She turns around. "I lost those goons in a Starbucks an hour ago."

She exhales, offers me the Marlboro. "If you can believe anyone's stupid enough to lose someone in a Starbucks."

"Starbucks can get pretty crowded, baby," I say, taking the cigarette from her, dazed yet relieved.

"I'm not worried about them," she says lightly.

"I think the fact that you can only have sex in the bathroom at Indo- chine should like give you major pause, baby."

"I wanted to celebrate the fact that our worries about a certain photograph are over."

"I talked to Buddy," I say. "I know."

"What horrible string did you pull?" she asks admiringly. "Confirm Chloe's nasty ex-habit?"

"You don't want to know."

She considers this. "You're right," she sighs. "I don't."

"Did you make Damien buy that new 600SEL?"

"Actually he leased it," Alison mutters. "Asshole."

"Damien's not an ass**le."

"I wasn't referring to him, but yes he is."

"Hey, tell me what you know about Baxter Priestly."

"Someone with amazing cheekbones." She shrugs. "In the band Hey That's My Shoe. He's a model-slash-actor. Unlike you, who's a model-slash-loser."

"Isn't he like a fag or something?"

"I think Baxter has a major crush on Chloe Byrnes," she says, eyes flickering gleefully over my face for a reaction, then, after thinking about something, she shrugs. "She could do worse."

"Oh boy, Alison."

She's laughing, relaxed. "Victor-just keep an eye out."

"What are you saying?" I ask, stretching.

"What is it you always say?" she asks. "The better you look, the more you see. Is that it?"

"Are you saying that Baxter Priestly and Chloe are-what, Alison?" I ask, arms still spread out. "Humping?!?"

"Why are you even worried?" She hands me back the cigarette. "What do you see in that poor little girl besides a staggering intellect?"

"What about Lauren Hynde?" I ask casually.

Alison stiffens up noticeably, plucks the cigarette from my lips, finishes it, starts moving toward the front of the restaurant.

"Barely anything. Two Atom Egoyan movies, two Hal Hartley movies, the latest Todd Haynes. Oh, and a small part in the new Woody Allen. That's about it. Why?"

"Whoa," I say, impressed.

"She's so out of your league, Victor, it's not even funny." Alison takes her coat and purse from a stool at the bar.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means I don't think you have to worry about being taken seriously by her," Alison says. "You're not gonna be."

"I'm just having a fly time, bay-bee." I shrug.

"She apparently had that whole hair-pulling madness disease. It disappeared entirely under Prozac therapy. Or so they say."

"So you're basically saying we're caught in a trap and we can't back out? Is that it?" I'm asking.

"Well, you're going to have to take the back way out." She kisses me on the nose.

"There is no back way out, Alison."

"Then just give me five." She yawns, buttoning up.

"Where are you going?" I ask sheepishly. "I suppose a ride is out of the question considering the circumstances, huh?"

"I have an extremely vital hair appointment at Stephen Knoll," Alison says, squeezing my cheek. "Kiss-kiss, bye-bye."

"See you tonight," I say, waving wanly.

"Big time," she mutters, walking down the stairs, outside, away from me.

16

Umberto guards the door at Spy Bar on Greene Street waving flies away with a hand

holding a walkie-talkie and wishes me luck tonight and lets me in and I head up the stairs smelling my fingers then duck into the men's room where I wash my hands and stare at myself in the mirror above the sink before I remember time is fleeting, madness takes its toll and all that and in the main room the director, assistant director, lighting cameraman, gaffer, chief electrician, two more assistants, Scott Benoit, Jason Vorhee's sister, Bruce Hulce, Gerlinda Kostiff, scenic ops and a Steadicam operator stand around a very large white egg, mute, video cameras circling, filming a video of the making of the commercial, photographers taking pictures of the video team.

Chloe sits away from them at a large booth in the back of the room. A group of makeup artists holding gels and brushes surround her and she's wearing rhinestone-studded hot pants, a minidress with a flippy skirt and she looks unnaturally happy in this twilight zone but after catching my gaze she just shrugs helplessly. Someone named, I think, Dario, who used to date Nicole Miller, wearing sunglasses and a Brooks Brothers coconut hat with a madras band and a telescope crown and sandals, is lying on a tatami mat nearby, with a Mighty Morphin Power Rangers tattoo on his bicep. I use the phone at the bar to check my messages: Balthazar Getty, a check for my tai chi instructor bounced, Elaine Irwin, a publicist from my gym, Val Kilmer, Reese Witherspoon. Someone hands me a cafe au lait and I hang out with this model named Andre and share a too tightly rolled joint by a long buffet table covered with really trendy sushi and Kenny Scharf- designed ice buckets and Andre's life is basically made up of lots of water, grilled fish and all the sports he can do and he has a look that's young, grungy, somewhat destitute but in a hip way. "I just want people to smile a little more," Andre's saying. "And I'm also concerned with the planet's ecological problem."