Free Party Girl: A Novel by Anna David Page B

sleep and that even still, I probably won’t be slumbering until long after the birds have started in on their oppressive morning chirping session. Or maybe it’s all those reasons. I chug from the bottle of Absolut I keep in my freezer without even chasing it with Diet Coke.
     
    I get to work on Monday with every intention of going downstairs to apologize to Stephanie. During my Sunday of only occasional consciousness—I’d opted, after being up for a few hours, to take more Ambien and sleep the whole day through—I’d come to the conclusion that heavy partying was really beginning to have a negative impact on my life, and that I was going to cut back on drinking and stop doing coke altogether. Stephanie, who I’d heard make more than a few of these apologetic declarations herself, would have to understand.
    But I also have to do a story on Ken Stinson, this incredibly cheesy actor who’s going to be playing Hercules in some terrible-sounding movie you couldn’t pay me $1,000 to see, and I decide that I should do the story first so that I can be more relaxed when I talk to her.
    The story is for our “Most Beautiful People” issue, and though he’s not remotely beautiful and the editors are clear on that, everyone knows that they don’t actually pick the most aesthetically pleasing famous people—just the ones coming out in movies and TV shows the readers will flock to.
    His publicist Amy connects the call and Ken tells me all the basics—no, he doesn’t go in for things like facials, he works out because he loves it and not for vanity—and when it’s over, I ask him if he has a childhood friend I could interview for terts.
    Terts are tertiary comments from people who know the source well, and though Absolutely Fabulous typically likes to use terts from other bold-faced names, they allow us to use “civilians” for our special issues. So Ken, after confirming his height (five foot eleven) and weight (two hundred pounds exactly), gives me the name and number of his best friend from high school, back in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
    The high school friend—a real redneck-sounding guy named Chuck—seems sweet and genuinely proud of Ken’s success. He laughs that before Ken became “an actor stud,” he was a dork “just like the rest of us.”
    I transcribe and start writing the piece with the speed of a mad-woman, noting that the height-and-weight stats Ken gave me conflict with the DMV records we always check them against. He must have thought that five foot nine and 180 pounds simply wasn’t “Most Beautiful People” material. Granted, he could have lied when he gave the DMV his stats, which could of course mean he’s even shorter and scrawnier than that, but there’s only so much a reporter can do.
    And then, when I’m putting the finishing touches on the piece, I get an e-mail from Stephanie, which has the formality of an Ed McMahon Publisher’s Clearinghouse notification. Dear Amelia, I read, my heart racing. I’m sorry to have to write this note but I just don’t think I can continue to be friends with you. I think you can figure out why. Best of luck in all your future endeavors—Stephanie.
    Tears start pouring out of my eyes before I’m even aware of them and I have an urge to take the computer and toss it on the ground. She can’t be friends with me? She thinks I can “figure out why”? Jesus Christ. Who the fuck does she think she is, e-mailing me a goddamn friendship rejection letter like I’ve interviewed for a job she’s not hiring me for? You’d have thought Gus was her husband the way she was carrying on.
    After a few minutes, though, I feel strangely calm. If I’m going to be thoroughly honest, I’ve been getting sick of Stephanie lately—she’s been a lot harsher and less comforting of late and I’d been starting to wonder if maybe we didn’t have as much in common as I used to think. Other people seem to have these friends that they’ve known since they were like in