When she comes out to the sidewalk, she finds Lex standing with a dog.
The hound strains the rope; a kerchief tied around his neck signals that someone loved him, even if his ribs show. He flinches as Elise tries to pet him, and bares shiny onyx gums.
“O’Harris got picked up a couple nights ago, and he ain’t getting out, but I can’t take care of this fella of his. I wannu but I can’t.”
The dog pulls, and Lex restrains him. Elise crouches in the winter light, holds pizza crust to his mouth.
Marianne watches, wisps of white hair standing up on her head from the excitement.
Eyes dark and wet, he snatches the food, attacks it on the pavement. His patchy fur is tawny, with black outlining his ears and snout and paws.
“He’s a hungwy widdle one,” Marianne says.
“What’s his name?” Elise asks.
“Jessie, but he’ll take whatever name you got.”
Jamey’s banking on Annie, who always makes things better.
And the next morning, Annie prances into the hotel lounge, with luggage and chauffeur, to meet Tory and Jamey. Apple cheeks and donkey teeth. A washtub torso and rooster legs. Nice round breasts that have lasted, without work. Dallas Annie, get your gun!
“Look at my Jamey.” Annie smiles, and rocks him with a hug full of perfume and Hermès scarf and gold necklace. “I’m so happy.”
Annie met Tory when they were young at a big party thrown by Warren Beatty. Somehow Tory and Annie ended up in a room with a glass ceiling, banana plants, a hot tub, and a couple bikers. Annie swallowed the Quaalude, but Tory shook her head. Oh, not tonight, she said, fumbling with a cigarette, and Annie realized she was scared. Leave her alone, she said. The biker unbuttoned Tory’s dress, and Annie threw her drink—BAM!—blood and vodka–orange juice ran down his forehead—Oops! she peeped, hand over mouth, like a silent-era blonde. Later the two girls lounged in Annie’s penthouse suite and giggled.
Annie, heir to Hanesworth Oil, with a face carbon-copied from her CEO dad and a bank account the size of a small country’s GDP, fit snugly with this creature who was impeccable on screen and disastrous in life. They never left each other’s side.
At the hotel bar, the ladies drink martinis, eat peanuts, talk about PETA, the Italian Alps, Miami Vice, artichokes, their friend Jerry, their enemy Helen, Armani’s spring line, and cats.
Then Annie turns to Jamey: “Your mama tells me you’re in a very interesting relationship. Now, do I get to meet her?”
“Yes, tonight—she’s coming to the screening,” he answers.
“Stupendous!” she cries in her bright-as-Texas-sunshine voice. “What’s her name, darling?”
“Elise.”
“Elise what?”
“Elise Perez.”
“She’s not at Yale, is that correct? You met her outside of school then?” Annie pops a peanut into her glossy mouth.
“I met her outside of school, yes.”
“Well, I couldn’t be more excited. And you know, I’m truly of the mind that everyone needs to stretch their parameters, see what’s out there.” Annie’s looking at Jamey but addressing Tory. “And if you end up right back where you started, with someone a little bit more like yourself, you at least know why.”
The theater is full, people are turned away. The curtain parts, and Jamey looks around at the light and dark shapes playing on faces. The story seeps through everyone’s forehead and into the subconscious, creating a dream inside. There’s a rustle of a slacks leg being crossed, a cough drop unwrapped. Rows of people breathe in these moving pictures like they’re smoke.
The dinner after is a VIP group of Yale film scholars, another NYC director, and Annie and Tory’s friend Tristan, who drove in from Litchfield. Jamey is introduced to everyone he doesn’t know, embraced by everyone he does know, and he’s left to introduce Elise since his mother simply isn’t doing it.
Annie greets Elise with a debutante smile and a church hug.
“Sorry,” Tory says to Elise when they have to ask the waiter for another chair. “I forgot you were coming.”
That’s when Jamey notices Elise’s posture change, her chin tilting, face hardened one tiny degree.
“I loved being reminded how solid that film is,” says one of the scholars, dripping a forkful of risotto.
“Right?” says Annie, the MC, stirring up praise.
The group murmurs complex statements.
Elise doesn’t wait long. “Jamey said Jack Nicholson was supposed to come,” she says to the table.
Silence, and Tristan tinkles the cubes in the glass.
Annie says, “Oh, Jack, he’s probably tied up in some hotel room in Bangkok with a hangover,” and the table laughs.
Except Tory, who looks at Elise as if seeing her for the first time.
Elise eats her pork chop, wide-eyed.
“Tory, can I ask you what your next project is going to be?” a professor inquires.
“I’m choosing,” Tory says. “There’s not a lot of great material out there.”
“Can I ask a question?” Elise says. “What was it like when you were famous? Did everyone want your autograph?”
Tory now looks like she’s about to come across the table, WWF-style. “I was just asked for my autograph at the screening.”
“Oh, really!” Elise says.
“Really,” Tory answers.
“That’s cool,” Elise says with a straight face. “That they still ask.”
Jamey looks down, watches his hand play with his napkin, hiding his amusement, his amazement.
“I mean, thank God they don’t stalk you like that guy did—remember, in Cannes?” says Tristan. “In ’78? That was like unreal.”
“Oh my dear lord, I do remember that!” Annie says, her hand on her forehead. “That was a great year at Cannes, though, wasn’t it?” she says.
Normally, a person exits backward, like a geisha, for Tory. But Elise throws her napkin on her plate, zips her jacket.
“Nice to meet you all,” Elise says. “I got to get up early!”
She allows herself to look at Tory with clown-crazy eyes, flashing raspberry-red lights. “Good night, Tory. It was a pleasure.” Then leaves.
Jamey and Elise walk the dog in eager but ineffective sunshine. The sores on the dog’s back are scabbing already, and his ribs aren’t as brutally visible. Now he smells of White Rain shampoo.
“I can’t think of a name!” Elise says.
They walk by a school playground shrieking with kids.
“I loved this one book, Call of the Wild, about a dog named Buck,” Jamey says finally.
“Buck!” Elise kneels to look the dog in the eye. “Do you wanna be Buck?”
They wander into the park, neon green with new buds and leaves.
Sitting on the bench, Elise zips her fur, puts on mirrored glasses. Jamey rubs Buck under his chin.
He needs to apologize, and explain his mom.
Elise waits, her face gentle, like a bell open for ringing.
He tries. “Tory is—she’s funny. She’s always been such a—performer,” Jamey says, biting his lip, reaching for something truer.
But he fails.