Party Girl: A Novel (24 page)

“Hello?” I sort of say and sort of shriek.

“Amelia? Is this a bad time?” When I realize whose voice it is, I want to dance a jig across the room.

“Adam!” It’s the first time I’ve heard from him since the day we spent together and I don’t make any effort to hide how happy I am to hear from him. “How are you?”

I expect him to launch into the same speech everyone else has been giving me about how funny and natural I was on TV, but he doesn’t. “Good,” he says. “Just been in back-to-back interviews for the show. The only problem is that I’m completely distracted.”

“Distracted? Why?” I smile as I lie down on my king-size bed.

“Honestly? Because I can’t stop thinking about you.”

Hooray
, I think. I wish for superhuman powers that could allow me to break through the phone and touch him.

“Me?” I ask, dying to hear more.

“Yes, you. Spending time with you the other day just sort of sparked something obsessive in me, I guess.”

I allow the pleasure of hearing these words bathe me in happiness for a second. Then I say, “I’m thinking about you a lot, too.” Fuck the “rules” and playing hard to get. “And guess what, Adam? I’m in New York.”

“What? Are you serious? For how long?”

“Just till tomorrow.”

“This sucks,” he says. “They have me on this insane interview schedule the rest of the day and night.”

I glance at the clock and realize I only have forty-five minutes to get uptown to meet the
Chat
editors for dinner. “And I have to go to dinner and this club and—”

“Wait, have you even told me why you’re here?” he asks. “Oh, shit. They’re motioning for me to go back into the room. Why don’t we just stick with our plan to see each other in L.A.? I’ll call you in a week or two when I’m back.”

After we hang up, I marvel over the fact that this phone call has made me feel about a thousand times better than the entire collection of enthusiasm on my voicemail. I’m sitting on my bed thinking about that while I rock back and forth and grin like some special ed student when I hear Nadine knocking on my door and telling me she has the car downstairs to take us to dinner.

At dinner, where a few of the editors split a bottle of wine and the rest of us drink sparkling water, I listen to basically every single one of them call me a genius, and act like this is something I’m actually used to or feel I deserve. Afterward, we go to Butter, where a steady stream of well-wishers come up and congratulate me on my column or tell me how funny I was on the
Today
show. A Nicole Miller publicist hands me her card and tells me she’d like to send me some outfits that she hopes I’ll consider wearing “out on the town.” A
Playboy
senior editor asks me if I’d be willing to write something for him and then hits on me when I explain that my
Chat
contract is exclusive. An actor who’s on
CSI
drunkenly confesses his love for me and tries sticking his hand down my pants. Eventually, I return to the Royalton to sleep, and before I know it, I’m back on a plane home.

Just after the plane boards, I get a call from Mom, who’s a bit underwhelmed by the process of explaining to people how she feels about her daughter writing about a ménage à trois experience at a wedding she hosted. The details I’d given Mom about the column had been deliberately sparse, both because I hadn’t known quite how to broach the content topic and because I thought my chances were decent that Mom would be too submerged in her poetry world to be more than even tangentially aware of her daughter’s “highly fictionalized” column. But appearing on the
Today
show was clearly like taking a banner and waving it in front of her face.

“I just don’t understand why you can’t write about something that’s meaningful to you now,” she says.

“Mom, no one in the world at large wants to read about the adventures of a girl who goes to meetings at Pledges and hangs out with her gay best friend.”

“Nonsense—you just think that because you haven’t tried to write it yet.”

“Jesus,” I find myself screeching, causing a model I just saw on the cover of
Elle
who’s sliding into a seat a few feet away from me to glance over with some concern. I lower my voice. “Why can’t you just be happy for me?”

“Oh, I am happy for you, honey,” she says, sounding anything but. I’ve never met someone less able to hide how she truly feels than my mother—or maybe it’s that I’ve never been quite so skilled at interpreting someone’s subtext. “And Dad is, too.”

The mere concept of my dad reading my column is horrifying and a thought I’m planning to repress as soon as humanly possible, but luckily, I won’t have to hear about this from him since Mom is the family’s unofficial gossip columnist and spokesperson when it comes to dramatic events.

“Look, Mom, they’re asking me to turn my phone off,” I say, even though passengers are still coming onto the plane and all anyone has done to me since I’ve gotten on board is smile ear to ear. I hang up and think about calling Adam, but it feels like it’s too soon. I could phone Stephanie, but I already talked to her a few times yesterday. Justin has been hanging out with his old boyfriend again and has been increasingly distant, and Rachel will remind me that humility is especially important when the outside world is validating me. For the first time since I’ve been sober, I don’t feel like being grateful.
I
was the one cracking up Meredith and Matt.
I
was the one being fawned over wherever I went.
I’m
publishing’s latest sensation. With a slew of saved messages from well-wishers on my voicemail, why the hell can’t I think of anyone to gloat about that to?

22

“Here we go,” Tim says as the Town Car pulls up outside the Roosevelt Hotel. “You’re on.”

We’ve just had dinner at Mr. Chow’s and are on our way into Brent Bolthouse’s night at the Roosevelt, where Paris and Jessica Simpson are regulars and the paparazzi wait outside knowing that they can make their week’s worth of money on this one night. It’s all part of Tim and Nadine’s plan to have me “out there” more, and while part of me loves the attention, this other part of me is exhausted by it.
It’s a full-time job keeping up the persona of Party Girl
, I think as the driver opens the door and helps me out.

As we approach the throng of people gathered outside, the doorman, Andrew, lifts the velvet rope to let us through. “Hey, Amelia,” he says, as I walk past, Tim and John on my heels. I spent years introducing myself to Andrew and he never gave me the time of day. Having people know me now is, while wonderful, also surprisingly unnerving. It makes me feel like I’m constantly under observation. But I smile at him and smooth down my cleavage-revealing Marc Jacobs silk dress.

As we walk toward the bar, I wonder if Adam is going to be here. It’s been over two weeks since we talked in New York, and I’m shocked he hasn’t called but I know there has to be a good reason. I keep seeing promos for his show and torturing myself with the idea that he’s fallen for the main girl on it—a former Miss Teen USA in her acting debut—and forgotten all about me. And even though I know that I could call him, I can’t seem to bring myself to.
A connection, by its very definition, can’t be one-sided,
I keep thinking.
Of course he’s going to call.

When we get to the bar, Tim asks me what I’d like. It’s our first time out together and I’ve been preparing for this question for many days. Rachel has said that I don’t need to tell anyone why I’m not drinking if I don’t want to and that if somebody really wants an answer, I can always just say that I’m on antibiotics.
Just tell him you’re sober now
, my mind says, as I scan the bottles lined up in front of me.
What’s he going to do, take the column away?

Instead I ask for a cranberry and soda and he just nods and orders that, along with vodka tonics for himself and John. I’ve been noticing lately that a lot of people just don’t seem to think about alcohol all that much, and Tim could be one of them.
He probably thinks I’m just wild twenty-four hours a day, drunk or sober
, I think, and I can’t decide if that’s something I should be horrified by or relieved.

“So what have you gotten up to lately?” Tim asks as we settle into a booth. John looks up from his drink expectantly, and I suddenly feel enormous pressure to be all that they think I am.
Think of something
, my mind says,
quick.
I go over the past few days: Monday night I went to a meeting at Pledges to meet Justin but he didn’t show, Tuesday I played with my cats, obsessed over Adam, and read the Pledges book. Wednesday? I can’t remember what I did on Wednesday and I get momentarily excited, thinking that I’ll surely have an exciting story to share with them when I remember that I’d randomly flipped to this show on Animal Planet about polar bears and had become instantly riveted. I start to panic, thinking I’m surely going to disappoint them, when I remember the night I went to Guy’s with Chad Milan and left with Rick Wilson.
It’s not like I’m making it up
, I think.
I’m just fudging the dates a tiny bit.

“Well,” I say, “I went out with a CAA agent the other night.”

Tim nods politely but looks a little disappointed.

“And left with this random, out-of-work actor I had a crush on when I was sixteen years old.”

“No!” Tim shrieks disbelievingly, suddenly wearing a huge smile. He glances at John and adds, “You naughty girl.”

“Well, I was looking for a way to get out of having to kiss the agent guy goodnight,” I say, shrugging, like I think a modern, sexually evolved woman would.
Channel Angelina Jolie pre-her humanitarianism
, I say to myself as I continue to tell John and Tim about making out with Rick in the car, leaving the message for Chad and then being busted by him at the gym the next day.

“This is why she’s so good,” Tim says to John as he sips his drink. “She sees what she wants and goes after it, while the rest of us get mucked up in always trying to do the right thing.” I nod and smile, thinking,
I am a total fraud. I can’t stop thinking about Adam and don’t do a damn thing about it, but I sit here and act like I’m some kind of warrior woman.
I will Tim and John to stop talking about me, and then marvel at the fact that I’m even thinking such a thing.

Suddenly, the music gets turned up louder. Tim and John continue to talk but because they’re sitting next to each other and I’m across the table, I can’t really hear them anymore so I pretend to look like I’m completely wrapped up in the scene around me, while inside I’m thinking about how I’d much rather be in a bubble bath.

Just then, the waitress stops at the table and deposits a tequila shot in front of me, motioning her head toward the bar where Jeremy Barrenbaum, a producer with a Sony deal, stands and smiles at me as he holds up his own tequila shot. I smile at him and look down at the shot.

“From a fan?” Tim asks, as he leans over and I nod. I glance down at the lime and salt the waitress is depositing on the table and when I look up, Jeremy Barrenbaum is standing right in front of me.

“Party Girl, would you do me the honor?” he asks, slurring his words slightly and holding out his shot. When I don’t respond, he says, “Okay, fine—if you insist on doing body shots with me, I’ll acquiesce.”

Years ago, I’d had a crush on Jeremy. Someone had pointed him out to me at one of the first Hollywood parties I went to, mentioning that he had produced these two movies I’d liked and had dated this actress on
Melrose Place.
I’d thought he was cute, but knew for a fact that if he were a plumber and not a successful producer, I wouldn’t necessarily think so. Later that night, someone introduced me to him and he spent the whole time we were talking glancing around, giving me the distinct feeling that he was simply killing time until someone more important or famous came along. Eventually, he excused himself to go talk to Rachel Hunter. After that, when we saw each other, we would do the sort of Hollywood head nod, that I-know-we’ve-met-but-maybe-one-or-both-of-us-don’t-remember-the-other’s-name, and when someone started to introduce us at a premiere last year, I explained that we already knew each other while he held out his hand expectantly, looking like he’d never laid eyes on me before. I’d wondered at the time if he just walked around doing that Hollywood head nod to everyone or if he was pretending not to know me as some kind of a power move. Was being introduced over and over and only occasionally acknowledging it a distinctly Hollywood tradition or did this happen in other cities?

“Here’s to the best little wedding guest out there,” he says, clicking his shot glass against mine. I watch him pick up my salt and pour it on his hand, lick it, take the shot and then reach down for a lime wedge and bite into it. The smell of tequila is so strong I feel like I’ve practically ingested it myself. “What’s your problem?” he asks, gesturing to my still-full shot glass.

I glance at Tim and John, who are watching us with interest, and introduce everyone, after which there’s an awkward pause. “Got sick on tequila in high school, and haven’t been able to touch it since,” I finally say, smiling. At least the first part was true. “How about I do a shot of something else?”

“Sure thing,” Jeremy says. “I’ll do another one with you.” He motions the waitress over and she stands there expectantly.

“Hmmm,” I say, wondering how the hell I’m going to get out of this. Then, buying time, I say to the waitress: “You know, for some reason I can’t decide. Can I follow you to the bar so I can assess my options?” She shrugs and starts walking so I gesture to Jeremy, Tim, and John that I’ll be right back before following her. And once we get to the bar, I remember how I’d drink from my parents’ vodka and gin bottles in high school and fill them back up again with water. Why wouldn’t the reverse of that work now? So I say to the waitress, “I know this sounds crazy, but can you give me two shot glasses and fill one with vodka and one with water?”