I'm slouching vacantly against a wall and my leg has fallen asleep because of how long I've been stuck in this particular position. Sweat pours down the sides of Bentley's face as he's camcording and Bobby's concerned about camera angles but Bentley assures him Bruce's head isn't in the frame. The French premier's son, momentarily lucid, starts shouting out obscenities. Bobby's frustration is palpable. Bruce takes a break, wiping his forehead with a Calvin Klein towel, sips a warm, flat Beck's. Bobby lights a cigarette, motions for Bruce to remove another tooth. Bobby keeps folding his arms, frowning, staring up at the ceiling. "Go back to section four, ask it in B sequence." Again, nothing happens. The actor doesn't know anything. He memorized a different script. He's not delivering the performance that Bobby wants. He was miscast. He was wrong for this part. It's all over. Bobby instructs Bruce to pour acid on the actor's hands. Pain floods his face as he gazes at me, crying uselessly, and then his leg is sawed off.

21

The actor playing the French premier's son realizes it doesn't matter anymore how life should be-he's past that point now in the underground room in the house in the 8th or the 16th. He was on the Italian Riviera now, driving a Mercedes convertible, he was at a casino in Monte Carlo, he was in Aspen on a sunny patio dotted with snow, and a girl who had just won the silver medal in the Model Olympics is on her tiptoes, kissing him jealously. He was outside a club in New York called Spy and fleeing into a misty night. He was meeting famous black comedians and stumbling out of limousines. He was on a Ferris wheel, talking into a cell phone, a stupefied date next to him, eavesdropping. He was in his pajamas watching his mother sip a martini, and through a window lightning was flickering and he had just finished printing his initials on a picture of a polar bear he'd drawn for her. He was kicking a soccer ball across a vast green field. He was experiencing his father's hard stare. He lived in a palace. Blackness, its hue, curves toward him, luminous and dancing. It was all so arbitrary: promises, pain, desire, glory, acceptance. There was the sound of camera shutters clicking, there was something collapsing toward him, a hooded figure, and as it fell onto him it looked up and he saw the head of a monster with the face of a fly.

20

We're at a dinner party in an apartment on Rue Paul Valery between Avenue Foch and Avenue Victor Hugo and it's all rather subdued since a small percentage of the invited guests were blown up in the Ritz yesterday. For comfort people went shopping, which is understandable even if they bought things a little too enthusiastically. Tonight it's just wildflowers and white lilies, just Ws Paris bureau chief, Donna Karan, Aerin Lauder, Ines de la Fressange and Christian Louboutin, who thinks I snubbed him and maybe I did but mavbe I'm past the point of caring. Just Annette Bening and Michael Stipe in a tomato-red wig. Just Tammy on heroin, serene and glassy-eyed, her lips swollen from collagen injections, beeswax balm spread over'her mouth, gliding through the party, stopping to listen to Kate Winslet, to jean Reno, to Polly Walker, to Jacques Grange. just the smell of shit, floating, its fumes spreading everywhere. just another conversation with a chic sadist obsessed with origami. Just another armless man waving a stump and whispering excitedly, "Natasha's coming!" just people tan and back from the Ariel Sands Beach Club in Bermuda, some of them looking reskinned. just me, making connections based on fear, experiencing vertigo, drinking a Woo-Woo.

Jamie walks over to me after Bobby's cell phone rings and he exits the room, puffing suavely on a cigar gripped in the hand holding the phone, the other hand held up to his ear to block the din of the party.

"He's certainly in hair heaven," Jamie says, pointing out Dominique Sirop. Jamie's looking svelte in a teensy skirt and a pair of $1,500 shoes, nibbling an Italian cookie. "You're looking good tonight."

"The better you look," I murmur, "the more you see."

"I'll remember that."

"No you won't. But for now I'll believe you."

"I'm serious." She waves a fly away from her face. "You're looking very spiffy. You have the knack."

"What do you want?" I ask, recoiling from her presence.

Behind her Bobby walks quickly back into the room. He grimly holds hands with our hostess, she starts nodding sympathetically at whatever lie he's spinning and she's already a little upset that people in the lobby are dancing but she's being brave and then Bobby spots Jamie and starts moving through the crowd toward us though there are a lot of people to greet and say goodbye to.