Gladyss of the Hunt (13 page)

“
Enchanté
back,” she echoed awkwardly, apparently paralyzed by his presence.

I explained that Maggie was an actress struggling to get a break. Noel listened sympathetically.

Perhaps because of the bubbliness of the champagne, I'd forgotten for a moment that this party consisted of other movie stars too. Jodie Foster scurried past; Madonna was just leaving; someone who looked a lot like Tom Cruise seemed to zip right between everyone's legs like a soccer ball with great hair. The Lilliputian mafia seemed to run Hollywood and, clannishly, they seemed to pick their own stubby stars.

“What's good here?” Noel asked Maggie, looking at her tray of appetizers.

“Good here?” she asked as though he was asking about her.

“Yeah, you know, foodwise?”

Before she could respond, a goateed food handler came up from behind and said to Maggie, “They're asking for you in the kitchen.”

“Oh shit,” she awakened to the moment. “I'm going to get fired!”

She dashed off. Now I realized why just a few days earlier she had asked me if I would introduce her to Noel should the occasion ever arise. She must've already known she'd be working this little soirée.

“This is Seymour Phelps,” Noel abruptly introduced me to a middle-aged man with pores as big as a sponge. He explained that Phelps had just produced
Screwed Bigtime!
an over-touted reality
show featuring Venezia Ramada and some other rich kid celebrity.

As the producer babbled on, it occurred to me that movie stars were little more than children wandering around in a playground of filmic possibilities: inside were hypothetical swing sets and topical seesaws that these people assembled and disassembled as quickly as the Army Corp of Engineers. Each one had a sandbox filled with agents, lawyers and financial consultants, in which these eternal juveniles tried to divine which of the little projects had a jungle gym that offered them a climb to the top.

“So what exactly is it that you do?” Phelps finally turned the spotlight away from himself.

“I'm a big game hunter,” I kidded slightly drunk, “but to pay for the bullets I work as a cop.”

When the producer politely chuckled, Noel perked up. “She's not kidding, show him your pistol.”

I took out the silver derringer-cigarette lighter that Noel had just given me.

“Oh, you got my gift!” Noel exclaimed clapping his hands together. “I hope you like it.”

“It's wonderful.” I pecked his cheek without thinking. After a little more cajoling, since I left my gun at home, Noel had me flash my shiny badge.

“I hope I'm not out of line in saying that not since Angie Dickinson have I seen such a beguiling and clever police lady.” Seymour Phelps addressed this remark more to Noel than to me.

“That's exactly how I'd typecast her,” Noel said, with talk-show suavity.

“You wouldn't be interested in auditioning for an upcoming show I'm putting together, would you?” the producer asked me.

“What is it?” Noel asked.

“
Fatigues Conceptual
, my latest reality TV show. I'm going out with it next week. Fatigues are the clothes that soldiers wear.”

“I know,” I said, “but you know who'd be perfect for it?” I scanned the mobile mosaic of moving faces until I spotted her, chatting with the cute goateed waiter, and waved.

“Since September 11th,” Seymour explained, “public sympathy toward first responders has gone through the roof.”

“I'm not an actor,” I said. As Maggie struggled to make her way
toward us, hungry carnivores picked at her fresh tray like piranhas going after a deer fording an equatorial stream. “But I have a friend who's a very talented actress . . .”

“I got actors popping out of my ass like hemorrhoids. I'm trying to find someone real . . .”

“. . . Maggie,” I said, “she's more real than real.”

“What's going on?” Maggie popped up, balancing a tray that had been packed with skewers of marinated squab.

“Oh, perfect,” Seymour said, relieving her of her last remaining sticks. “I'm famished.”

At just that moment the entire crowd seemed to hold its collective breath. Flashes popped as Crispin Marachino and Venezia Ramada entered, then the talking resumed and grew louder. The heiress's hair was overly teased, and her make-up was nineteenth-century goth. Her decolletage barely hangared her saline-filled zeppelins. A feathery outfit that looked spot welded to her belly, thighs, and nipples flowed down to her feet where it seemed to be hemmed with bubble-wrap. It was as if she were perpetually stepping out of the frothy ocean.

“I'm a little confused as to which of you dated Venezia first.”

“Dating is such a harsh word,” he replied.

“So neither of you is jealous of the other?”

“Jealous of her, no. But in fairness, I started dating Venezia as payback, so I guess he was dating her first.”

“Payback for what?”

“When Crispin and I first started hanging out ten years ago, he had just done his first feature. He was the hot young director, whereas my star was still rising. I was dating Rima Bergman at the time.”

“Was she in
Pals?
” It was a TV show that didn't outlive its third season.

“Yeah. Anyway Crispin took me aside one day and claimed she was giving him serious vibes. I said I thought that was highly doubtful, so he asked if I wanted him to test her loyalty.”

“What does that mean?”

“He offered to wait till he was alone with her, and then make a move.”

“What kind of a move?”

“The usual: say he might have a role for her, then see what happened. I mean, he made a persuasive argument. He said if she cheated
on me with him, she could cheat on me with anyone.”

“And you agreed to that?”

“Well, look at him. He's not very good looking and—call me old fashioned, but I really thought Rima loved me. She was a star and I figured she wouldn't be taken in by some goofy-ass director. I mean, she was higher up on the acting pyramid than either of us. Also I didn't think he was serious, so I said something like, I'd like to see you try.”

“He took her on a date?”

“All I know is he called me the following week and told me, shall we say, intimate details of her anatomy and proclivities. Things that painfully indicated intimacy.”

“You're kidding!”

“Wish I was. I wept like a baby.”

“Don't you think you at least owed her the opportunity to explain?”

“Oh I did. She confessed to all of it.”

“So you turned around and did the same thing to him.”

“Not at all. What happened was, we were on a film set years later, and he asked if I was still pissed about his doing Rima. I said it was long forgotten. He told me that if he were in a similar situation, he'd want a friend to do the same for him. So when I found myself alone with his fiancée, and she was fawning all over me. I just sort of let it happen.”

“And you don't think he's pissed about you sleeping with Venezia?”

“Look at them. Do they look broken up? The man's impervious to jealousy. Sex to him is kind of a long, wet handshake, nothing more.”

“So you all secretly hate each other?” I asked softly, just as they approached.

“What a beautiful couple you two make,” the director greeted us. He and his swollen blond accessory looked tipsy already.

“Now Vanessa”—Noel spoke slowly to her as though talking to a child—“You remember Officer Chronou from the other day, don't you?”

“Wow, when you said you were inviting her to this, I thought you were kidding,” Venezia responded, Then she floated away to the bar, as if to get away from me.

“So,” Crispin asked. “Any new developments in your big murder case?”

“No.”

“I've played a cop in four films,” Noel said, “so I always feel like such a phony when I meet a real one.”

“Actually,” Crispin kidded, “I need to shoot a female cop soon.”

“Maybe she should shoot you,” Noel replied.

“No, for my next movie. You remember, a cop gets killed.”

“Oh, cut it out.”

“I'm absolutely serious. It's called
Times Squared
.” He ran his eyes over my body and added, “You'd be great.”

“And casting her would piss Venezia off no end,” Noel uttered.

“If someone saw me getting killed as a cop in a movie, I'd be up on disciplinary charges so quick . . . ,” I replied. “Luckily though, I have a gorgeous neighbor who happens to be here at this very party.” I called out her name, and Maggie suddenly popped up like a cork right beside me.

“Why would I want to use your goddamn neighbor, when I can get a real cop?” Crispin whined. Maggie sighed, and Crispin looked at her, adding, “But maybe I can use you somewhere.”

“Thanks!”

Looking at my glasses, the director asked, “Are those prescription?”

“Unfortunately they are,” I said. “My contacts start to irritate my eyes when I wear them too long.”

“I find eyeglasses so sexy,” Noel said. “They're so intellectual.”

“Yeah,” Crispin said. “Lawyers are always throwing them on murderers they're defending when they're about to go in for sentencing.”

“I'm scheduled for Lasik eye surgery, so I'll be free of them soon.”

When Maggie reappeared carrying a fresh tray of sushi hors d'oeuvres, I gave her a proper introduction to the director.

“Nice to eat you,” he said, grabbing a handful of inside-out rolls.

“I've seen all of your films,” she replied eagerly.

“Well I hope you'll check out
Fashion Dogs
, which is opening very soon,” he said, rubbing a roll into a bulge of wasabi.

“Absolutely.”

“'Cause if it doesn't hit at least thirty million on that first weekend he's never making another film again,” Noel added.

“So,” Crispin inquired, “what are the chances that you'd be catering at a big celebrity party that your neighbor is attending. That's one for the books, huh?”

“Well coincidences do happen,” she replied sweetly. They kept talking as Noel steered me across the beautiful tiled floor toward an attractive, elegantly dressed woman in her mid-forties. “Gladyss, this is Miriam, our hostess. Miriam, this is the friend I told you about, Police Officer Gladyss Chronou.”

Miriam was a tall, angular Waspy woman with silver streaks in her short, straight hair. She wore a shimmering evening gown. If she'd had a tiara and a torch, she could've passed for a size two Lady Liberty.

“Officer Chronou!” the hostess shrieked, as though I were a celebrity. “I'm so glad to meet you!”

“Why?” I asked before I could catch myself.

“Because you are one of New York's Finest,” Noel began. “And Miriam has a mystery for you to solve.”

“What mystery is that?” I assumed he was just kidding.

“One that can wait until the party is over,” she said, focusing on a commotion at the door. A lanky man who looked like Jim Carrey had just entered and launched into comic capers.

“What's this mystery?” I asked Noel.

“It's some nutty internet thing.”

“Miriam looks familiar.”

“She tries for that Marilyn Monroe look. Only she's tall and skinny, so it doesn't really work.”

“Then why does she try for it?”

“Her first big project was a Marilyn biopic that she wrote and directed. Strictly made for TV. But she fell in love with Marilyn. She even started one of the first fan web sites for her.”

On three occasions people asked either for Noel's autograph or for a photo with him. He always consented. It was exhilarating just being with him. Strangers were kind. Servants were eager. Everyone wanted his love and approval. And he seemed only to want mine. For the first time, life seemed to be the way I had always thought it would be when I was a child. I was particularly proud that I had displayed some self-restraint, only downing three glasses of champagne. I couldn't remember the last time I'd had so much fun. Soon Noel
and I were dancing up a storm, until a large wrinkly hand reached out of the noisy crowd and tapped me in mid-hop.

It was a butler. Noel leaned in and we heard him say, “Ms. Williams asked if you and Mr. Holden could join her immediately in the study. It's a matter of some urgency.”

I followed Noel as he followed the butler through a series of ever-unfolding rooms to the other side of her museum-like home. Eventually we entered a study that was bigger than my entire apartment.

Miriam was nervously puffing on a fancy-looking cigarette and staring out of a huge bay window with an intimate view of Central Park. From here it looked like her own private garden. When she saw me, she tensely rubbed out her cigarette and apologized for the hasty summons.