"It's about attitude as lifestyle, "Jamie's saying.
"You're starting to sound like a Calvin Klein ad, baby, and I don't like it," Bobby growls.
Jamie waves playfully at the camera until Bobby's asked about his involvement with Amnesty International. I turn away, notice Dennis Rodman striding confidently around the room in a loincloth, a giant pair of wings and a diamond nose ring. When I turn back to the table the VJ is asking Bentley how he likes Paris.
"I love everything but the Americans," Bentley yawns, being vaguely entertaining. "Americans are notoriously inept at foreign languages. My idea of tedium? Listening to some nitwit from Wisconsin try and order a glass of ice at Deux Magots."
From behind me I hear the segment director say to someone, "We're not running that."
"You should let people proceed at their own pace, Bentley," Jamie says gently, leaning in, plucking an unlit cigarette from his hand. "Don't have a tizzy."
"What are you all wearing?" the VJ asks, lights and a camera swinging around to the rest of us. "Just go with it."
It's freezing in Natacha, everyone's breath is steaming and we're waving away flies, the floor littered with piles of confetti, and the smell of shit is even more pervasive after I do a couple of hits from the packet of coke that I reluctantly hand back to Bentley. Markus Schenkenberg, who thinks he's my friend but who is not, pulls a chair up next to mine, another photo op, another black snakeskin jacket to show off, another chance for him to tell me, "We're not infallible, Victuh."
"Is that on the record or off the record?"
Markus yawns as Beatrice Dalle catwalks by, then glances back over at me.
"He's a terrorist," I tell Markus, motioning to Bobby.
"No," Markus says, shaking his head. "He doesn't look like a terrorist. He's way too gorgeous."
Reject the hype, girlfriend," I sigh, slouching deeper into my chair. "That guy's a terrorist."
"No," Markus says, shaking his head. "I know terrorists. That guy doesn't look like a terrorist."
"You're a daredevil," I yawn, giving him shark eye. "You're a total renegade."
"I'm a little out of control," Markus admits. "I'm thinking of jamming out right now."
"He's the villain," I sigh.
Someone from Camden is leaning into Jamie, a French guy named Bertrand who was Sean Bateman's roommate, whispering something in her ear, both of them staring at me. Jamie keeps nodding until Bertrand says something that causes her to stiffen up and stop nodding and she has to push Bertrand away, her face falling apart. Bertrand glares at me while folding back into the crowd. Mario Sorrenti and David Sims materialize, surrounding Markus. Bobby starts tablehopping with Shoshanna Lonstein, a former Talking Head, the magician David Blaine and Snoopy Jones. In tears, Tammy runs away from Bruce, who has China Chow perched on his knees, and a dealer Bentley sent over named the Grand Poobah whispers "Have you been experienced?" in my ear and arrangements are made.
32
A shot of Scotch tape being applied with rubber gloves to a white metal gas canister. This shot-with the camera slowly pulling back-is intercut with one of me taking a shower, slowly soaping my chest, my legs, the camera gliding gratuitously up over my ass, water cascading down the flexing muscles in my back. Another shot of the thick metal canister sitting on a Hans Wegner ottoman. A quick montage of my character dressing-slipping on Calvin Klein boxer-jockeys, a lime-green Prada turtleneck, a Yohji Yamamoto suit with a close-up of the label for the audience's gratification. A close-up of my face, a hand entering the frame to slip on a pair of black Ray-Bans (an instance of well-paid product placement). Another close-up: a Xanax tablet placed on my tonglic, a bottle of Volvic water tilted toward my lips. A shot of the gas canister being packed into a Louis Vuitton tote bag.
An exterior shot of Hozan. A brief interior shot of me eating a late lunch and in this shot the Christian Bale guy walks past me but I don't notice because I'm concentrating on the patrolmen walking by carrying submachine guns, because I'm distracted by the arm that has fallen asleep. Shots of me moving down Rue de Fourey toward the Seine. A shot of me on Pont Marie crossing the Ile Saint-Louis with Notre Dame looming up above me, the sky gray and overcast. Then I'm crossing the Seine onto the Left Bank. A shot of me turning right on Boulevard Saint-Germain. A shot of me descending into a metro station. This shot lingers for several seconds on a crowd of straggling tourists.