Glamorama (80 page)

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 the 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.

“An hour. Probably less. Maybe forty minutes.”

“Actually,” she says, “I think I’m supposed to stay here.”

“Why?”

“I think I’m supposed to shoot a scene.”

“What am I supposed to do?” I ask.

“I think”—Chloe squints at the script and then, looking up—“you’re supposed to go.”

“And then?” I ask.

“And then?” Chloe says, smiling.

“Yeah.”

“You’re supposed to come back.”

7

There’s no need to punch in the code to deactivate the alarm system in the house in the 8th or the 16th. The door leading into the courtyard just swings open.

Walking quickly through the courtyard, I grab my keys out of the Prada jacket I’m wearing but I don’t need them because that door’s open too. Outside, it’s late afternoon but not dark yet and
the wind’s screaming is occasionally broken up by distant thunderclaps.

Inside, things feel wrong.

In the entranceway I lift a phone receiver, placing it next to my ear. The line is dead. I move toward the living room.

“Hello?” I’m calling out. “Hello? … It’s me .… It’s Victor .…”

I’m overly aware of how silent and dark it is in the house. I reach for a light switch. Nothing happens.

The house smells like shit, reeks of it—damp and wet and fetid—and I have to start breathing through my mouth. I pause in a doorway, bracing myself for a surprise, but the living room is totally empty.

“Bobby?” I call out. “Are you here? Where are you,” and then, under my breath, “you fuck.”

I’m just noticing that cell phones are scattered everywhere, across tables, under chairs, in piles on the floor, dozens of them smashed open, their antennas snapped off. Some of their transmission bars are lit but I can’t get an outside line on any of them and then I

you are the sort of person who doesn’t see well in the dark

turn into the darkness of the kitchen. I open the refrigerator door and then the freezer and light from inside illuminates a section of the black, empty kitchen. I grab a bottle that lies on its side in the freezer and take a swig from a half-empty gallon of Stoli, barely tasting it. Outside, the wind is a hollow roaring sound.

In a drawer adjacent to the sink I find a flashlight and just as I turn toward another drawer something zooms past me. I whirl around.

A reflection in the gilt-edged mirror that hangs over the stove: my grave expression. Then I’m laughing nervously and I bring a hand to my forehead, leaving it there until I’m calm enough to find the .25-caliber Walther I hid last week in another drawer.

With the beam from the flashlight I’m noticing that the micro-wave’s door is open and inside it’s splattered with a dried brown mixture of twigs, branches, stones, leaves. And then I notice the cave drawings.

They’re scrawled everywhere. Giant white spaces heavily decorated with stick figures of buffalos, crudely drawn horses, dragons, what looks like a serpent.