Glamorama

  “Who was the Remform … for?” I ask.

  “It doesn’t matter. It’s not something you need to know, Victor, but it definitely was not intended for Bobby Hughes. In fact, quite the opposite. It slipped into the wrong hands.” Palakon pauses gravely. “I thought you would be protected. You weren’t. I’m sorry. The Remform was stolen—we now realize—during your voyage on the QE2. And we did not—I swear to you, Victor—understand the situation until we met last week at the hotel.”

  “We didn’t realize any of this until Palakon made contact with you last week,” Delta confirms.

  “I didn’t realize where the Remform was located until you told me,” Palakon says.

  “Why don’t you guys just tell Jamie what’s going on?” I ask.

  “That would be far too dangerous for her,” Palakon says. “If we attempted any kind of contact and she was found out, an enormous amount of time and effort would have been wasted. We cannot risk that.”

  “Does my father know any of this?” I ask.

  “No.”

  I’m stuck, can’t form a sentence.

  “The fact remains that Bobby Hughes has the Remform and obviously has plans to manufacture and use it,” Palakon says. “That was not supposed to happen. That was definitely not supposed to happen.”

  “But … ,” I start.

  “Yes?”

  The room waits.

  “But you know Bobby Hughes,” I say.

  “Pardon?” Palakon asks. “I know of him.”

  “No, Palakon,” I say. “You know him.”

  “Mr. Ward, what are you talking about?”

  “Palakon,” I shout. “I saw you in a videotape shaking Bobby Hughes’ hand, you fucking bastard, I saw you shake that asshole’s hand. Don’t tell me you don’t know him.”

  Palakon flinches. “Mr. Ward, I’m not sure what you’re talking about. But I have never met Bobby Hughes face-to-face.”

  “You’re lying, you’re fucking lying,” I shout. “Why are you lying, Palakon? I saw a videotape. You were shaking his hand.” I’m out of the chair again, stomping toward him.

  Palakon swallows grimly, then launches into, “Mr. Ward, as you well know, they are quite sophisticated at altering photographs and videotapes.” Palakon stops, starts again. “What you probably saw was just a movie. A special effect. Just a strip of film that was digitally altered. Why they showed this to you I don’t know. But I have never met Bobby Hughes before—”

  “Blah blah blah,” I’m screaming. “What a load of shit. No way, man.” There’s so much adrenaline rushing through me that I’m shaking violently.

  “Mr. Ward, I think you have been a victim of this as well,” Palakon adds.

  “So you’re telling me we can’t believe anything we’re shown anymore?” I’m asking. “That everything is altered? That everything’s a lie? That everyone will believe this?”

  “That’s a fact,” Palakon says.

  “So what’s true, then?” I cry out.

  “Nothing, Victor,” Palakon says. “There are different truths.”

  “Then what happens to us?”

  “We change.” He shrugs. “We adapt.”

  “To what? Better? Worse?”

  “I’m not sure those terms are applicable anymore.”

  “Why not?” I shout. “Why aren’t they?”

  “Because no one cares about ‘better.’ No one cares about ‘worse,’” Palakon says. “Not anymore. It’s different now.”

  Someone clears his throat as tears pour down my face.

  “Mr. Ward, please, you’ve helped us enormously,” Crater says.

  “How?” I sob.

  “Because of that printout you gave to Palakon, we believe that Bobby Hughes is using the Remform in a bombing this week,” Crater explains. “A bombing that we now have the power to stop.”

  I mumble something, looking away.

  “We think this has to do with a bombing scheduled for Friday,” Palakon says matter-of-factly. “That date is November 15. We think ‘1985’ is actually a misprint. We think the 8 is actually an 0.”

  “Why?”

  “We think 1985 is actually 1905,” Crater says. “In military parlance that’s 7:05 p.m.”

  “Yeah?” I mutter. “So?”

  “There’s a TWA flight leaving Charles de Gaulle this Friday, November 15, at 7:05,” Palakon says.

  “So what?” I’m asking. “Aren’t there a lot of flights leaving on that date, near that time?”

  “Its flight number is 511,” Palakon says.

  9

  I’m told to stay calm.

  I’m told they will contact me tomorrow.

  I’m told to return to the house in the 8th or the 16th and pretend nothing has happened.

  I’m told that I can be placed, eventually, in a witness protection program. (I’m told this after I have collapsed on the floor, sobbing hysterically.)

  I’m told again to stay calm.

  On the verge of trust, I realize that the inspector from Interpol is the actor who played the clerk at the security office on the QE2.

  I’m told, “We’ll be in touch, Mr. Ward.”

  I’m told, “You’ll be watched.”

  “I know,” I say hollowly.

  Since I have no more Xanax left and it’s starting to rain I head over to Hôtel Costes, where I wait in the café pretending to be pensive, drinking tea, smoking Camel Lights out of a pack someone left discarded at the table next to mine, until Chloe walks in with a famous ballerina, a well-known former junkie just out of rehab and Aphex Twin, and they all start chatting pleasantly with Griffin Dunne, who’s standing at the front desk, and then everyone but Chloe walks away and in a trance I move forward while she checks her messages and I grab her, embracing her fearfully while glancing around the hushed lobby and then I’m kissing her lips, entering her life again, and we’re both crying. The concierge turns his head away.

  I start relaxing but a film crew has followed Chloe into the lobby and a camera starts panning around us and we’re asked to “do that” once more. Someone yells “Action.” Someone yells “Cut.” I stop crying and we do it again.

  8

  Afternoon and outside silvery clouds glide through the sky as a soft rain keeps drifting over a steel-gray Paris. There were two shows today—one at the Conciergerie, one in the gardens of the Musée Rodin—and she was being paid a zillion francs, naysayers abounded, the catwalks seemed longer, the paparazzi were both more and less frantic, girls were wearing bones, bird skulls, human teeth, bloody smocks, they held fluorescent water pistols, there was serious buzz, there was zero buzz, it was the epitome of hype, it was wildly trivial.

  From room service we order a pot of coffee that she doesn’t drink, a bottle of red wine of which she has only half a glass, a pack of cigarettes but she’s not smoking. An hour passes, then another. Flowers sent by various designers fill the suite, are of colors and shapes conspicuous enough so that we can easily concentrate on them when we’re not talking to each other. A pigeon sits nestled on the ledge outside the window, humming. At first we keep saying “What does it matter?” to each other, ad-libbing like we have secrets we don’t care about revealing, but then we have to stick to the script and I’m sucking on her pussy causing her to climax repeatedly and we arrange ourselves into a position where I’m lying on my side, my cock slowly pumping in and out of her mouth, arching my back with each movement, her hands on my ass, and I don’t relax until I come twice, my face pressed against her vagina, and later she’s crying, she can’t trust me, it’s all impossible and I’m pacing the suite looking for another box of tissues to hand her and she keeps getting up and washing her face and then we attempt to have sex again. Her head leans against a pillow. “Tell me,” she’s saying. “Possibly,” she’s saying. “It’s not beyond you,” she’s saying. We’re watching MTV with the sound off and then she tells me I need to shave and I tell her that I want to grow a beard and then, while forcing a smile, that I need a disguise a
nd she thinks I’m serious and when she says “No, don’t” something gets mended, hope rises up in me and I can envision a future.

  After trying to sleep but kept awake by remembering how I got here I reposition myself on the bed next to Chloe, trying to hold her face in my hands.

  “I thought it would solve everything if I … just left,” I tell her. “I was just … directionless, y’know, baby?” She smiles unhappily.

  “I had to get my priorities straightened out,” I’m whispering. “I needed to clear my head.”

  “Because?”

  A sigh. “Because where I was going …” I stop, my throat tightens. “Yeah?” she whispers. “Because where you were going … ,” she coaxes.

  I breathe in and then I’m reduced.

  “There was no one there,” I whisper back.

  “You needed to clear your head?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So you came to Paris?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Victor, there are parks in New York,” she says. “You could have gone to a library. You could have taken a walk.” Casually she reveals more than she intended. I wake up a little.

  “The impression I got before I left was that you and Baxter—”

  “No,” she says, cutting me off.

  But that’s all she says.

  “You could be lying to me, right?” I ask shakily. “Why would I bother?” She reaches toward the nightstand for a copy of the script.

  “It’s okay, though,” I’m saying. “It’s okay.”

  “Victor,” she sighs.

  “I was so afraid for you, Chloe.”

  “Why?”

  “I thought you’d gotten back on drugs,” I say. “I thought I saw something in your bathroom, back in New York … and then I saw that guy Tristan—that dealer?—in your lobby and oh Jesus … I just lost it.”

  “Victor—”

  “No, really, that morning, baby, after the opening—”

  “It was just that night, Victor,” she says, stroking the side of my face.

  “Really.”

  “Baby, I freaked—”

  “No, no, shhh,” she says. “It was just some dope I got for the weekend. It was just for that weekend. I bought it. I did a little of it. I threw the rest away.”

  “Put that down—please, baby,” I tell her, motioning at the script she’s holding, curled in her other hand.

  Later.

  “There were so many relatively simple things you couldn’t do, Victor,” she says. “I always felt like you were playing jokes on me. Even though I knew you weren’t. It just felt that way. I always felt like a guest in your life. Like I was someone on a list.”

  “Oh baby …”

  “You were so nice to me, Victor, when we first met,” she says. “And then you changed.” She pauses. “You started treating me like shit.”

  I’m crying, my face pressed into a pillow, and when I lift my head up I tell her, “But baby, I’m very together now.”

  “No, you’re freaking me out now,” she says. “What are you talking about? You’re a mess.”

  “I’m just … I’m just so afraid,” I sob. “I’m afraid of losing you again … and I want to make you understand that … I want to fix things .…”

  Her sadness creases the features of her face, making it look as if she’s concentrating on something.

  “We can’t go back,” she says. “Really, Victor.”

  “I don’t want to go back,” I’m saying.

  “A smart suit,” she sighs. “Being buff. A cool haircut. Worrying about whether people think you’re famous enough or cool enough or in good enough shape or … or whatever.” She sighs, gives up, stares at the ceiling. “These are not signs of wisdom, Victor,” she says. “This is the bad planet.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Yeah, baby … I think I was paying too much attention to the way things looked, right? I know, baby, I know.”

  “It happens.” She shrugs. “You have the standard regrets.”

  I start crying again. Chloe’s asking “Why?” She touches my arm. She’s asking “Why?” again.

  “But I can’t find anything else … to put in its place,” I say, choking.

  “Baby—”

  “Why didn’t you just dump me?” I sob.

  “Because I’d fallen in love with you,” she says.

  My eyes are closed and I can hear her turning pages and Chloe breathes in as she delivers the following line (“warmly w/affection”): “Because I still am in love with you.”

  I pull away, wiping my face blindly.

  “There are so many things I want to tell you.”

  “You can,” she says. “I’ll listen. You can.”

  My eyes fill up with tears again and this time I want her to see them. “Victor,” she says. “Oh baby. Don’t cry or you’re gonna make me cry.”

  “Baby,” I start. “Things aren’t the way … you might think they are .…”

  “Shhh, it’s okay,” she says.

  “But it’s not,” I say. “It’s so not okay, it’s not.”

  “Victor, come on—”

  “But I plan to stick around a little while,” I say in a rush before bursting into tears again.

  I’m closing my eyes and she stirs lightly on the bed, turning pages in the script, and she keeps pausing, deciding whether to say something or not, and I’m saying, clearing my throat, my nose hopelessly stuffed, “Don’t, baby, don’t, just put it away,” and Chloe sighs and I hear her drop the script onto the floor next to the bed we’re lying on and then she’s holding my face in her hands and I’m opening my eyes.

  “Victor,” she says.

  “What?” I’m asking. “What is it, baby?”

  “Victor?”

  “Yeah?”

  Finally she says, “I’m pregnant.”

  A problem. Things get sketchy. We skipped a stage. I missed a lesson, we moved backward, we disappeared into a valley, a place where it’s always January, where the air is thin and I’m pulling a Coca-Cola out of a bucket of ice. The words “I’m pregnant” sounded harsh to me but in an obscure way. I’m in the center of the room, flattened out by this information and what it demands from me. I keep trying to form a sentence, make a promise, not wander away. She’s asking are you coming in? I’m telling myself you always took more than you gave, Victor. I keep trying to postpone the next moment but she’s staring at me attentively, almost impatient.

  “And yes, it’s yours,” she says.

  Because of how startled I am, all I can ask is, “Can you, like, afford to do this now?” My voice sounds falsetto.

  “It’s not like I’ve been underpaid,” she says, gesturing around the suite. “It’s not like I can’t retire. That’s not an issue.”

  “What is?” I ask, swallowing.

  “Where you’re going to be,” she says quietly. “What role you’re going to take in this.”

  “How do you … know it’s mine?” I ask.

  She sighs. “Because the only person I’ve been with since we broke up”—she laughs derisively—“is you.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask. “What about Baxter?”

  “I never slept with Baxter Priestly, Victor,” she shouts.

  “Okay, okay,” I’m saying.

  “Oh Jesus, Victor,” she says, turning away.

  “Hey baby, what is it?”

  “Four weeks ago? Remember? That day you came over?”

  “What?” I’m asking, thinking, four weeks ago? “Yeah?”

  Silence.

  “That day you called me out of the blue?” she asks. “It was a Sunday and you called me, Victor. I’d just gotten back from Canyon Ranch. I met you at Jerry’s? Remember? In SoHo? We sat in a booth in the back? You talked about going to NYU?” She pauses, staring at me wide-eyed. “Then we went back to my place .…” She looks away. She softly says, “We had sex, then you left, whatever.” She pauses again. “You were having dinner that night with Viggo Mortensen and Jude Law and one of th
e producers of Flatliners II and Sean MacPherson was in town with Gina and I didn’t really want to go and you didn’t invite me—and then you never called .… That week I read that you had dinner at Diablo’s—maybe it was a Buddy Seagull column—and you and Damien had patched things up and then I ran into Edgar Cameron who said he had had dinner with you at Balthazar and you guys had all gone to Cheetah afterwards and … you just never called me again and … oh forget it, Victor—it’s all in the past, right? I mean, isn’t it?”

  Four weeks ago I was on a ship in the middle of an ocean.

  Four weeks ago on that ship there was blood pooled behind a toilet in the cabin of a doomed girl.

  Four weeks ago I was in London at a party in Notting Hill.

  Four weeks ago I was meeting Bobby Hughes. Jamie Fields hugged me while I stood screaming in a basement corridor.

  Four weeks ago I was not in New York City.

  Four weeks ago an impostor arrived in Chloe’s apartment.

  Four weeks ago on that Sunday he undressed her.

  I’m saying nothing. Reams of acid start unspooling in my stomach and I’m vibrating with panic.

  “Baby,” I’m saying.

  “Yeah?”

  I start getting dressed. “I’ve gotta go.”

  “What?” she asks, sitting up.

  “I’ve gotta get my stuff,” I say in a controlled voice. “I’m moving out of the house. I’m coming back here.”

  “Victor,” she starts, then reconsiders. “I don’t know.”

  “I don’t care,” I say. “But I’m staying with you.”

  She smiles sadly, holds out a hand. “Really?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Really. I’m totally, totally sure of it.”

  “Okay.” She’s nodding. “Okay.”

  I fall on the bed, wrapping my arms around her. I kiss her on the lips, stroking the side of her face.

  “I’ll be back in an hour,” I say.

  “Okay,” she says. “Do you want me to come with you?”

  “No, no,” I’m saying. “Just wait here. I’ll be right back.”

  At the door, something shifts in me and I turn around.

  “Unless … you want to come with me?” I ask.

  “How long will you be?” She’s holding the script again, flipping through it.