Bentley pauses, considers something. “Can I ask you something, Victor?”
“Shoot.”
Bentley shakes his head side to side slowly and in a low voice warns, “Oh, you shouldn’t suggest that.”
“I meant”—I clear my throat—“go ahead.”
Bentley clears his throat lightly, then asks, totally serious, “Are you still dating Stephen Dorff?”
Jamie suddenly flops down between us as I’m coughing up the tequila punch, taking in air. “There’s a croquet game on the sixth floor and accessories on five,” she says, kissing Bentley on the cheek.
“Hello, darling,” Bentley says, kissing her back.
“Why are you choking?” Jamie asks me. “Why is he choking?” she asks Bentley, and then, “Oh Bentley, what did you do?”
“Moi?” Bentley whines. “Oh, just asked a personal question that got exactly the kind of response that satisfied me immensely.”
“I didn’t answer any question,” I croak, wiping my mouth.
“Well, give Bentley an answer now, baby,” Bentley says.
Playing along—but also panicked—I shrug. “Maybe it’s true.”
Bentley takes this in calmly, then, totally deadpan, his eyes closed with pain and longing, asks, “Would you move in with me, please?”
“How disco, baby,” I say, recovering. “But I’m, um”—I glance over at Jamie, who seems like she could care less—“involved.”
Another long pause on Bentley’s part, during which he tosses back what’s left of the chilled rum and gathers his thoughts. “Well, then,” he asks, “can I … watch?”
“Er, no.”
“He was looking through your purse, Jamie,” Bentley says, immediately sober, pointing a finger at me.
“Hey, I was looking for the coke,” I say.
“Jesus, Victor,” she says, reaching into a jacket pocket. “Here. You don’t need to go through my things.” But the annoyance lasts only a millisecond because she’s waving back at Iris Palmer and Honor Fraser, while Bentley bows his head, raising his empty glass.
“Iris looks fabulous,” Jamie murmurs.
“How do you and Mr. Ward know each other, Jamie?” Bentley asks, leaning over. “And I’ll leave him alone—I promise. It’s just that I was flirting with Harry Nuttall all evening and then I had my sights set on Robbie but it’s all just been intolerably arid—” And then, squinting into the crowd, “Oh my god, who invited Zandra Rhodes?”
“We went to Camden College together, Bentley,” Jamie says. “However, I graduated.” She turns to me. “Did you?”
“Oh, that’s right,” Bentley says. “Bobby told me that.”
“Who’s Bobby, baby?” I’m asking, trying to get her attention.
Bentley suddenly pretends to be looking around, “busying himself,” his eyes widening exaggeratedly, and over his shoulder the Japanese guy keeps staring in such a strange way that it’s starting to cause me major discomfort and maybe Jamie notices this too because she leans in, blocking the view, and kisses me softly on the lips and maybe that’s an answer to the Bobby inquiry. While I’m staring into Jamie’s face—her expression saying basically “hey, it’s okay”—Bentley dramatically clears his throat and Jamie pulls back, almost shamefully. Again I’m left staring at the Japanese guy.
“So Victor,” Bentley says, staring at me with all the subtlety of a raven, “what do you think of London?”
“Phony Beatlemania has bitten the dust, I see.”
“How tongue-in-chic.”
“Hey Joaquin, hey man,” I call out, waving Joaquin Phoenix over, and he’s dressed in a brown Prada suit and has his hair swept back and he shakes my hand and, recognizing Jamie, kisses her on the cheek and nods briefly at Bentley.
“Hey, how’s this party, man?” I’m asking. “Wild, huh?”
“It’s very … unstuffy,” Joaquin says, giving the party behind him a cursory look. “I kind of like it. Better than last night, huh?”
“Yeah man,” I’m saying. “So what are you doing in town, man?”
Joaquin flinches, pretends he didn’t hear me. “What?”
“What are you doing in town, man?” I ask, staring up into his face.
“Uh, Victor, man,” Joaquin says. “I told you last night I’m shooting that John Hughes movie in Hampstead.”
“Oh,” I say. “Yeah, yeah, that’s right.”
“Did you two see each other last night?” Bentley asks, suddenly paying close attention, emphasis on all the wrong places.
“We were at Annabel’s,” Joaquin sighs, scratching at a sideburn. “It was a party for Jarvis Cocker that Catrina Skepper threw.” He takes a sip from a bottle of Tsingtao.
“Man, I guess I’m just like, um, really … jet-lagged,” I say, forcing a casual grin. “Yeah, that was such a fun party.”
“It was okay.” Joaquin shrugs.
He doesn’t stay long because Iris Palmer and Bella Freud whisk him away and Bentley lights another cigarette for Jamie, who’s just staring on a continuous basis in a very hard, weird way at me, as if she’s trying to figure something out. I play along by cocking my head, looking confused, grinning dumbly, fooling around with my own cigarette that Bentley insists on trying to light, shrugging my shoulders guy-like.
“I think Joaquin’s harelip is fabulous,” Bentley intones dramatically.
“Why did you tell him you were at Annabel’s last night?” Jamie asks me.
“Because, baby, I was,” I say. “Yeah, Jarvis and I hung out and then Joaquin and I, er, hung out some more and … it was just like clowns to the left of us, jokers to the right, y’know, baby?”
Jamie nods, inhales on the cigarette, then says, “But you weren’t there, Victor.”
“Hey, how do you know, baby?” I’m asking.
“Because I was there, Victor,” she says.
A long pause and then, feigning outrage, I ask, “And you didn’t say hello? Jesus, baby.”
“I didn’t say hello, Victor, because you were not there,” Jamie says. “I would’ve remembered if you had been there, Victor.”
“Well, Joaquin says he saw me there—so hey.” I lift my arms up, shrugging, hoping this gesture will do for an answer. “Maybe you didn’t see me.”
Bentley’s pulling white roses out of chrome vases, smelling them, fastening one to his lapel, squinting out at the rest of the room, at the extras sweeping past. Jamie keeps staring at me. I’m nodding my head to the music, trying to get a grip.
“What are you doing in London, Victor?” Jamie asks.
“Having a fly time, bay-bee,” I say, leaning up into her face, kissing her again on the lips, this time harder, a tongue slipping through. Jamie kisses back but suddenly it’s broken because of shadows standing over us and someone saying, “Kula Shaker’s performing on the sixth floor.”
Above us is this impossibly gorgeous couple, smiling wryly at Jamie as if she’d just done something wrong, and the girl is wearing a white Yohji Yamamoto sheer slip dress and I vaguely recognize her as Tammy, this model from Kentucky, and she’s holding hands with Bruce Rhinebeck, also model handsome and wearing a shiny Gucci fitted suit with a Dolce & Gabbana leather jacket over it and he automatically hands Jamie the joint they’re sharing.
“And word is flashing about that the DJ on the roof is Laurent Garnier,” Bruce says. “Sounds crunchy, huh?”
“Hey guys,” Jamie says, and then, an afterthought, “Oh, this is Victor Ward.”
“Ah, terrific,” Bruce says, not ungentlemanly. “Another expatriate.”
“Nice eyebrows, bud,” I tell Bruce.
“Thanks,” he says. “They’re mine.”
“We’re bored and need to split,” Tammy says.
“Can we go to Speed tonight?” Bentley asks. “LTJ Bukem is spinning. Or we can stay here because I think I’m having the time of my life.”
“I’ve had the most terrible day,” Tammy says. “I just want to go home and collapse.”
“What are you drinking?” Jamie
asks, taking the glass out of Tammy’s hand. “Can I have a sip?”
“It’s rum, tonic and lime juice,” Tammy says. “We overheard somewhere that it’s the new drink of the decade.”
“Drink of the decade?” Bentley groans. “Oh, how horribly disgusting. What horribly disgusting person so named that measly little cocktail?”
“Actually it was Stella McCartney,” Tammy says.
“Oh, she’s wonderful,” Bentley says, sitting up. “I love Stella—ooh, let me have a sip.” He smacks his lips after tasting the drink. “Oh my god—I think Stella’s right. This little baby is the new drink of the decade. Jamie—alert the media. Somebody—nab a publicist.”
“I spent most of the day at the Elite Premier offices.” Tammy yawns, leaning into Bruce. “Then lunch in Chelsea.”
“Oh, where?” Bentley asks, studying a white rose.
“Aubergine,” Tammy sighs. “I spent what could have been two hours in Vent and then I had drinks at the Sugar Club before coming here. Oh Jesus, what a day.”
“I had that Craig McDean photo shoot,” Bruce says, taking the joint back from Jamie. “Then I watched representation for the Spice Girls sign a gargantuan record deal and had an early dinner at Oxo Tower with Nick Knight, Rachel Whitehead and Danny Boyle.”
“You’re a man of substance.” Jamie smiles.
“I’m a preeminent tastemaker.” Bruce smiles back.
“You’re sheer genius, baby,” Tammy tells Jamie.
“And you’re the fall’s most revealing fashion trend,” Bentley tells Tammy.
“A-list all the way,” Bruce says, squeezing Tammy’s hand.
“What is this?” I’m asking. “Night of the Perpetually Chic?”
“It looks like everybody’s going somewhere, but they’re not, really,” Tammy says, looking around.
“Let’s face it, the impression I get is: boom—this is over,” Bruce says, finishing the roach.
Since the tape of “Friends” is being rerun, the Japanese guy has engaged two of his buddies to start looking at me and he’s gesturing wildly and I’m trying to recall the ads I did that appeared in Japan but can’t come up with any and Bruce is noticing my discomfort so he glances back at the Japanese guys and then Tammy and Jamie follow suit and I notice an almost imperceptible nod on Tammy’s part that makes Bruce suggest, “Maybe, guys, it’s time we escape.”
Jamie leans into me and whispers, “Why don’t you come with us?”
“Where are you guys going?” I ask as she helps me stand.
Tammy and Bruce lift Bentley up off the lime-green couch and Bentley sloshes around and they steady him and then guide his weaving body down a staircase.
“We’re going back to our house.”
“What’s our house?”
“A place we all inhabit,” she says. “Does that simplify matters for you?”
“Why don’t you come back to the Four Seasons with me?”
“You may do whatever you want, Victor.” Jamie leans in and kisses me so hard I back into a giant vase of white roses, my head pressed into them, petals brushing over my cheeks, my scalp, my neck.
“I’m just glad you’re here,” she purrs before guiding me downstairs to Bruce’s Jaguar. “And safe,” she adds quietly.
“All this persuasion,” I moan.
9
Bruce races recklessly in a skillful way through London streets, Tammy in the front seat next to him lighting another joint, both of them occasionally eyeing us distantly in the rearview mirror, and even with the air-conditioning blasting the windows are steamed over and I’m between Bentley and Jamie and she’s clinging to me in the darkness of the backseat and that Robert Miles song “One and One” is blasting out of the speakers and I’m hungrily kissing her lips, craving her in a way I never did at Camden, while also contending with Bentley, who keeps reaching over, brushing confetti off the Versace jacket I’m wearing, and every time I push him away he makes doomed noises and Jamie keeps stroking my dick, which is stiff and raging against my thigh, and I have to keep repositioning myself and finally my hand wraps around hers, guiding it, applying more pressure, and when I’m too lost in Jamie, that’s when Bentley’s hand sneaks in and grabs something in my pocket and rubbing it he starts making gratified noises and then, when he realizes it’s just a roll of Mentos, there’s another doomed noise.
As Bruce makes a sweeping U-turn, changing direction because of streets blocked off due to bomb threats in Trafalgar Square, Primal Scream’s “Rocks Off” blasts out and the Jaguar speeds up, careening around a corner, noise from the song pouring over us, and the windows are rolled down, wind rushing in, and every time Jamie touches me I’m seeing blue and leaping around with desire and then she kicks off her shoes and swings her legs up over my thighs so her feet lie across Bentley’s lap and I’m leaning down, lights from the city flashing around us.
“You’re so beautiful,” she’s whispering to me as my head drops down to hers, my face burning.
One or two more traffic delays provoke cursing. Bentley quarrels briefly with Bruce until he finds a still of Matthew McConaughey romping in a stream that someone left in the backseat and Bentley ends up staring at it, occupied, and finally Bruce maneuvers the Jaguar into a driveway where a small gate slides open and when we pass through it a blinding light shoots out from points on the roof of the black house we’ve driven up to and then that light slowly fades as Bruce pulls out some kind of remote device and touches a few buttons and once it’s dark everything vanishes except for the clouds in the open sky above us.
8
Inside the black house there’s a doorway that I follow Jamie through and Bentley and Bruce and Tammy scatter, dispersing upstairs to bedrooms, and Jamie and I are in a dark place, and she’s lighting candles and offering me a drink that smells like Sambuca and we both pop a Xanax to come off the coke before heading toward a hot bath in a room that smells of freshly painted walls where more candles are lit and Jamie tears off the Jil Sander suit and helps me undress, and she finally pulls my Calvin Klein boxer-jockeys off while I’m on the bathroom floor, delirious and giggling, my legs up in the air, Jamie standing over me, candlelight throwing her elongated shadow over the walls and ceiling, and my hand’s reaching for her ass and then we’re in the water.
After the bath she pushes me onto a sprawling bed and I’m drugged out and turned on and a Tori Amos CD plays softly in the background and then I’m lying on my side, marveling at her, my hand running along the sparse hair on her cunt, fingers slipping in and out, strumming along it, while I let her suck on my tongue.
“Listen,” she keeps whispering, breaking away.
“What, baby?” I whisper back. “What is it?”
She doesn’t want to fuck so she starts giving me head and I swing her around and start eating her pussy which is hot and tight and I’m taking it slow, licking with long strokes of my tongue, sometimes all the way up to her asshole spread above me, and then driving the tongue in deeper and faster, sometimes stiffening it, making my tongue rigid and fucking her with it, then taking as much of her pussy into my mouth as I can, sucking on the whole thing, and then I flick the tip of my tongue over her clit and that’s when she sits up on my face, humping it while I reach up, massaging her nipples as she comes touching her clit with her middle finger, my mouth slobbering all over her hand, and she’s making weeping sounds and when I come she tries to steady my hips with her chest because they’re thrusting up involuntarily and with her hand pumping my cock I shoot all over her, ejaculating endlessly and so hard I have to bury my face and mouth back into her pussy to muffle the shouts my orgasm forces me to make and then I drop back, wetness from her vagina smeared all over my chin, lips, nose, and then it’s silent except for my breathing. The CD that was playing has stopped, a few candles have burned out, I’m spinning.
In the darkness I hear her ask, “You came?”
“Yeah,” I pant, laughing.
“Okay,” she says, the bed making rustling noises a
s she gets off it, carefully holding up an arm as if she’s afraid of dropping something.
“Hey baby—”
“Good night, Victor.”
Jamie walks toward the door, swings it open, light from the hallway causes me to squint, shielding my eyes, and when she closes the door blackness blossoms out of control and still spinning I’m also moving upward toward something, a place where there’s someone waiting to meet me, voices calling out follow, follow.
7
I’m waking up because of the sun streaming through the skylight and chic steel beams onto the bed where I’m staring at the geometric patterns etched on those chic steel beams. I tentatively sit up, bracing myself, but I’ve apparently slept off what should have been a major hangover. I check out the surroundings: a room done in ash gray and totally minimalist, a large steel vase filled with white tulips, lots of gorgeous chrome ashtrays scattered everywhere, a steel nightstand where a tiny black phone sits on a copy of next month’s Vanity Fair with Tom Cruise on the cover, a Jennifer Bartlett painting hanging over the bed. I open a steel blind and peer out at what looks like a reasonably fashionable London street, though I’m not quite sure where. There are no clocks in the room so I have no idea what time it is but the way the clouds are racing past the sun above the skylight suggests it’s not morning.
I call the Four Seasons asking for messages but there aren’t any and a flicker of panic I think I can control starts spreading and I wash it off in the shower adjacent to the bedroom, the stall made up of pale-green and dark-gray tiles, and the bathtub Jamie and I used last night is drained, melted candles on its rim, Kiehl’s products neatly lined up next to stainless-steel sinks. I dry off and take a Ralph Lauren bathrobe hanging from a hook and drape it over me before opening the door very slowly because I’m unsure of what’s behind it.
6
I’m standing on what looks like the second floor of a three-story town house and everything is stark and functional and so open you can’t really hide anywhere. I’m moving down a hallway—passing bedrooms, a study, two bathrooms, rows of empty shelves—heading toward a staircase that will take me to the first floor, and the color scheme incorporates aqua and apple and cream but ash dominates—the color of chairs and couches and comforters and desks and vases and the carpets lining the bleached oak floors—and then moving down the stairs, gripping the cold steel railing, I step into a huge open space divided in two by a series of tall steel columns and the floors are suddenly terrazzo and the windows are just cubes of opaque glass. There’s a dining area where Frank Gehry chairs surround a giant Budeiri granite table below diffused lighting. There’s a salmon-hued kitchen where shelves hang by steel rods and the vintage refrigerator contains yogurt, various cheeses, a tin of unopened caviar, Evian, half a round of focaccia; and in a cupboard, Captain Crunch, bottles of wine. The whole place seems transitory and it’s freezing and I’m shivering uncontrollably and there’s a profusion of cell phones piled on a fancy pink table and I’m thinking this is all too 1991.