"Lauren and I met at a press junket," Maxwell explains. "It was in L.A. at the Four Seasons."
Eva and Maxwell share a private moment. I'm silently retching.
"Popular spot?" Maxwell asks me.
I pause before asking, "Is that a true-or-false?"
"Man, you're all over the place," he says, lingering.
"Just fifteen minutes."
"More like an hour." Maxwell laughs.
"We're so sorry about Chloe;' Corrine interrupts.
I nod gravely.
"Are you guys going to that party at Life?" she asks.
"Oh yeah, sure, we'll be there," I say vaguely.
Corrine and Maxwell wait at the table while Eva and I stare at them vacantly until they finally realize we're not going to ask them to join us and then they say goodbye and Maxwell shakes my hand again and they disappear into the throng at the bar and the people waiting there look at Corrine and Maxwell differently now because they stopped at our table, because they gave the illusion that they knew us.
"God, I don't recognize anybody," I say.
"You have to check those photo books that were given to you," Eva says. "You need to memorize the faces."
"I suppose."
"I'll test you," Eva says. "We'll do it together."
"I'd like that," I say.
"And how is Victor Ward?" Eva asks, smiling.
"He's helping define the decade, baby," I say sarcastically.
"Significance is rewarded in retrospect," Eva warns.
"I think this is the retrospect, baby."
We both collapse into major giggling. But then I'm silent, feeling glum, unable to relate. The restaurant is impossibly crowded and things are not as clear as I need them to be. The people who have been waving at our table and making I'll call you motions saw how Corrine and Maxwell broke the ice and soon they will be all over us. I down another cup of sake.
"Oh, don't look so sad," Eva says. "You're a star."
"Is it cold in here?" I ask.
"Hey, what's wrong? You look sad."
"Is it cold in here?" I ask again, waving away a fly.
"When are you going to Washington?" she finally asks.
"Soon."
6
0
Jamie told me, "You're the only sign in the horoscope that's not a living thing."
"What do you mean?" I muttered.
"You're a Libra," she said. "You're just a set of scales."
I was thinking, This is just a fling, right? I was thinking, I want to f**k you again.
"But I thought I was a Capricorn," I sighed.
We were lying on a field bordered by red and yellow trees and I had my hand thrown up to block my eyes from the sun slanting through the branches, its heat striking my face, and it was September and summer was over and we were lying on the commons lawn and from an open window we could hear someone vomiting in a room on the second floor of Booth House and Pink Floyd-"Us and Them"-was playing from somewhere else and I had taken off my shirt and Jamie had haphazardly rubbed Bain de Soleil all over my back and chest and I was thinking about all the girls I had f**ked over the summer, grouping them into pairs, placing them in categories, surprised by the similarities I was finding. My legs had fallen asleep and a girl passing by told me she liked that story I read in a creative writing workshop. I nodded, ignored her, she moved on. I was fingering a condom that was lodged in my pocket. I was making a decision.
"I don't take that class," I told Jamie.
"No future, no future, no future-for you," Jamie half-sang. And now, in a hotel room in Milan, I remember that I started to cry on the field that day because Jamie told me certain things, whispered them in my ear so matter-of-factly it suggested she really didn't care who heard: how she wanted to bomb the campus to "kingdom f**k," how she was the one responsible for her ex-boyfriend's death, how someone really needed to slit Lauren Hynde's throat wide open, and she kept admitting these things so casually. Finally Jamie was interrupted by Sean Bateman stumbling over, holding a six-pack of Rolling Rock, and he lay down next to us and kept cracking his knuckles and we all started taking pills and I was lying between Sean and Jamie as they exchanged a glance that meant something secret.
Sean whispered into my ear at one point, "All the boys think she's a spy."
"You have potential," Jamie whispered into my other ear.
Crows, ravens, these flying shadows, were circling above us and above that a small plane flew across the sky, its exhaust fumes forming the Nike logo, and when I finally sat up I stared across the commons and in the distance, the End of the World spread out behind them, was a film crew. It seemed that they were uncertain as to where they were supposed to be heading but when Jamie waved them over they aimed their cameras at where we were lying.