Chapter Fourteen
People leaving. Bobby this morning, Tammy to Jacques Levy's for the weekend, Bruce to check out the floor plans of the terminals at Orly airport, Bentley on vacation, "perhaps Greece, perhaps not," which leaves me escorting Jamie to the Carita salon on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore, where Jamie has-in no particular order-her hair colored, a massage, aromatherapy and antistress treatments, an energy-balanced magnetic manipulation session, and then she's guided by a New Age adviser (eighteen, gorgeous) to a "beach of calm" complete with the sounds of prerecorded shellfish cavorting somewhere on a large, craggy rock. I'm waiting with the bodyguards and the bodyguards are waiting because of Brazilian millionaires, an empress or two, the Princess of Monaco, Judith Godreche, and we're all sipping a 1992 Ch?teau de Bellet and I'm on Xanax while the film crew shoots me flipping glumly through a photography book about '60s movie magazines until the boom operator knocks one of the bodyguards in the head and the director gets bored and the crew moves on to an early dinner and the next setup.
At the Opera Gamier feelings are mixed about the Japanese libretto but we're really there for the paparazzi waiting at the bottom of the stairs while Jamie and I are standing at the top of the stairs. And Christiana Brandolini is there and Sao Schlumberger loses a contact lens and Irene Amic hisses "You're stepping on my hem" but when she turns and sees my face, panicked and caught in the glow of a chandelier, she relents and smiles, whispering something about how beautiful I am, and then Candy Spelling's waving to Jamie, and Amira Casar and Astrid Kohl tell me about a party a week ago at Les Bains that I wasn't invited to.
I spot the Christian Bale look-alike I first saw on Bond Street in London, now wearing a tuxedo and nodding slowly when he notices me staring over at him transfixed. Jamie and I decide to leave during the first intermission.
A black Citroen takes us to the Buddha Bar and after we sit at a table, shaken, saying nothing, just staring hopelessly at each other, Jamie reaches into her Prada bag and calls Hotel Costes and since she knows Jean Louis and Gilbert a room is waiting by the time we arrive at 239 Rue Saint-Honore. The first assistant director glances at a call sheet and tells both of us to be on the main set by 9:00 tomorrow. It's midnight and Jamie rushes into the lobby, hugging herself in a Helmut Lang ponyskin coat, and then it's my turn to follow her.
The door to our room closes behind me and Jamie and I fall on the bed while I'm kissing her mouth and her arms are wrapped around my shoulders and after I'm naked I'm shaking so hard that she has to pull back. Then someone knocks on the door.
Jamie stands up, also naked, pulls on the Helmut Lang overcoat, lazily strides over to the door. She opens it without asking who it is.
A film crew I haven't seen before enters the room. A large Panavision camera is wheeled in, lights are positioned. The first AD tells me where to lie on the bed while Jamie confers with the director and the script supervisor. The propmaster opens a bottle of champagne, pours two glasses. A joint-not a prop-is introduced into the scene and then Jamie's lying next to me and I'm lighting the joint. Someone rumples the blankets on the bed and the director calls "Playback" and Jane Birkin starts sighing "Je T'Aime" on a CD and the film crew is just a shadow behind the lights and it's so cold in the room steam keeps pouring out of our mouths.
Jamie lies on her back and dreamily inhales on the joint I hand her, holding smoke in until she slowly breathes it out-a cue for her to start speaking in a halting, deliberate tone, her voice breathy and lost, her eyes half-closed.
"Bobby... strolled into Superstudio Industria... It was a shoot that had gone late... was it for an Anne Klein campaign?... I can't remember... People were making a hundred thousand dollars a day and it seemed worth it and it was maybe ten-thirty or eleven and... in December 1990... four years ago?... five?... and there had been a power failure of some kind... this blackout and candles were being lit but you still couldn't see anything and it was freezing... It had gotten so cold... in just a matter of minutes... I had goose bumps all over my body at Industria that night... and there was this shape moving in the darkness... a figure... tall... kept getting closer to where I was standing alone... and then it started... circling me... a mass... this shape... and it was whistling a song... which sounded familiar... 'On the Sunny Side of the Street,' it kept singing... and then I noticed the camera crew... following him at a discreet distance... but they had no lights... and they were still filming this... this shape, this thing... and when he lit a cigarette... in that instant I saw his face and recognized him immediately... He took me to the VIP room at that Club Xerox... and somewhere in the background was the film crew... and somewhere beyond that the Who was playing...