Palakon ever calls. Thunderstorms start rumpling my hair and I dash into the Paul Smith store on Bond Street, where I purchase a smart-looking navy-gray raincoat. Everything But the Girl’s “Missing” plays over everything, occasionally interrupted by feel-good house music, along with doses of Beck’s “Where It’s At” and so on and so on.
I’m also being followed by a guy wearing wraparound black sunglasses who looks like he should be in a soap opera—handsome, with a too-chiseled chin and thick swept-up black hair—and resembles maybe a moddish Christian Bale, suspiciously blasé in a long black Prada overcoat, seemingly up to no good and vaguely plasticine.
Regrets: I never should have turned down that Scotch ad.
Mental note: eyeliner on men seems fairly cool this season.
At Masako I’m slumped in a velvet booth in back picking at sushi that tastes like ham, and the Christian Bale guy sits at a table for four up front in the deserted restaurant, grinning distantly, a camcorder sitting on an empty chair next to him, and doom music piped in through the stereo system fails to cheer any
body up.
When I walk up to him holding a San Pellegrino bottle, he pays his check and takes a final sip of cold sake, smiling arrogantly at me.
“You want my autograph? Is that it?” I’m asking and then my voice gets babyish. “Stop following me. Just leave me the fuck alone, okay?” A pause, during which he gets up and I back away. “Or else I’ll pour this San Pellegrino all over your head—got it?”
He just answers silently with a so-what? expression.
I watch as he glides confidently outside to where a boxy blue Jeep Commando waits at the curb in front of Masako, its windows tinted black, blocking out the face of the driver. Outside, I take note of various Tex-Mex restaurants, the postapocalyptic mood, my pseudoreality, then head back to the Four Seasons, where all I really want to do is take my shirt off.
12
Outside the Four Seasons obligatory paparazzi share cigarettes, glance idly at me as I stand there pretending to ruffle through my pockets for my room key while they wait for the occasional Town Car or limousine to roll up and dispense anyone snapworthy, which today does not include me. Inside: Ralph Fiennes is shaking hands with a twenty-year-old movie producer who I’m sure someone I know has boned and Gabriel Byrne is simultaneously talking on a cell phone, being interviewed by People magazine and sipping a large cup of tea. In other words: it’s all happening, it’s all familiar. The only void: no message from Palakon, which doesn’t relieve me in the way I imagined it would. I push the door to my suite open, turn on MTV—and with a ping, Everything But the Girl floats through the room, which right now is totally arctic. Shivering uncontrollably I push a bunch of Japanese fashion magazines scattered across the bed into a pile and then I’m flopping down, pulling the covers over me, dialing the kitchen for a protein shake and to see what time the hotel’s gym closes.
Movement across the room causes me to whirl around.