Free Glamorama by Bret Easton Ellis

vision is interrupted frequently by flashes from a photographer sent by
Vanity Fair
wearing a Thai-rice-field-worker hat, a video of
Casino Royale
on some of the monitors,
Downhill Racer
on others, while upstairs Beau and Peyton (ahem)
man
the phones. At our table Damien and me and JD (sitting by my side taking notes) and the two goons from the black Jeep, both wearing black Polo shirts, finish up breakfast, today’s papers spread out everywhere with major items about tonight’s opening: Richard Johnson in the
Post
, George Rush in the
News
(a big photo of me, with the caption“It Boy of the Moment”), Michael Fleming in
Variety
, Michael Musto plugging it in the
Voice
, notices in Cindy Adams, Liz Smith, Buddy Seagull, Billy Norwich, Jeanne Williams and A. J. Benza. I finish leaving a message under the name Dagby on my agent Bill’s voice mail. Damien’s sipping a vanilla hazelnut decaf iced latte, holding a Monte Cristo cigar he keeps threatening to light but doesn’t, looking very studly in a Comme des Garçons black T-shirt under a black double-breasted jacket, a Cartier Panthere watch wrapped around a semi-hairy wrist, Giorgio Armani prescription sunglasses locked on a pretty decent head, a Motorola Stortac cell phone next to the semi-hairy wrist. Damien bought a 600SEL last week, and he and the goons just dropped Linda Evangelista off at the Cynthia Rowley show and it’s cold in the room and we’re all eating muesli and have sideburns and everything would be flat and bright and pop if it wasn’t so early.
    “So Dolph and I walk backstage at the Calvin Klein show yesterday—just two guys passing a bottle of Dewar’s between them—and Kate Moss is there, no shirt on, arms folded across her tits, and I’m thinking, Why bother? Then I drank one too many lethal martinis at Match Uptown last night. Dolph has a master’s in chemical engineering, he’s married and we’re talking
wife
in italics, baby, so there wasn’t a bimbo in sight even though the VIP room was filled with eurowolves but no heroin, no lesbians, no Japanese influences, no
British Esquire
. We hung out with Irina, the emerging Siberian-Eskimo supermodel. After my fifth lethal martini I asked Irina what it was like growing up in an igloo.” A pause. “The evening, er, ended sometime after that.” Damien lifts off the sunglasses, rubs his eyes, adjusts them for the first time this morning to light, and glances at the headlines splashed over the various papers. “Helena Christensen splitting up with Michael Hutchence? Prince dating Veronica Webb? God, the world’s a mess.”
    Suddenly Beau leans over me with the new revised guest list, whispers something unintelligible about the Gap into my ear, hands over a sample of the invitations, which Damien never bothered to look at but wants to see now, along with certain 8×10s and Polaroids of tonight’s various waitresses, stealing his two favorites—Rebecca and Pumpkin, both from Doppelganger’s.
    “Shalom Harlow sneezed on me,” Damien’s saying.
    “I’ve got chills,” I admit. “They’re multiplying.”
    I’m looking over the menu that Bongo and Bobby Flay have come up with: jalapeño-cured gravlax on dark bread, spicy arugula and mesclun greens, southwestern artichoke hearts with focaccia, porcini mushrooms and herb-roasted chicken breasts and/or grilled tuna with black peppercorns, chocolate-dipped strawberries, assorted classy granitas.
    “Did anyone read the Marky Mark interview in the
Times
?” Damien asks. “The underwear thing is ‘semi-haunting’ him.”
    “It’s semi-haunting me too, Damien,” I tell him. “Listen, here’s the seating arrangements.”
    Damien studies Beau suspiciously for a reaction.
    Beau notices this, points out certain elements about the menu, then carefully says, “I’m semi-haunted … too.”
    “Yesterday I wanted to fuck about twenty different strangers. Just girls, just people on the street. This one girl—the only one