Diamond Girl

Chapter 18



His name was … oops, my bad. See, that’s what happens when your life turns to crap, you start thinking the whole world is going to hell, but really it’s just you. If you are, for example, dying in pretty disgusting circumstances, like me, then you might assume everybody else is too. They’re not. Everybody else is just fine. It’s all going to go right along without me and I think, given the way that makes me feel right now, it’s probably a really good thing that people can’t play God.

His name is Michael Annador. He is at present living in the city of my birth, running a successful P.R. firm, doubtless partying every night and, from the last I heard, deep into a relationship with some Russian supermodel who might, if she is very lucky, become his first trophy wife. If he had married me, as I prayed he would want to do for three straight years, I wouldn’t have been considered a trophy wife; he would have been the one people called a trophy.

One of the many wonderful things about him is that he makes a joke out of everything, and by the time he had finished calling himself Trophy Boy, everyone would have laughed and the sting would have been taken out of it, and we would have lived happily ever after, the way I was supposed to.



* * *



I met him like I usually met every other new person and experience in my life, because of Milan.

By the time we were eighteen, she had not only become a fixture on the club scene; she was one of the people who could make the club scene.

American Express will tell people that membership has its privileges. Well, Milan was the first one to teach the owners of nightclubs and restaurants, and later boutiques, designers - you pretty much name it - that being associated with Gen X’s hottest blond had its privileges too.

As everyone knows, privilege isn’t free.

They had all started offering her first perks, then money, to appear at their establishments or to wear their clothes and, since she was a formidable businesswoman nearly from the cradle, she quickly cued into the fact that she could maximize profits by, say, getting paid an appearance fee to eat at Nobu 57, cash in others by continuing the night being photographed dancing at Butter, and do all of it wearing clothes by Donatella. Milan called it her 'trifecta'. Nowadays there are other girls who are paid for appearances and label flashing, but she was the first, and she still commands the most.

On that particular night, the Michael night, Milan was expected to appear at Bungalow 8. Bungalow 8 was new, hot and becoming terribly vogue. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist in New York to find a place where to order a bottle of Keitel Vodka will cost you five hundred dollars, or where a glass of Cristal, non-vintage will run fifty dollars a glass. New York is a tourist town and any rube from nowhere U.S.A. can find a bar that will make you pay for the privilege of drinking in our city. But if you want to watch the rich and famous people you read about in magazines, you have only a few places to choose from, and good luck getting past the doorman.

Bungalow has a famously rude doorman, and because it’s so tiny and crowded, and despite its overall air of fabulousness it still has to obey city fire codes, the rare available space is reserved for the few, the stunning, the truly rich, and the famous.

If you do get in, all you have usually managed is the right to try and hold your inch of floor space while getting shoved to the side by snobbish, busy waiters who are self-importantly rushing by to wait on the celebrities seated in the black and white striped booths.

They are the reason Bungalow is what it is and they are the reason that regular people who make it in consider it a privilege to stand, pressed up against the men’s room door, desperately trying to keep their thirty dollar house drink from being spilled.

Milan always has a booth, no matter where she goes, and whether I was with her or by myself, so did I. But when I was with her, the whole place revolved around us and that was heady air, even for me, a girl like me who had never breathed any other kind.

Back then I thought that it was kind of sad that Milan got paid to eat / dance / wear / exist in those places. Back then I didn’t exactly think money grew on trees; I didn’t think about money at all.

I’ll give her this, she worked for it. To the people who watched her, and that was everyone, she just looked like an almost ridiculously beautiful stretch model of a girl, eating - well, pretending to eat - in restaurants, dancing or laughing in her V.I.P. sections at clubs, and making anything she wore look stunning, which it is if you are five foot eleven, weigh a hundred and fifteen pounds and are drop dead gorgeous. If Milan was bored out of her skull, or tired, or if her feet hurt, she never let it show. This was work, and if her work is to do nothing more than be at a certain place and make being there seem like the only place to be, well nobody does it better.

That night at Bungalow, she had dressed to coordinate with the club's interior, and when she and her driver stopped by to pick me up, and I saw her, I kind of wanted to set myself, or her, on fire.

She was wearing a vintage couturier Zandra Rhodes mostly see-through black and white sari, cut up to her thigh, and a pair of black gladiator sandals. She dazzled me. She made me feel short and puffy and horrible. I had put on one of those ‘seemed like a good idea at the time’ dresses, but sitting next to Milan in the back of the limo was, I realized, a fashion disaster of epic proportions.

In the salon, my now hated white lace Chanel dress had seemed ironic and edgy. I had let my new PS talk me into wearing it with white lace tights and that season’s lace-up mini boots. Sitting next to her long chic body, I knew I looked like a slightly oversized five year old in my puffy skirt.

I waited for Milan to say something cutting. When she instead told me that I looked ahhdorable, I felt even worse. Her kindness let me know that she felt too sorry for me to tell me what she thought. I sulked all the way to the club and listened silently while she talked about the other girls who would be meeting us there.

Milan had a rotating entourage by then. Christy and I weren’t part of it, we were her 'family', as she would remind us reassuringly if we showed signs of jealousy or insecurity. The other girls, who she allowed in and then banished at will, were just 'interesting'.

I was only half-listening while she chattered away about the two new girls I would meet that night. “You’ll have fun, Care Bears. These are L.A. girls. They’re funny, like teamsters in dresses, bad dresses too.” I flushed and she caught it. She leaned over and kissed my temple. “Oh, let it go. You couldn’t be anything but totally adorable if you tried. Gawd, you are so insecure all the time. Carey …” She began ticking off points on her long fingers. Her fingernails, I noted, were painted black and I curled my own childishly pink painted ones into fists. “… you are beautiful, you look like a perfect doll all the time, you are Carey Kelleher, and that tends to count, and, besides,” she giggled, “yeah, that dress is a total mess, but it’s a Chanel mess, so who cares? Are you going to pout all night long, 'cause, Care Bear, then you really will look like a psycho baby-doll.”

We both started to laugh, and for once I think I looked as happy and at home as she did when we strode past the half mile long line of people waiting outside for a nod from the doorman, a nod that in most cases would never come.

Inside, I got separated from Milan for a minute by three photographers all simultaneously begging her for a smile. She was there for work, so she worked it, flashing them her signature smile and head tilt, and showing off her dress. I began making my way towards the booths, looking for Christy, when a hand grabbed my shoulder and spun me around. I would have pulled away but then I looked at who was pulling and didn’t move a muscle.

Michael is six feet two inches and brawny in a town of skinny lounge lizard boys. He has very olive skin and about ten pounds of thick dark brown hair that always looks like he just got out of bed. It’s a hot look by any standard and his hair always hangs down into his smoky even dark blue eyes, and I’m sure - no, I know - that I am only one of thousands of girls who loved brushing it back. Michael is such a smart boy.

He grinned down at me, way down, despite my stupid white five inch boots. “I heard you let a friend of mine take off your little party dress.”

I was horror-stricken. I had only been with two guys up at Brown. How had that reached all of New York, and why did he, the most perfect looking boy in the world, have to have heard about it? Always bad under fire, I answered stupidly. “What? What did you say?”

He leaned forward, moving right into my personal space, and thank God for wonderful overcrowded New York nights, I couldn’t back away. His breath smelled like cinnamon and vodka. He grinned lazily at me and by that time I was already dying to know his first name so that I could call the imaginary son I would give him by it later when I was alone. “Hey, I was just kidding. It’s the line from a song.”

“What song? I’ve never heard a song with that line.”

He shrugged. “It’s old. I dig old school music.” He smiled. “Anyway, it’s all that plays on my dad’s plane, so I didn’t have any choice. It’s a song by this guy Elvis Costello, I think it’s called 'Alison', but it reminds me of you, whose name is …?”

“Carey ... uh ... Carolyn, well, no, I mean everybody calls me Carey ... I’m ... uh ... I’m here with Milan.”

“Milan? The city?”

He was good. I really thought he didn’t know, and throwing in his dad’s plane casually, that was clever too.

“Yeah, she’s … oh well, who cares? I’m here with some girlfriends and I still don’t know your name. Gawd, I hope it’s not Elvis.”

He laughed. “No, fraid not. I’m Michael, well, no, I mean everybody calls me Mike. Uh, I’m here by myself.”

“Are you making fun of me? You tell me some random rude song line and now you’re ...”

He put his finger on the side of my face. “F*ck no, I’m not making fun of you. Have you looked in a mirror? I saw you, I thought 'Jesus, Mike, you gotta catch that one before every other idiot in the place swarms her'.”

“Oh.”

His finger pushed lightly against my face. “Smile. I want to see it. I can tell it’s a good one.”

“Good what?” I asked him stupidly.

He laughed again. I didn’t mind that time; at least he thought I was funny. “A good dimple. Show it to me.”

I did and he whistled. Without asking me, he leaned forward and put the tip of his tongue against my dimple. I shivered, swaying towards him. He leaned back, leaving me bereft. “I could put a quarter in there. God, you are like a perfect little doll, and I want you to let me take off your party dress, ‘Carolyn, everybody calls you Carey’.”

Lucky for me, I heard Christy’s voice calling me over to the booth because I would have let him, right there, right then. Instead I muttered some unintelligent remark about my friends waiting and I think I went so far as to say 'Nice meeting you'.

Christy and Milan were giggling at the look on my face but I could tell they both definitely approved of the way he looked and, for once, I was the center of attention.

The two L.A. girls were a kind of social hit and miss. One of them was really pretty. She looked kind of like a Botticelli angel in the extra-long variety. Her name was Lyric, typical L.A. goofy name, and she veered back and forth from kind of thuggy to New Age hippy, but mostly she was sweet and I liked her. The other girl acted like a wannabe Mike Tyson, f*ck this and f*ck that and, as if that wasn’t bad enough, she was fairly hideous, with a really severe receding chin situation and huge nose, and she was wearing leather which no one did.

Her name was Karmen, which sums up a lot about what is wrong with L.A., and after her fourth eye-rolling remark about all the bitches and hos that she liked to f*ck up in L.A., I leaned over and whispered to Christy, “Gawd, who is she and why is she at our table?”

Christy rolled her eyes in agreement. “I know, isn’t she the worst? Milan told me her dad owns like the internet or something, but I could care, right? Don’t worry; I don’t think we’ll be seeing her again. Milan said she is out here for a week to try and do outpatient rehab. She knows a friend-of-a-friend kind of deal, just ignore her. Now you tell me who the ahhmazing looking guy is who’s been staring at you all night?”

I squirmed in pleasure. “Oh my God, is he really staring?”

“Like, uh, yeah. Do you know him?”

“I just met him. His name is Michael. He said I remind him of some ahhmazing love song and he licked my dimple.”

Christy gasped in admiration and I looked for him. He was standing about a foot away, just watching me. After a while he came over, nodded at Milan and Christy, and asked me to dance.

I said yes, but we didn’t dance. We walked outside into the cold night and kept walking for a few blocks until we got to his apartment. He didn’t live in a doorman building and the elevator was broken. I followed him up the kind of dirty metal stairs. All I could hear were my heels clanging on the steps and my heart pounding in my ears. When we got inside, he didn’t offer me a drink or anything, he just reached for me and I let him take off my party dress.