They're helping me stand up. I'm trying to cling to Palakon as they lead me to the door.
"You must calm down, Mr. Ward," Palakon says. "Now let Russell take you back and we'll contact you within a couple of days, possibly sooner. But you must remain calm. Things are different now and you must remain calm."
"Why can't I stay here?" I plead, struggling as I'm being led to the door. "Please let me stay here."
"I need to get a full view," Palakon says. "Right now it's just a partial view. And I need to get a full view."
"What's happening, Palakon?" I ask, finally motionless. "What's the story?"
"Just that something has gone terribly wrong."
In the backseat of the black Citroen everything is covered with confetti and it seems like hours before Russell drops me off on Boulevard Saint-Marcel and then I'm crossing through the Jardin des Plantes and then I'm at the Seine and above me the morning sky is white and I'm thinking, Stay indoors, go to sleep, don't get involved, view everything without expression, drink whiskey, pose, accept.
25
I'm standing at a pay phone on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore, calling Felix at the Ritz. The phone in his room rings six times before he answers. I'm taking off my sunglasses then putting them on, again and again.
"Hello?" Felix asks tiredly.
"Felix, it's me," I say. "It's Victor."
"Yes?" Felix asks. "What is it? What do you want?"
"We have to talk." Across the street from where I'm standing someone's behaving oddly-weird hair, waving car fumes away with a newspaper, laughing uncontrollably. Across the street the sun is rising, then decides not to.
"Oh Victor, I am so tired of this," Felix says. "I am so tired of you."
"Felix, please, not now, please don't go into a rant now," I'm saying. "There are things you need to know," I'm saying. "I've figured some things out and I need to tell you these things."
"But I'm not interested in listening to you anymore," Felix says. "In fact, nobody is, Victor. And frankly I don't think there's anything you need to tell anyone, except of course if it's about your hair or your gym routine or who you plan to f**k next week."
(Bobby flies to Rome and then to Amman, Jordan, on Alitalia. A bag in the overhead compartment in first class contains spools of electric wire, needle-nosed pliers, silicon, large kitchen knives, aluminum foil, packets of Remform, hammers, a camcorder, a dozen files containing diagrams of military weapons, missiles, armored cars. On the plane Bobby reads an article in a fashionable magazine about the President's new haircut and what it means and Bobby memorizes lines he needs to deliver and flirts with a stewardess who mentions in passing that her favorite song is John Lennon's "Imagine." In a soothing voice Bobby compliments her career choice. She's asking him what it was like being on the Oprah Winfrey show. He's recalling a visit to room 25 at the Dreamland Motel. He's planning a catastrophe. He's contemplatively eating a brownie.)
"Felix, remember when you were asking me what happened to Sam Ho?" I'm saying. "Remember about the other film crew? The one Dimity saw me with at the Louvre yesterday?"
"Victor, please, just calm down," Felix says. "Get a grip. None of this matters anymore."
"Oh, yes it does, Felix, it does matter."
"No," he says. "It doesn't matter."
"Why not?" I'm asking. "Why doesn't it matter?"
"Because the movie's over," Felix says. "The production has been shut down. Everybody's leaving tonight."
"Felix-"
"You've been shockingly unprofessional, Victor."
(Jamie's in traffic circling the Arc de Triomphe, then she's turning down Avenue de Wagram, making a right onto Boulevard de Courcelles, heading for Avenue de Clichy to meet Bertrand Ripleis, and Jamie's thinking that this seems like the longest day of the year and she's thinking about a particular Christmas tree from her childhood, but it was never really the tree that impressed her, it was the ornaments adorning the tree, and then she's remembering how afraid of the ocean she was as a little girl-"too watery," she'd tell her parents-and then she's eighteen, in the Hamptons, a summer dawn, freshman year at Camden is a week away and she's staring out at the Atlantic, listening to a boy she met backstage at a Who concert at Nassau Coliseum snoring lightly behind her and two years later, in Cambridge, he'll commit suicide, pulled toward a force he could not evaluate, but now it was the end of August and she was thirsty and a giant gull circled above her and mourning didn't matter yet.)