"Do you have any cash?" I asked her.

"Don't overdo it, baby," she warned, lowering her sunglasses, scanning the room.

I took my sunglasses off and checked my reflection in the lenses.

She snapped her fingers at me. "Hey, why don't you just start chewing with your mouth open. Why don't you just start licking your fingers after meals."

"I don't intend to take you anywhere nice," I told her.

"Nice butt," she murmured, ogling a Brazilian guy she hadn't f**ked yet but would a week later as he passed by, bouncing a soccer ball on his knee as he crossed the length of the room while eating a bagel, his jeans perfectly ripped, wearing a tank top with a gym logo on it.

I agreed, teasingly.

"You fag," she yawned, taking the last swallow of Molson.

"He wears socks with sandals," I pointed out. "He still wears his high-school graduation ring."

"You, too, are in dire need of a maturity alert, my friend," she said.

"I don't wear Members Only jackets."

"Contrary to popular opinion this is not enough to not make you evil," she said.

"Evil?" I faux-gasped. "Black light posters are in. Bongos are in.

"Pervert," she said gleefully. "You have potential."

Sean Bateman, whom she had f**ked, joined us, offered a distracted smile, nodding even though no one had said anything that required a nod. He wondered aloud if any of us had pot, mentioned something about Rupert getting arrested in Albany late last night or early this morning. Sean pulled a beer out of the 'acket he had just taken off and handed it to Jamie, who opened it with her teeth. I noticed how nice Bateman's forearms were and someone was sadly strumming Led Zeppelin-I think it was "Thank You"-on a guitar and any light that had been streaming through the window we were all sitting next to disappeared and Sean whispered in my ear, "All the boys think she's a spy..."

I nodded and managed to smile.

Jamie was eyeing me carefully.

"What?" I asked, confused.

"You're easy to unfold," she said to me in front of Sean.

"What's the story, baby?" I was asking, worried, blank-faced.

"You have potential," Jamie said, grinning. "You definitely have potential."

0

The camera slowly pans around my apartment, Smashing Pumpkins' "Stumbleine" pours out over the sound track: a vintage industrial fan, an empty fish tank, dried flowers, a candelabra, a bicycle, a kitchen custom-made from several kinds of stone, a glass-door refrigerator, a food processor unwashed and stained with the grain and pulp from a health shake, a set of martini glasses. In the bathroom there's a poster of Diana Rigg in "The Avengers" and candles from Agnes b. and in the bedroom there's a down comforter lying on a futon that was handcarved in a Japanese forest and the original poster for La Dolce Vita that Chloe gave me for a birthday hangs over it and in the closet in that bedroom is a black Paul Smith suit, a black turtleneck, jeans and white shirts, vests, an open-weave pullover sweater, a pair of brightly colored Hush Puppies, black desert boots. On my desk: free drink tickets, a Cohiba cigar still in its container, a Clash CD-Sandinista!-unopened, a check to Save the Rainforest returned because of insufficient funds, last year's Social Register, a Baggie of psilocybin mushrooms, a half-empty Snapple, a roll of Mentos, an ad ripped from a magazine of Tyson promoting a new lip balm and the dragon tattoo etched on his bicep has a Chinese inscription on it that translated means "don't trust anyone" and an old fax machine and falling out of the fax machine at this moment is a slip of fax paper that I pick up and read.

On it:

nie Marais, Christopher Lambert, Tommy Lee, Lauren Hutton, Claire

Danes, Patty Hearst, Richard Grieco, Pino Luongo, Steffi Graf
Michael J. Fox, Billy Crudup, Marc Jacobs, Marc Audibet, the

Butthole Surfers, George Clinton, Henry Rollins, Nike, Kim Deal,
Beavis and Butt-head, Anita Hill, Jeff Koons, Nicole Kidman, Howard

Stem, Jim Shaw, Mark Romanek, Stussy, Whit Stillman, Isabella
Rossellini, Christian Francis Roth, Vanessa Williams, Larry Clark, Rob

Morrow, Robin Wright, Jennifer Connelly, RuPaul, Chelsea Clinton,
Penelope Spheeris, Glenn Close, Mandie Erickson, Mark Kostabi,

Rend Russo, Yasmen, Robert Rodriguez, Dr. Dre, Craig Kallman,
Rosie Perez, Campion Platt, lane Pratt, Natasha Richardson, Scott

Wolf, Yohji Yamamoto, L7, Donna Tartt, Spike Jonze, Sara Gilbert,
Sam Bayer, Margaret Cho, Steve Albini, Kevin Smith, Jim Rome, Rick