Glamorama

Glamorama Page 145

"So you'll be appreciated," Tammy says, lighting a thin cigarette.

"You don't appreciate me."

"Don't be absurd," she mutters.

"I know who you're seeing this afternoon."

"What else are you doing today?" she asks tonelessly.

"I'll go to the Versace luncheon. I'll have a club sandwich. I'll nod when it's appropriate." Pause. "I'll stick to the script."

The camera keeps circling the table they're sitting at and nothing's registering on Tammy's face and Bruce's hand shakes slightly as he lifts an Hermes coffee cup and then without sipping any cafe au lait puts it back on its saucer and closes his green eyes, lacking the energy to argue. The actor playing Bruce had a promising career as a basketball player at Duke and then followed Danny Ferry to Italy where Bruce immediately got modeling jobs and in Milan he met Bobby who was dating Tammy Devol at the time and things just flew from there. A vase-a prop-filled with oversized white tulips sits nonsensically between them.

"Don't be jealous," Tammy whispers.

A cell phone sitting on the table starts ringing and neither one of them moves to pick it up but it might be Bobby so Bruce finally answers. It's actually Lisa-Marie Presley, looking for Bentley-whom she calls "Big Sistah"-but Bentley's sleeping because he got in at dawn accompanied by an NYU film student he picked up at La Luna last night because the NYU film student had a tinted-blond chevron that accentuated already enormous lips and a penchant for nonbloodletting bondage that Bentley couldn't resist.

"Don't be jealous," Tammy says once more, before leaving.

"Just stick to the script," Bruce warns her.

As Tammy casually picks up a Vuitton box sitting on a chrome table in the hallway, the opening piano strains from ABBA's "S.O.S." begin playing and the song continues over the rest of Tammy's day, even though on the Walkman she wears throughout the city is a tape Bruce made for her-songs by the Rolling Stones, Bettie Serveert, DJ Shadow, Prince, Luscious Jackson, Robert Miles, an Elvis Costello song that used to mean something to both of them.

A Mercedes picks Tammy up and a Russian driver named Wyatt takes her to Chanel in Rue Cambon where she breaks down in an office, crying silently at first and then gasping until Gianfranco arrives and gets a sense that maybe something is "off" and scurries away after calling for an assistant to calm Tammy down. Tammy's freaked, barely gets through the fittings, and then she meets the son of the French premier at a flea market in Clignancourt and soon they're sitting in a McDonald's, both wearing sunglasses, and he's three years younger than Tammy, sometimes lives in a palace, hates the nouveau riche, f**ks only Americans (including his nanny, when he was ten). Tammy "ran into" him on Avenue Montaigne outside Dior four months ago. She dropped something. He helped pick it up. His car was waiting. It was getting dark.

The French premier's son has just returned from Jamaica and Tammy halfheartedly compliments him on his tan and then immediately inquires about his cocaine problem. Has it resolved itself? Does he care? He just smiles evasively, which he realizes too late is the wrong move because she gets moody. So he orders a Big Mac and Tammy picks at a small bag of fries and his flat is being painted so he's staying at the Presidential Suite at the Bristol and it's freezing in the McDonald's, their breath steaming whenever they talk. She studies her fingertips, wondering if cocaine is bad for your hair. He mumbles something and tries to hold her hand. He touches her face, tells her how sensitive she is. But it's all hopeless, everything's a label, he's late for a haircut. "I'm wary," she finally admits. He actually-Tammy doesn't know this-feels broken. They make vague plans about meeting again.

She walks away from the McDonald's, and outside where the film crew's waiting it's warm and raining lightly and the Eiffel Tower is only a shadow in a giant wall of mist that's slowly breaking up and Tammy concentrates on the cobbled streets, a locust tree, a policeman strolling by with a black German shepherd on a leash, then she finally gets back into the Mercedes the Russian named Wyatt is driving. There's a lunch at Chez Georges that she's just going to have to skip-she's too upset, things keep spiraling away from her, another Klonopin doesn't help-and she calls Joan Buck to explain. She dismisses the car, takes the Vuitton box and loses the film crew in the Versace boutique on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore. No one knows where Tammy is for the next thirty-five minutes.

She hands the Vuitton box to a strikingly handsome Lebanese man slouching behind the wheel of a black BMW parked tightly against a curb somewhere in the 2nd arrondissement, actually not far from Chez Georges so she changes her mind and