"Turn the beat around, JD."

"Um... why?"

"Because I love to hear percussion."

"Don't do this now, Victor," JD pleads. "Damien wants to be left alone."

"But that's the way, uh-huh uh-huh, I like it, uh-huh uh-huh."

"Okay, okay," JD pants. "Just get that fabulous ass over to Fashion Cafe, nab DJ X and do not sing `Muskrat Love."'

"`Muskrat Suzy, Muskrat Sa-a-am... '"

"Victor, I'll do whatever you want."

"London, Paris, New York, Munich, everybody talk about-pop music." I tweak his nose and march toward Damien's chamber.

"Please, Victor, let's go the other way," JD says. "The better way."

"But that's the way, uh-huh uh-huh, I like it."

"He doesn't want to be bothered, Victor."

"Hey, I don't either, so get away from me, you little mo."

"Victor, he told me to hold all calls and-"

"Hey-" I stop, turning toward him, pulling my arm out of his grasp. "I'm Victor Ward and I'm opening this club and I am sure that I am-what's the word? oh yeah-exempt from Mr. Ross's rules."

"Victor-"

I don't even knock, just stride in and begin bitching.

"Damien, I know you didn't want to be bothered but have you checked the guest list for this thing? We have people like Martin Davis supposedly stopping in and I just think that we have to be careful about who the paparazzi are going to see and who they're not..."

Damien's standing by the windows of his office, a large expanse of glass that overlooks Union Square Park, and he's wearing a polka-dot shirt and Havana-style jacket and he's pressed up against a girl wearing an Azzedine Alaia wrap coat and a pair of Manolo Blahnik high heels, all covered in pink and turquoise, who immediately disengages from him and flops onto a green hop sofa.

Lauren Hynde has changed since I saw her outside Tower Records earlier this afternoon.

"And, um, I, um..." I trail off, then recover and say, "Damien-I love that moneyed beachcomber look on you, baby."

Damien looks down at himself, then back at me, smiles tightly as if nothing's really wrong, and in the overall context of things maybe it isn't, then he says, "Hey, I like that unconstructed boxy look you got going."

Stunned, I look down at my hip-hugger pants, the tight satin shirt, the long leather coat, forcing myself not to glance over at the green hop sofa and the girl lounging on it. A long, chilly silence none of us are able to fill floats around, acts cool, lives.

JD suddenly sticks his head in, the Details girl looking over his shoulder, both of them still stuck in the doorway, as if there's a dangerous invisible line existing that they are not allowed to cross.

"Damien, I'm sorry about the interruption," he says.

"It's cool, JD," Damien says, moving over to the door and closing it in their faces.

Damien moves past me and I'm concentrating on staring out the window at people in the park, squinting to make some of them come into focus, but they're too far off and anyway Damien enters my view, dominating it, and picks up a cigar on his desk and a book of matches from the Delano. The new issue of Vanity Fair sits by an Hermes lamp, along with various glossy Japanese magazines, CDs, a PowerBook, a bottle of Dom Perignon 1983 in an ice bucket, two half-empty flutes, a dozen roses, which Lauren will not carry out of this room.

"Jesus f**king Christ," Damien snaps. I flinch. "Why in the f**k is Geena Davis on the cover of goddamn Vanity Fair? Does she have a movie out? No. Is she doing anything new? No. Jesus Christ, the world's falling apart and no one cares. How do these things happen?"

Not looking over at Lauren Hynde, I just shrug amiably. "Oh, you know how it happens: a shoe ad here, a VJ spot there, a bit part in 'Baywatch,' a bad indie film, then boom: Val Kilmer."

"Maybe she has cancer." Lauren shrugs. "Maybe she went on a big shopping expedition."

"Do you guys know each other?" Damien asks. "Lauren Hynde, Victor Ward."

"Hey, Lauren." I manage a ghastly little wave, which turns into a peace sign, then back into a ghastly little wave.

"Hi." She tries to smile without looking at me, concentrating on her fingernails.

"You two know each other?" Damien asks again, pressing.

"Oh yeah, sure," I say. "You're friends with Chloe."

"Yes," she says. "And you're..."