“No way.” I stop her. “Not that room.” I shove her toward the bathroom door. She looks at me, still pretending to be drunk, then goes in, closes the door. I actually hear her fart.

I turn the lights off, with a Bic, light candles I bought at the Pottery Barn last night. I take off my clothes, touching myself, already stiff, stretch out on the bed, waiting, starving now.

“Come on come on come on.”

The toilet flushes, she uses the bidet and then she comes out, shoes in hand, and seems shocked to find me lying on the bed with this giant hard-on but she plays it cool. She doesn’t want to do this and she knows she’s way out of her league and she knows it’s too late and this turns me on even more and I have to giggle and she takes her clothes off, asking “Where’s the coke? Where’s the coke?” and I say “After, after” and pull her toward me. She doesn’t really want to f**k so she tries to give me head instead and I let her for a little while even though I cannot feel a thing, so then I start f**king her reallv hard, looking into her face when I’m coming and, like always, she freaks out when she sees my eyes, shiny black, and she sees the horrible teeth, the ruptured mouth (what Dirk thinks looks like “the anus of an octopus”), and I’m screaming on top of her, the mattress below us sopping wet with her blood and she starts screaming too and then I hit her hard, punching her in the face until she passes out and I carry her outside to the pool and by the light coming from underwater and the moon, high in Encino tonight, bleed her.

I meet Miranda at the Ivy on Robertson for a late supper and she’s looking, in her own words, “absoloutly fabulous.” Miranda is “forty,” with jet-black hair pulled back tight, a jagged white streak running through it on the side, a pale-tan complexion and high, gorgeous cheekbones, teeth the color of lightning, and she’s wearing an original hand-beaded velvet dress by Lagerfeld from Bergdorf Goodman she bought when she was in New York last week to bid on a water bottle at Sotheby’s that eventually went for a million dollars and to check out a private fund-raising party for George Bush, which, according to Miranda, was “just smashing.”

“Even though you’re older than me by, like, twenty years, you always seem incredibly youthful,” I tell her. “You are definitely one of my favorite people to hang out with in L.A.”

Tonight we’re on the patio and it’s hot and we’re talking quietly about how Donald is used rather promiscuously in a layout on linen suits in the August issue of GQ and how if you look very carefully at the model next to him you can see four tiny purple dots on his tan neck that the airbrusher missed.

“Donald is absoloutly wicked,” Miranda says.

I agree and ask, “What’s the definition of superfluous? Ethiopian after-dinner mints.”

Miranda laughs and tells me that I’m wicked too and I sit back, sipping my limeade and Stoli, very pleased.

“Oh look, there’s Walter,” Miranda says, sitting up a little. “Walter, Walter,” she calls out, waving.

I despise Walter-fiftyish, faggot-clone, agent at ICM whose main claim to fame in some circles is that he bled every person in the Brat Pack except Emilio Estevez, who told me one night at On the Rox that he wasn’t into “Dracula and shit like that.” Walter saunters over to our table, wearing a completely tacky Versace tuxedo, and he drones on about the screening at Paramount tonight and how this film will do $110 million domestic and that he played f**ky with one of the film’s stars even though the film is a piece of shit and he flirts shamelessly with me and I’m not impressed. He slinks off—“What a slime, what a homo,” I mutter—and then it’s only me and Miranda.

“So tell me what you’ve been reading, darling,” she asks, after the N.Y. steaks, blood rare and extra au jus on the side, arrive and we both dig in. “By the way, this is”—she cocks her head, chewing—“delish,” and then, “Oh, but what a headache.”

“Tolstoy,” I lie. “I never read. Boring. You?”

“I absoloutly love that Jackie Collins. Marvelous trash,” she says, chewing, a dark line of juice dripping down her pale chin as she pops two Advil, washing them down with the cup of au jus. She wipes her chin and smiles, blinking rapidly.

“How’s Marsha?” I ask, sipping a red-wine spritzer.

“She’s still in Malibu with…” and now Miranda lowers her voice, mentions one of the Beach Boys.

“No way, dude,” I exclaim, laughing.

“Would I lie to you, baby?” Miranda says, rolling her eyes up, licking her lips, polishing that steak off.