"Why didn't you check it for me?" Bentley whines. "Jesus, Bobby." "I didn't know I was going to stay." Bobby shrugs, staring at me.
After I'm seated at a table with Donatella Versace, Mark Vanderloo, Katrine Boorman, Azzedine Alaia, Franca Sozzani and the Belgian iconoclast and we've all laughed at other people's expense and smoked dozens of cigarettes and waiters have cleared away platcs of food that were barely looked at let alone touched and all of us have whispered secret things to the person on our left, Jamie walks by the table with a joint and asks for a light from Donatella, who's sitting next to me, and Jamie-while pretending to talk to Donatella, who's talking to Franca-tells me that Bobby is leaving for Beirut tomorrow and then he's traveling on to Baghdad and Dublin, where he's meeting with a member of a Virginia paramilitary group, and he'll be back in five days. I'm listening intently as she says this and she's encouraging me to laugh gaily and she relays this information in such a way that if you were across the room-as Bobby is now-you would assume she was telling Donatella how terrific Victor looks or contemplating aloud how fabulous her life turned out and Jamie takes just one hit off the joint before leaving it for the rest of the table to smoke and my foot has fallen asleep, and limping away, trying to follow her, I bump into slow-moving silhouettes and shadows and I notice Bentley making a dashing exit with the Prada backpack and then the rock group Autour de Lucie starts tuning up, about to perform their first song, a cover of the Who's "Substitute."
35
ABBA's "Voulez-Vous" blasts out over the sound track and in front of Les Bains a white Range Rover waits and in the front passenger seat the director from another film crew is going over tonight's sequence while in back various assistants staring intently ahead communicate on wireless headphones with the second unit, which has already set up at the designated site. With the Prada backpack slung over his shoulder Bentley hops into the Range Rover as it pulls away, followed by a black Citroen, toward the Boulevard Saint-Germain. Cafe Flore has been canvassed all week and a detailed description of its layout yielded the best table to leave the Prada backpack at. Bentley studies the following scene on two pieces of fax paper, memorizes his lines.
The cab drops Bentley off a block away from Cafe Flore and he walks quickly, purposefully, over to that outside table just off the sidewalk where Brad, the actor playing the NYU film student Bentley picked up at La Luna last week, is sitting with two friends-Seattle waif boys who attended Camden with Brad-and they're all stylishly chewing gum and smoking Marlboros, slouching in their seats with perfect hair, and an empty Starbucks cup sits in the middle of the table and by Brad's feet is a Gap bag filled with newly bought T-shirts. "Ooh, let's play dress-up," Brad says when he sees Bentley maneuvering toward the table in his Versace tuxedo.
Cafe Flore is packed, shimmering, every table filled. Bentley notices this with a grim satisfaction but Bentley feels lost. He's still haunted by the movie Grease and obsessed with legs that he always felt were too skinny though no one else did and it never hampered his modeling career and he's still not over a boy he met at a Styx concert in 1979 in a stadium somewhere in the Midwest, outside a town he has not been back to since he left it at eighteen, and that boy's name was Cal, who pretended to be straight even though he initially fell for Bentley's looks but Cal knew Bentley was emotionally crippled and the fact that Bentley didn't believe in heaven didn't make him more endearing so Cal drifted off and inevitably became head of programming at HBO for a year or two. Bentley sits down, already miked, in a crimson-and-forest-green chair and lights a cigarette. Next to them Japanese tourists study maps, occasionally snap photos. This is the establishing shot.
"Hey Bentley," Brad says. "This is Eric and Dean. They went to Camden and are both aspiring models. We've been comparing diets."
"So that's why I thought you all looked so cool," Bentley says, the Camden reference causing him to flash on Victor and what's in store for him.
"Laurent Gamier is spinning tonight at Rex," Brad says hopefully.
"Maybe, maybe," Bentley says, nodding, exhaling smoke, and then, looking over at the tattoo circling Dean's wrist, "Nice."
"Do you have it?" Brad asks, referring to the Ecstasy Bentley was supposed to bring to Cafe Flore.
"I'm going to have to go to Basil's flat," Bentley says offhandedly, smiling at Dean again.
"Oh man," Brad groans, disappointed. "That'll take forever."