Part 18 (1/2)

Craven, genuflective begging ensues, heartfelt and genuine. Please, please, please. He will do anything, he tells her. He will bark like any species of dog she can name, even roll over if necessary. Finally, she peels off the teddy and lies back on the bed like Manet's Olympia, ripe and haughty, a bored odalisque. She is a woman whose image is expensively employed to arouse desire in conjunction with certain consumer goods.

”Fast,” she commands, ”and no sweating.”

The narrator takes what he can get, a grateful consumer.

Location, Location, Location The narrator lives in the West Village, near the river, far enough west that he is spared the Visigoth invasions of provincial teens with boom boxes, just south and east of the Meatpacking District. A summer's-evening breeze is imbued with a perfume that wafts from the sc.r.a.p heaps of decaying flesh stacked outside the packing warehouses; after dark, the streets are taken over by transvest.i.tes and the cruising vehicles of their johns; many nights, the narrator is awakened by thick whispers and carnal grunts from the stairwell just outside the bedroom windows. ”It's always a tradeoff with Manhattan real estate,” the agent cheerfully informed him, and then demanded fifteen percent of the first year's rent.

Curriculum Vitae The narrator's name is Collin McNab. That's me, thirty-two years old and not really happy about it. Still waiting for my adult life to begin. Is this my fault? I could blame my parents. That That would be novel. would be novel.

I have a job, of sorts. It is called Paying the Rent Until I Write My Original Screenplay About Truth and Beauty. The job description: writing articles about celebrities for a young women's magazine. A branch of astrology. I'm planning to develop a computer program that will spit these things out with the touch of a few keys, a simple program indeed, since there are so very few variables. Already my word-processing program contains macro keystrokes that instantly call up such revelations as ”shuns the Hollywood limelight in favor of spending quality time with his family at his sprawling ranch outside of Livingston, Montana.” (Control, MONT.) And ”There's nothing like being a parent to teach you what really matters in life. The fame, the money, the limos-you can keep it. I mean, being a father/mother is more important to me than any movie role could ever be.” (Alt, BABY.) And the ever popular ”Actually, I've always been really insecure about my looks. I definitely don't think of myself as a s.e.x symbol. When I look in a mirror I'm like-Oh G.o.d, what a mess.” (s.h.i.+ft, WHAT, ME s.e.xY?) Right now I'm trying to write a piece about Chip Ralston, boy movie star, but cannot seem to track him down. Although Chip Ralston allegedly agreed to this piece, his agent, his business manager and his publicist are all somewhat evasive at the moment. Is it possible that Chip remembers a rather negative-all right, very negative-review in the Tokyo Business Journal Tokyo Business Journal that I wrote about his second movie, in which I said that the best acting was done by his car, a racing-green Jensen Healy with s.e.xy wire wheels and a deep, throaty voice? that I wrote about his second movie, in which I said that the best acting was done by his car, a racing-green Jensen Healy with s.e.xy wire wheels and a deep, throaty voice?

Metropolis After twenty-four hours, still no message from Philomena but one from the narrator's boss, Jillian Crowe, asking for an update on the Chip Ralston piece. There was a twinkling moment when Collin seemed to have the gift of pleasing Princess Jillian, a time when he detected an almost girlish interest in his person and his so-called work, culminating in the evening when he was her escort, a last-minute subst.i.tute but an escort nonetheless, to the Costume Gala at the Metropolitan Museum. This was the metropolis as it was meant to be seen, in the flattering aphrodisiac light of eminence, a brilliant republic compounded of wealth, power, accomplishment and beauty. The atmosphere of festive mutual regard extended even to tourists, like Collin, on the happy a.s.sumption that their applications for citizens.h.i.+p were pending. He was with Jillian Crowe, therefore he was. If he had first taken the whole thing more or less as a joke, secure in his self-knowledge as a flunky, toward the end of the night he started to feel remarkably comfortable in this new role. Infected by both a desire to please and half a dozen gla.s.ses of Krug, he regaled the table with colorful anecdotes about the s.e.xual practices of the j.a.panese and with the untold story behind a recent celebrity interview. He didn't think that Jillian appreciated these stories quite as much as he'd hoped. But then again, he doesn't exactly remember. He does recall her saying, ”Darling, when I try to show you the ropes, do try to pick up more than just just enough to hang yourself.” And then there was Philomena's reaction: furious at being left out, she was also irate at the datelike aspects of what Collin tried to present as a tedious professional obligation. enough to hang yourself.” And then there was Philomena's reaction: furious at being left out, she was also irate at the datelike aspects of what Collin tried to present as a tedious professional obligation.

”Why don't you ask Jillian Crowe to f.u.c.k you?” became a late-night refrain in their bedroom for some time. It seemed to Collin that he paid dearly for this little outing. At work his novelty simply and immediately wore off, novelty being the cardinal virtue in the value system of the magazine; after that night, the frisson between Collin and Jillian Crowe fizzled.

Suspicious Information Collin calls his girlfriend's modeling agency to ask for her hotel in San Francisco.

”San Francisco?” says the booker. ”What's in San Francisco? I show no booking for Philomena in San Francisco. In fact, I'm showing no bookings at all. She booked out. Told me she was taking the week off.”

Collin feels a painful outward pressure on either side of his skull, above and behind the ears, as if he were growing horns.

Fall Yellow leaves fluttering down the face of the building across the street, like messages from a princess in a high tower. Another year going past.

Neutral Information, i.e., Raw Data Philomena Briggs, born Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, July 13, 1963. Height: 5 10. Hair: auburn. Dress size: 4. Shoe size: 8. Measurements: 34-24-34.

Interpretation The above data comes from Phil's composite, the business card with pictures distributed by her modeling agency, and is in fact not raw at all but cooked to a turn. The actual birth year is 1961. The place of birth was a town too small to show up on any map. The measurements are obviously suspect. And the last time I bought her a dress, I had to return the four to Barneys and get the six. ”The salesclerk told me they ran small,” I noted helpfully as she tried it on, knowing that if she got upset with the way she looked in it I might not get lucky for days.

How I Got My Job The joke around the office is that Jillian Crowe gave me my current job on the celeb beat after she heard that I was living with a model named Phil. Another point in my favor was what I wore to my interview, a vintage Brooks Brothers gray flannel hand-me-down from my father; Jillian thought that I was fas.h.i.+on-forward enough to have antic.i.p.ated the return of the three-b.u.t.ton sack suit. She has since discovered her mistakes.

My contract is up in two months, and no one has approached me about renewal. In fact, my office was recently converted to storage s.p.a.ce. I send in my copy via modem from my apartment: vanguard of the virtual office.

More on Phil I met Philomena in Tokyo, on the Ginza Line between Akasaka-mitsuke and s.h.i.+mbas.h.i.+. I couldn't help noticing her, of course, the only other gaijin gaijin in the subway car, a head taller than the indigenous population, clutching her big black modeling portfolio to her ribs, nervously tossing her coppery hair. I was trying very hard not to stare. ”Do you know which stop is Ginza,” she asked. I looked up from my copy in the subway car, a head taller than the indigenous population, clutching her big black modeling portfolio to her ribs, nervously tossing her coppery hair. I was trying very hard not to stare. ”Do you know which stop is Ginza,” she asked. I looked up from my copy of Heike Monogatari of Heike Monogatari, all innocence, my expression one that was meant to say, Whatever in the world leads you to a.s.sume that I speak English? At the same time I was thinking, Oh, Jesus, please don't get off the train and walk out of my life-you're the most gorgeous creature I've ever seen in it.

She was in j.a.pan building up her modeling portfolio and her savings account. Aside from her modelish appearance, I was charmed by what seemed to me-after five years in j.a.pan-her archetypal Middle Americanness, the curious alloy of wide-eyed curiosity and other-side-of-the-tracks street savvy. In that stranger-in-a-strange-land context, I, in turn, must have cut a rather striking figure, being able to order food right off the menu, count, ask directions and, when necessary, shout insults. Which is to say, I doubt she ever would've shacked up with me in the States. But in the context of adult males known to Philomena, I was practically a saint, just by virtue of nonviolently hanging around. Her father disappeared when she was three, and of her mother's several boyfriends the best that she could say of her favorite was that he was pa.s.sed out most of the time. She has never really told me the worst of it, and I'm sure I don't want to know. Whenever Philomena, standing in front of the full-length mirror at five minutes to eight, tells me that she hates going out anyway, not to mention all of our so-called friends who are really only my friends, and that she is absolutely not attending the opening/screening/premiere/party/dinner/wedding or whatever occasion has forced her to confront the imagined shortcomings of her wardrobe and her body, whenever she ignores my pleas for s.e.xual relief or says, ”n.o.body really cares about anybody except themselves”-at these times I remind myself that she is still in a bad mood from her childhood. But this behavior did not manifest itself until we had been together for a year. And by then she was a relatively successful fas.h.i.+on model in New York, where such comportment was a professional prerequisite.

She moved into my tiny flat in Roppongi. We slept on a single futon that we laid out on the tatami floor each night and folded up each morning. Recently escaped from my official Ph.D. studies, I was keeping carca.s.s and spirit together by teaching English and writing movie reviews for the j.a.pan Times j.a.pan Times and the and the Tokyo Business Journal Tokyo Business Journal. Two evenings a week I took the train to s.h.i.+njuku and conjugated English verbs with j.a.panese businessmen: I dump.

You dump.

He dumps.

We dump.

You all dump manufactured goods below cost on the American market in order to gain market share.

On my free nights, I bought mordant pickled vegetables, anthropomorphic ginger root, fat, white, talcy sacks of short-grain rice, s.h.i.+ny fish and skinny chickens with feet. I turned on the automatic rice cooker when I heard Philomena's key in the door. We made love when she returned home, and sometimes again after we had rolled out the futon for the night. We were always s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g in those days. Jesus, it was wonderful. Then we moved to New York, which is to monogamy what the channel changer is to linear narrative.

Celebrity Searches I call Celebrity Searches. ”Can you give me a current location on Ralston, Chip?”

”Still checking,” the voice says after a long wait. Finally: ”We show him in his Malibu house up until Thursday last week, then we pick him up last Sat.u.r.day at the Westin St. Francis in San Francisco. Checked out Sunday and we're not showing anything since.”

”Can you work on that for me?”

”Sure. Meantime, how about Kiefer Sutherland? He's right here in town.”

”Who I really need to find is my girlfriend.”

”Actress?”

”Model.”

”Supermodel?”

”Just model.”

”Model, non super. Name?”

”Philomena Briggs.”

After a search, he says she's not in their database.

Finally, a Message from Phil ”Hi, it's me. You there? ... Guess you're out. I'm rus.h.i.+ng to get a plane. We're off to L.A. to finish up. I'm not sure about the schedule. It's nuts. Call you when I know where I am. Big kiss.” This message on my machine when I return from dinner. It's the tone of voice which is so disturbing. A false, heightened breeziness. The words strung together on a thin wire of nervous gaiety.

Collin's Reaction The narrator has been able to suppress his anxiety until this moment. But hearing her voice, he knows that his suspicions were well founded.

Fruitlessly he dials the Chateau Marmont, the Sunset Marquis, the Four Seasons, the Bel-Air, the Bel Age and the Peninsula. Maybe it's not too late. Maybe if he can reach her in L.A., he can stop her from doing what he fears she has already done. Between calls he searches all the drawers for cigarettes-which he gave up a year ago-and finally finds a pack of horribly stale Newports that someone left in the apartment. He lights one from the stove and thinks, Wait a minute, who smokes Newports? No one he knows. And Phil has never smoked. Jesus, she's been entertaining black guys in the apartment? No-wait, it could be a girl who smokes New-ports. One of Phil's friends. What friends? Who are her friends? He realizes that Philomena has very few girlfriends. Suddenly it seems dangerous to have so few friends. Who is your boyfriend supposed to call when he can't find you? Collin remembers something his sister once said: ”Beware the woman who doesn't like other women; she's probably generalizing from her own character.”

Flashback ”Why don't we ask Katrinka and her boyfriend for dinner?”

”You ask them. The three of you can go out. Or better yet, just the two of you. You and Katrinka.” ask them. The three of you can go out. Or better yet, just the two of you. You and Katrinka.”

”I thought you liked Katrinka.”

”I used to. Till I found out she was a liar.”

”What did she lie about?”

”Lots of things.”

”Like what?”

”Like she said you were coming on to her, trying to get her to meet you and stuff.”

”She said that?”

”Uh-huh.”

At this point Collin was hard-pressed to speak up in Katrinka's defense. In fact, it had seemed to him that she was always flirtatious, and he had been aware at the time that he was not actively discouraging it. And so he did not really want to probe any deeper into the matter. And once again the two of them, Collin and Philomena, dined a deux a deux.