He paused, shrugged, nodded glumly and immediately walked away.
Aurore Ducas passed by and so did Yves Saint-Laurent and Taki. An Iraqi ambassador spent the entire party standing close to Bobby, who kept making hand motions my way, urging me to mingle. I spent the early part of the evening chatting nervously to Diane Von Furstenberg and Barry Diller and trying to move closer to Jamie, who sometimes was ignoring me and sometimes laughing hysterically while petting a basset hound someone had dragged in, and bartenders poured champagne into thin crystal flutes while staring blankly past us. And predictably the party got hipper as it kept gliding further along and people started dancing to Republica and Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell arrived with The Artist Formerly Known As Prince and Tom Ford showed up with Dominique Browning and I had a heavy conversation with Michael Douglas about high-end safaris while I held a plate of lobster looking fairly benign and "I'm Your Boogie Man" by KC and the Sunshine Band blasted out, which was Jamie's cue to start dancing and my cue to just stare wonderingly at her. Baptiste Piton did the flower arrangements. The word PARTY kept flashing above us in bright, multicolored lettering.
Bruce left the party the moment the French premier's son showed up and Tammy locked herself in an upstairs bathroom with a bottle of champagne and fell into a fairly hysterical state and someone-this zonked-out NYU film student who'd spent a few nights in the apartment and was lighting everybody's cigarettes-gave me his phone number, signing the back of an old issue of Le Monde with an important pen he borrowed from a certain luminary. A new David Barton gym was opening somewhere in Pigalle and a baffled Princess Sumaya of Jordan gasped "Ooh-how perfect." The director and Felix, along with most of the film crew, were thrilled by the direction the party was taking. I ended up slumped over on a bench in the courtyard and drunkenly said "Bonjour, dude" to Peter Jennings as he left and my foot had fallen asleep so I limped back into the party and tried to dance with Jamie but Bobby wouldn't let me.
36
The shows we attended today: Gaultier, Comme des Garcons and-after a stop at the new Frank Malliot place located somewhere beneath the Champs Elysees-Galliano (a giant white curtain, uncharacteristic modern lighting, "Stupid Girl" by Garbage blaring, models bowing, we needed alibis), and then inevitably Les Bains for a dinner in honor of Dries von Noten and male bouncers pull us in and I'm wearing Prada and mellowing out on immense dosages of Xanax and it's a big hyped-up bash and I'm saying "Hey baby" in strained variations to Candelas Sastre and Peter Beard and Eleanore de Rohan-Chabot and Emmanuel de Brantes and Greg Hansen and a dentist I visited briefly in Santa Fe when Chloe was on location there and Ines Rivero and there are way too many photographers and store buyers and PR types and all the girls are carrying straw bags and wearing dresses the colors of crayons and the club is decked out with immense flower arrangements made up of gardenias and roses. I keep overhearing the word "insects" and when I light a cigarette I'm just noticing the thousand francs clutched in my hand that for some reason Jamie gave me during the Galliano show while I sat next to her trembling violently. This morning over breakfast Bobby said nothing about where he was heading off to today but since so many scenes are being shot without me I just frantically memorize my lines and show up according to the production schedule, staying inconspicuous, staying out of sight.
I walk over to where the film crew waits and I hit my mark, lighting Jamie's cigarette. She's wearing a tight sequined pantsuit by Valentino and carefully applied winged eyeliner. Eric Clapton starts playing over the sound system, which is my cue.
"Eric Clapton sucks."
"Oh yeah?" she asks. "That's just great."
I grab a glass of champagne off a tray a waiter gliding by is holding and we're both out in the open standing next to each other on the dance floor, looking at everything else but us.
"I want you," I say, wanly smiling, nodding to Claudia Schiffer as she passes by. "I want you very badly."
"That's not in the script, Victor," she warns, smiling wanly too. "That's not going to play."
"Jamie, please," I say. "We can talk. Bobby's not here yet."
"Just knock those date-rape fantasies out of that pretty little head of yours," she says, exhaling.
"Baby," I say genuinely. "I don't want to hurt you."
"You're about to hurt both of us if you keep this up."
"Keep what up?" I ask.
She turns even farther away. I move closer.
"Hey Jamie-" I reach out to touch her shoulder. "What's the story?"