"A photograph?" he asks. "A photograph?"

"B-b-baby," I stammer. "That sounds kind of sinister when you ask it twice. But it's, um, do you know Alison Poole?"

"Sure, she's Damien Nutchs Ross's squeeze," he says, spotting someone, giving thumbs-up, thumbs-down, then thumbs-up again. "How are things with the club? Everything nice and tidy for tomorrow night?"

"Cool, cool, cool: But it's like an, um, embarrassing photo like maybe of me?"

Richard has turned his attention to a journalist standing by us who's interviewing a very good-looking busboy.

"Victor, this is Byron from Time magazine." Richard motions with a hand.

"Love your work, man. Peace," I tell Byron. "Richard, about-"

"Byron's doing an article on very good-looking busboys for Time," Richard says dispassionately.

"Well, finally," I tell Byron. "Wait, Richard-"

"If it's an odious photograph the Post won't run an odious photograph, blah blah blah," Richard says, moving away.

"Hey, who said anything about odious?" I shout. "I said embarrassing."

Candy Bushnell suddenly pushes through the crowd screaming "Richard," and then when she sees me her voice goes up eighty octaves and she screams "Pony!" and places an enormous kiss on my face while slipping me a half and Richard finds Jenny Shimuzu but not Scott Bakula and Chloe is surrounded by Roy Liebenthal, Eric Goode, Quentin Tarantino, Kato Kaelin and Baxter Priestly, who is sitting way too close to her in the giant aquamarine booth and I have to put a stop to this or else deal with an unbelievably painful headache. Waving over at John Cusack, who's sharing calamari with Julien Temple, I move through the crowd toward the booth where Chloe, pretending to be engaged, is nervously smoking a Marlboro Light.

Chloe was born in 1970, a Pisces and a CAA client. Full lips, bone- thin, big br**sts (implants), long muscular legs, high cheekbones, large blue eyes, flawless skin, straight nose, waistline of twenty-three inches, a smile that never becomes a smirk, a cellular-phone bill that runs $1,200 a month, hates herself but probably shouldn't. She was discovered dancing on the beach in Miami and has been half-naked in an Aerosmith video, in Playboy and twice on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimwear issue as well as on the cover of four hundred magazines. A calendar she shot in St. Bart's has sold two million copies. A book called The Real Me, ghostwritten with Bill Zehme, was on the New York Times best-seller list for something like twelve weeks. She is always on the phone listening to managers renegotiating deals and has an agent who takes fifteen percent, three publicists (though PMK basically handles everything), two lawyers, numerous business managers. Right now Chloe's on the verge of signing a multimillion-dollar contract with Lancome, but a great many others are also in pursuit, especially after the "rumors" of a "slight" drug problem were quickly "brushed aside": Banana Republic (no), Benetton (no), Chanel (yes), Gap (maybe), Christian Dior (hmm), French Connection (a joke), Guess? (nope), Ralph Lauren (problematic), Pepe Jeans (are we kidding?), Calvin Klein (done that), Pepsi (sinister but a possibility), et cetera. Chocolates, the only food Chloe even remotely likes, are severely rationed. No rice, potatoes, oils or bread. Only steamed vegetables, certain fruits, plain fish, boiled chicken. We haven't had dinner together in a long time because last week she had wardrobe fittings for the fifteen shows she's doing this week, which means each designer had about one hundred twenty outfits for her to try on, and besides the two shows tomorrow she has to shoot part of a Japanese TV commercial and meet with a video director to go over storyboards that Chloe doesn't understand anyway. Asking price for ten days of work: $1.7 million. A contract somewhere stipulates this.

Right now she's wearing a black Prada halter gown with black patent-leather sandals and metallic-green wraparound sunglasses she takes off as soon as she sees me approaching.

"Sorry, baby, I got lost," I say, sliding into the booth.

"My savior," Chloe says, smiling tightly.

Roy, Quentin, Kato and Eric split, all severely disappointed, muttering hey mans to me and that they'll be at the opening tomorrow night, but Baxter Priestly stays seated-one collar point sticking in, the other sticking out, from under a Pepto-Bismol-pink vest-sucking on a peppermint-NYU film grad, rich and twenty-five, part-time model (so far only group shots in Guess?, Banana Republic and Tommy Hilfiger ads), blond with a pageboy haircut, dated Elizabeth Saltzman like I did, wow.

"Hey man," I sigh while reaching over the table to kiss Chloe on the mouth, dreading the upcoming exchange of pleasantries.