Glamorama (74 page)

“I’m Jamie Fields,” she says, holding out a hand.

“I’m Christian Bale,” Russell says, taking it.

“Oh right,” she says. “Yeah, I thought I recognized you. You’re the actor.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He’s nodding boyishly. “I recognized you too.”

“Hey, looks like we’re all famous, huh?” I chuckle dreadfully. “How about that, huh?”

“I really liked you in
Newsies
and
Swing Kids,
” Jamie says, not at all facetiously.

“Thanks, thanks.” Russell keeps nodding.

“And also
Hooked,
” Jamie says. “You were great in
Hooked.
”

“Oh thanks,” Russell says, blushing, smiling on cue. “That’s so nice. That’s so cool.”

“Yeah,
Hooked,
” Jamie murmurs, staring thoughtfully into Russell’s face.

A long pause follows. I concentrate on the film crew lifting a camera into the back of the van. The director nods at me. I don’t nod back.
From inside the van ABBA’s “Knowing Me, Knowing You” keeps playing, a reminder of something. I’m squinting, trying to remember. The director starts moving toward us.

“So what are you doing in Paris?” Jamie asks Russell.

“Oh, just hanging,” Russell says confidently.

“And … teaching French?” Jamie laughs, confused.

“Oh it’s just a favor,” I’m saying, laughing with her. “He’s owing me a favor.”

Behind us, walking out of the front entrance of the apartment building on Avenue Verdier, are Palakon, Delta, Crater—all in overcoats and sunglasses—without the Japanese man. They maneuver past us, walking purposefully down the block, conferring with one another. Jamie barely notices them since she’s preoccupied with staring at Russell. But the director stops walking toward me and stares at Palakon as he passes by, and something in the director’s face tightens and he worriedly glances back at me and then once more at Palakon.

“It’s a favor,” Russell says, putting on Diesel sunglasses. “I’m between roles. So it’s cool.”

“He’s between roles,” I’m saying. “He’s waiting for a good part. One worthy of his skills.”

“Listen, I gotta split,” Russell says. “I’ll talk to you later, man. Nice meeting you, Jamie.”

“Yeah,” Jamie says tentatively. “You too, Christian.”

“Peace,” he says, moving off. “Victor, I’ll be in touch. Au revoir.”

“Yeah man,” I say shakily. “Bonjour, dude,” I’m saying. “Oui, monsieur.”

Jamie stands in front of me, arms folded. The crew waits, slouching by the van, its engine running. I’m focusing on slowing down my heartbeat. The director starts walking toward us again. My vision keeps blurring over, getting wavy. It starts drizzling.

“What are you doing here?” I ask, trying not to whimper.

“I’m picking up a prescription for Tammy,” she says.

“Uh-huh. Because she’s, like, very sick, right?”

“Yeah, she’s very upset,” Jamie says coolly.

“Well, right, because she should be.”

I’m wetting my lips, panic coursing through the muscles in my legs, my arms, my face—all tingling. Jamie keeps staring, appraising me. A
longer pause. The director is jogging up the street, grimly advancing toward us, toward me.

“So let me get this straight,” Jamie starts.

“Uh-huh.”

“You’re taking French lessons.”

“Uh-huh.”

“From Christian Bale?”

“No, we’re having an affair,” I blurt out. “I didn’t want to bring him to the house.”

“I don’t necessarily find that unbelievable.”

“No, no, it’s French lessons,” I’m saying. “Merci beaucoup, bon soir, je comprends, oui, mademoiselle, bonjour, mademoiselle—”

“All right, all right,” she mutters, giving up.

The director is getting closer.

“Send them away,” I whisper. “Please, just send them away, send them the fuck away,” I say, putting my sunglasses on.

Jamie sighs and walks over to the director. He’s on a cell phone and he snaps the mouthpiece closed as she approaches. He listens to her, adjusting a red bandanna knotted around his neck. I’m crying silently to myself and as Jamie walks back to me I start shivering. I rub a hand across my forehead, a headache’s building.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

I try to speak but can’t. I’m only vaguely aware that it’s starting to rain.

In a cab heading back to the house she asks me, “So where did you take your French lessons?” I can’t say anything.

“How did you and Christian Bale meet?” she asks.

The cab lurches forward in traffic, its windows streaked with rain. The air inside the cab is heavy with invisible things. I’m slouching in the back of the cab. My foot has fallen asleep.

“What is this?” she asks. “Are you doing your big deaf routine?”

“What’s in the bag?” I ask, nodding at the white shape in Jamie’s lap.

“Tammy’s prescription,” she says.

“For what? Methadone?”

“Halcion.”

“I hope you got her a lot,” I say, and then, “Can I have some?”

“No,” Jamie says. “What were you really doing with that guy?” I blurt out, “How did you know Marina Gibson?”

“Oh god,” she groans. “Are we back to that?”

“Jamie,” I warn, then relent. “Please.”

“I don’t know,” she says irritably. “I knew her in New York. Modeling. Whatever. Nightlife.”

I start giggling. “You’re lying.”

“Oh shit.”

I ask softly, “Could this have all been prevented?”

Finally she answers flatly, “That’s speculative.”

“Who else is involved with this?” I ask.

She sighs. “It’s all very small.” Pause. “The larger the group, the greater the danger of detection. You know.”

“I’m sure that works well on paper.”

“Did you look at the file?” she asks.

“Yes,” I murmur.

“Good,” she says, relaxing, and then, “I think Christian Bale’s cool.” She checks her fingernails. “In a fairly obvious way.”

I turn to look at her. “What does that mean?”

“Christian Bale wasn’t in
Hooked
, Victor,” Jamie says. “He wasn’t in that movie.”

I stall, then move into, “Maybe he was just being … polite.”

“Don’t bother,” she mutters.

And outside the house in the 8th or the 16th patches of sunlight start streaming through the dissolving clouds and Jamie and I open the gate and move together silently through the courtyard. Inside, with Bruce Rhinebeck gone the house seems less heavy, better, emptier, even with the second unit setting up. Bobby sits at the computer while talking on a cell phone, smoking a cigarette, tapping ashes into a Diet Coke can, stacks of spiral notebooks piled high on the desk in front of him, lounge music playing in the background. A pool table has been delivered, another BMW is ready to be picked up, new wallpaper has been ordered, there’s a party somewhere tonight. “It’s all confirmed,” Bobby says simply. Inside the house it’s twenty degrees. Inside the house, shit, its fragrance, churns everywhere, muddy and billowing. Inside the house there’s a lot of “intense activity” and everything’s quickly being lit.

I’m just trying not to cry again while standing behind Bobby. On the computer screen: designs for a device, a breakdown of the components that make up the plastic explosive Remform, prospective targets. Jamie’s in the kitchen, carefully reading Tammy’s prescription while pulling a bottle of Evian out of the refrigerator.

“How’s she doing?” Jamie asks Bobby.

“If it’s any consolation?” he asks back. “Better.”

Jamie walks past me blindly and moves slowly up the spiral staircase, maneuvering around crew members, thinking maybe she should feel more for me than she really does but my fear doesn’t move her, it’s isolated, it’s not hip, it doesn’t sing.

I’m touching Bobby’s shoulders because I need to.

He stretches away from me, mutters “Don’t” and then, “That’s not a possibility anymore.”

A long silence, during which I try to learn something.

“You look thin,” Bobby says. “When’s the last time you worked out? You’re looking too skinny. Slightly whitish too.”

“I just need some sleep, man.”

“That’s not an explanation,” Bobby says. “You need a motivational workshop.”

“I don’t think so,” I say, my voice cracking.

But Bobby might as well be submerged in a pool. We might as well be having a conversation underneath a waterfall. He doesn’t even need to be in this room. He’s just a voice. I might as well be talking on the phone with someone. I could be viewing this through a telescope. I might as well be dreaming this. Something hits me:
but isn’t that the point?

Bobby walks silently into the kitchen.

“Things are, um, falling apart,” I’m saying. “And no one’s acting like they are.”

“What’s falling apart?” Bobby says, walking back up to me. “I think things are right on schedule.”

Pause.

“What … schedule?” I’m asking. “What … things?” Pause. “Bobby?”

“What things?”

“Yeah … what things?”

“Just things.” Bobby shrugs. “Just things. Things about to happen.”

Pause.

“And … then?”

“And then?”

“Yeah … and then?”

“And then?”

I’m nodding, tears spilling down my face.

“And then? Boom,” he says serenely, lightly slapping my face, his hand the temperature of an icicle.

On cue from upstairs: Jamie starts screaming.

Even within the artfully lit shadows of the bathroom Tammy Devol and Bruce Rhinebeck shared, you can easily make out the bathtub overflowing with dark-red water, Tammy’s floating face, its shade a light blue, her eyes open and yellowish. Our attention is also supposed to be drawn to the broken Amstel Light bottle that sits on the tub’s edge and the groovy patterns her blood made on the tiled walls as it shot out of her veins. Tammy’s slashed wrists have been cut to the bone—but even that wasn’t “enough,” because somehow she managed to slice her throat open very deeply

(but you know it’s too deep, you know she couldn’t have done this, though you can’t say anything because you know that scenes are filmed without you and you know that a different script exists in which you are not a character and you know it’s too deep)

and because it smells so much like what I imagined a room covered in blood would smell like and Jamie’s screaming so loudly, it’s hard to start piecing things together, make the appropriate connections, hit that mark, and I can’t stop gasping.

It’s the things you don’t know that matter most
.

Two propmen, both wearing dust masks, swiftly force themselves past us and lift Tammy nude from the tub, her wrists and neck looking like they burst open outward, and a large purple dildo slides out of her cunt, splashing back into the bloody bathwater. My eyes are homing in on her navel ring.

Jamie has backed out of the bathroom and into Bentley’s arms. She struggles, hugs him, pulls away again. She holds a hand to her mouth. Her face is red, like it’s burning.

In a corner of the bedroom Bobby is talking to the director, both of them motionless except for an occasional nod.

Jamie tries to get away from Bentley and shambles madly toward Tammy’s bedroom but she’s blocked because another propman, also wearing a dust mask, is hauling a mattress soaked with blood down the hallway, to be burned in the courtyard.

Jamie stares at the stained mattress in horror—at its truth—and Bentley holds on to her as she flings herself at Tammy’s bed, Bentley falling with her, and screaming, she lunges for the script on Tammy’s nightstand and hurls it at Bobby and the director. She struggles with a pillow, absurdly. Her screaming intensifies, is a variation on the earlier screaming.

Bobby glances over at Jamie, distracted. He watches passively, trying to listen to something the director is telling him while Jamie scratches at her face, makes gurgling noises, pleads with anyone who will listen.

I can’t form a sentence, all reflexes zapped. I’m feebly reaching out a hand to steady myself, cameras swinging around us, capturing reactions.

Bobby slaps Jamie across the face while Bentley continues holding on to her.

“No one cares,” Bobby’s saying. “I thought we agreed on that.”

Jamie makes noises no one can translate.

“I thought we agreed on that,” Bobby’s saying. “You understand me? No one cares.” He slaps her across the face, harder. This time it gets her attention. She stares at him. “This reaction of yours is useless. It carries no meaning with anyone here and it’s useless. We agreed that no one would care.”

Jamie nods mutely and just as it seems she’s going to relax into the moment, she suddenly freaks out. Bentley is panting with exertion, trying to wrestle her down, but he’s laughing because he’s so stressed out, and someone from the crew keeps rationalizing, frivolously, “No one could have saved her.” I’m trying to move the other way, gracefully aiming for the door. I’m trying to wake up momentarily by turning away from this scene, by becoming transparent, but also realizing that the Halcion prescription Jamie picked up was meant not for Tammy but only for herself.

17