Party Girl: A Novel (29 page)

I’m not entirely sure why I’m taking this Adam rejection so hard. Of course, I have some ideas. In rehab, I’ve learned about how dangerous it can be for alcoholics and addicts to have expectations because we tend to not be able to handle the disappointment of having them not met, but that realization isn’t doing anything to get me out of my doldrums. The day I spent with Adam was the first time in my life I felt like I knew what people meant when they talked about finding the one. But they usually got years, or at least months or weeks, with the person. Why the hell did my discovery have to be so ephemeral?

Once the crying turns to sniffling, I realize that I’m in the midst of a full-blown depression.
Depression is something you’re bound to experience
, Tommy would say, and it would stun me how casually he’d mention the word “depression”—like he was talking about having the flu and not something completely overwhelming and debilitating that made life seem unlivable.
It, too, will pass,
he’d always add, sounding like someone who couldn’t ever possibly have lived through a depression.

After three solid days of not showering, cleaning, eating, answering the phone or really doing anything beyond dumping cat food into dishes and coating my pajamas in cigarette smoke, I decide it’s time to check voicemail. My mom, Stephanie, the
CSI
actor who’d tried to put his hands down my pants in New York, Tim, Stephanie again, and what seems like about a thousand hang-ups. Even though I already knew that none of the messages would be from Adam, it doesn’t stop me from crying when I get to the last one and it’s not him. When I hear who it is, however, I cry even harder.

“Amelia,” says a voice that’s at once both immediately familiar and hard to place. “What can I say? You’re the cat’s meow. The toast of the town. The bee’s knees.” Who do I know who would use those expressions?

And then it hits me.

“I guess part of me is glad to see that you actually remembered what happened between us,” Chris says, his voice cracking slightly, “but, what did you think—that I wouldn’t see it? Or did you just not care?” I sit there, frozen, as he does exactly what I hope he won’t and starts reading from my column.
“It was only after an impromptu reunion several weeks after the fact that I realized I’d gotten the basic elements of the
ménage altogether wrong: most girls had them with their hottest female friend and, say, a Red Hot Chili Pepper. I’d had mine with a couple of guys who’d probably have an easier time working their way around the Starship Galaxy than they would a woman’s body.”
Chris clears his throat. “Maybe I wouldn’t care if you hadn’t treated me like a leper ever since,” he says. “But Jesus, think of someone besides yourself for once.”

That throws me into yet another crying jag—though, much like someone covered in tattoos might have a difficult time identifying how many there actually were, I decide I needn’t bother calling them crying jags anymore but just consider the entire day one long, extended singular crying jag. Afterward, I set about smoking myself into oblivion. I contemplate calling Stephanie to ask her if it’s possible that I’m the worst person in existence but settle instead for falling asleep on the couch when I’m too exhausted to cry anymore.

Sometime later—it could be twenty minutes, it could be two hours—I wake up to the sound of someone banging on my front door. I stumble to it, groggy to the point that I almost feel hungover. Stephanie stands there, a bag of Trader Joe’s Sweet, Savory & Tart Trek Mix in her hand, and a plump Mexican woman behind her.

“Don’t say a word,” she says, gesturing for the woman to go inside. “I told Rosa I had an emergency for her.” Handing me the bag of trail mix she adds, “I wanted to bring you something healthy to eat but knew I’d have to start you on something you wouldn’t reject outright.”

“Thank you,” I croak gratefully, as she opens my living room window and starts dumping overflowing ashtrays.

“You’re welcome,” she says. “Now, will you please let Rosa clean your apartment and stop Plath-ing it over this guy?”

28

“Here you go,” Stephanie says, reaching through a throng of wannabe starlets to hand me a Diet Coke. I accept it gratefully and motion my head toward the side of the room, where I then go stand.

It’s been almost a week since she showed up with Rosa and basically single-handedly delivered me back to the world at large and I have to admit that I’m feeling significantly better. Of course, I’m still miserable over being blown off by Adam, but Stephanie has convinced me to treat it like a nagging toothache or headache—horrible, in other words, but something I can live with. The launch party for a new Condé Nast magazine, Stephanie convinced me, was just what I needed. But standing here, waiting for her to retrieve her drink from the bar, I remember that depression, like a grating Britney Spears song stuck in your head, has a way of coming back even when it seems like it’s gone away forever.

Parties like this used to fuel me—I always had that feeling that something exciting could happen—but being sober didn’t so much highlight how fun drinking was as much as it made me realize how intensely boring parties like this are.
We’re all talking and no one is saying anything,
I think as I tell a publicist who used to snub me when I worked at
Absolutely Fabulous
that it’s good to see her, too, and accept her “You go, girl” congratulations for the column. When I was drinking, if I had a boring night, I’d blame myself—for not being fabulous enough or not talking to the right people. But now I can see that I didn’t drink to make
myself
more interesting; it was to convince myself that other people were.

Stephanie joins me, sipping from her icy Amstel Light, and we watch a slew of club kids filter in, so perfectly outfitted in their Vans and True Religion jeans and tattoos that they may as well have come from Central Casting.

“You okay?” Stephanie asks, and I nod. She’d asked me the first time we went out together once I was sober if I’d prefer if she didn’t drink, and I told her that she shouldn’t feel like she had to deprive herself because of me. Tommy used to say that anyone out with a sober person shouldn’t drink, and if they did, they may well have a drinking problem themselves. But Tommy worked in a rehab and didn’t really understand the world of plus-ones and doormen who had articles written about them in magazines and open bars and gift bags.
Drinking is as normal as putting on shoes to most people at parties like this
, I think.
Besides, it’s not my job to go around diagnosing people as alcoholic when it’s a self-diagnosed disease.

And then, just when Stephanie and I see Nicole Richie and Lindsay Lohan pitch their skeletal frames against each other on the dance floor, a thought occurs to me, a thought infinitely more depressing than any others I’ve been having during this recent bout of depression:
Wherever I go, there I am.
It floats through my head as I stare at the anorexic starlets, until I feel Stephanie poking me in the shoulder.

“Holy shit!” she exclaims. “Three o’clock. With a bimbo.”

Stephanie’s not known for her histrionics so I instantly know what her exclamation means and who she’s talking about, but I’m nevertheless not remotely prepared for the physical stab I feel in my chest when I look toward the entrance and see Adam walking toward us with a thin blonde who isn’t his Miss Teen USA costar but is nevertheless scantily clad and inarguably attractive—albeit in a siliconed, Playmate-esque way.

And now that he’s less than twenty feet away, and growing closer by the millisecond, he seems less real to me than he has while I’ve been obsessing over him the past few weeks. It’s almost shocking to remember he’s an actual person and not simply a construct of my mind.

“Remember—you’re cool,” Stephanie says, under her breath. “And cool girls do not make scenes.”

I nod and then force myself to laugh like she’s just said the most hilarious thing I’ve ever heard in my life and that, in fact, I’ve been doing nothing but laugh uproariously since Adam and I last talked. He’s now just a few feet away so I glance at him and act surprised, like I’ve completely forgotten he exists until this very moment.

“Hey, Adam,” I say, as casually as I can. I don’t lean in for the requisite-in-L.A.-hug-greeting but smile so broadly that it doesn’t seem like I’m being passive-aggressive—just that I’m maybe too busy being happy to hug him.

“Amelia,” he says, looking me in the eye in a way that gives me the good kind of chills. “Stephanie.”

“Hi,” I say softly. He gives Stephanie a kiss on the cheek and then leans toward me. I hold my breath as his lips brush my cheek. Amazingly, horrifyingly, all the resentment I have for him seems to evaporate instantaneously.

“A-dam,” the blonde whines, nodding her head toward the bar. “I want to get a drink.”

“Oh, sorry, um…” He just stands there, looking at me. Our eyes are locked on each other but he breaks our gaze by glancing at the blonde distractedly.

“Lizzie,” she huffs. He continues to look at me while Lizzie literally stamps her foot and points toward the bar.

Stephanie, God bless her, looks at Lizzie and says, “What does everyone want? Lizzie and I will make a bar run.” Without even waiting for a response, Stephanie grabs one of the girl’s probably siliconed arms and starts pulling her away.

“Diet Coke!” I yell after her, gratitude and anxiety rushing through my veins simultaneously.

“Make that two!” Adam adds.

And now that I have Adam in front of me, I don’t know what to say.
Why the fuck didn’t you call me back?
occurs to me.
Why don’t you like me
? also floats through my mind.

Instead I say, “You look good.”

He smiles, and I notice dimples that had somehow escaped my notice before. Christ. Did he have to get better looking by the millisecond? Wasn’t this bad enough already?

“I’m sorry I didn’t call you,” he says.

I want to play it cool, but can’t seem to. “Yeah, what happened?” I ask, feeling sure-to-be-embarrassing tears springing to my eyes.

“What happened?” he repeats, looking hesitant.

“Yeah, what happened?” I suddenly feel enraged. “You wanted to but first you had to raid the Playboy Mansion for one of Hef’s cast-offs?”

This last part comes out of me before I even realize it. I’ve always seemed to lack the filter that stops thoughts from turning into phrases and it can be incredibly inconvenient when I happen to be intensely jealous.

His eyes flare. “Jesus, Amelia. You’re one to talk.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“It means that I run into you and you tell me how much you’ve changed, how pure and innocent your life is today, how that wild girl is just a part of your past.”

“It’s true.”

He doesn’t even seem to hear me, just keeps talking. “So I’m all excited, thinking this girl I’ve always thought would be perfect if she just wasn’t so out of control has actually tamed herself.”

I try to talk but he cuts me off.

“But then it turns out that the very day I’m telling you how excited I am about you, you’re all over TV, selling yourself as this sexy, wild woman who fucks groomsmen at weddings.”

I have the strong feeling that if this were a movie, now would be when I’d slap him. But I don’t actually feel offended—just misunderstood. “I didn’t fuck them,” I say.

“Next thing I know, you’re dangling from massive champagne glasses in magazines,” Adam continues, ignoring me. “And dancing on bar tables with, like, bisexual teenage nymphos. And here I am, the sucker who actually believed you were telling me the truth.”

“Adam, I was telling you the truth. The wedding was a long time ago—before I got sober. And the photo shoot, and dancing in the bar—all that is me just trying to play the ‘Party Girl’ part.”

He looks confused. “So you clean up your life and tell me you’re thrilled about it, meanwhile you’re trying to convince the world at large that you’re still wild and what’s more, being wild is the most glamorous thing imaginable?”

“When you put it like that, it does sound a little crazy,” I admit. “But it’s just a column. It’s what I write. It’s not
me.”

He looks angrier than he has the entire conversation. “So I’m supposed to believe that you would attach your name to something, go on TV shows and get in gossip columns publicizing something that’s ‘not you’?”

And now I’m pissed and sick of being judged by him. “Christ, Adam. It was an opportunity. I took it. No, I’m not the girl I write about in the column anymore, but I’ve lived that life, and no one’s ever made a big deal about anything I’ve ever done before. So if people want to give me money and make me famous for writing something that comes very naturally to me, what’s so wrong with taking them up on it?”

He seems to consider this, and takes a breath. “I don’t know. Nothing, I guess. It just seems like—”

Just then, I feel a large, sweaty hand clasp my shoulder. And, next thing I know, Jeremy Barrenbaum—an extremely drunk, exceedingly sweaty Jeremy Barrenbaum—is embracing me from behind.

“Party Girl!” he shrieks, forcing large, fleshy lips directly onto mine. I pull away but he keeps a damp, possessive arm around me.

“Jeremy, this is Adam,” I say, giving Adam a “please help me” look, which he either doesn’t see or completely ignores. Jeremy notices Adam standing there, and holds out one hand while the other stays firmly clasped to my shoulder. “How are you, man? Jeremy Barrenbaum.”

Adam shakes one of Jeremy’s hands as he eyes the other one, which is in the process of snaking its way from my shoulder to my waist. “Adam Tencer,” he says, somewhat coldly. Hearing the tightness in Adam’s voice, I actually feel physical pain. Is he telling the truth? Am I really “this girl he always thought would be perfect”? And who the hell is the wannabe Playmate girl?

“Um, Jeremy. Adam and I were actually in the middle of a conversation,” I say, removing his hand from my waist.

“Hey, no problem,” he says, but he has “bad drunk” written all over his face and doesn’t move. He surveys the room, spies a waitress carrying a tray of Jell-O shots, and motions her over. Grabbing two cups off her tray, he leers at me. “What do you say, Party Girl? Want to do shots and get crazy like last time?”