by M. M. Mayle
This draws explosive laughter from the claque that’s regrouped around him, many of whom are borderline garish themselves in garb that runs the gamut from studded black leather to foppish representations of period clothing.
Rayce pulls a long face at sight of an older beauty wielding a martini and masquerading as an ingénue. “Poor dear, so recently a firefly and now just another bug squashed on the windscreen, taillight soon to wink out.” He bows his head in mock respect, executes a quick turnabout in time to grin wolfishly at the barely contained assets of a bona fide ingénue. “Wowser! Nice, that, but one mustn’t ignore the fact her girls are adopted.”
He continues in this manner—debating haut couture versus hot couture and differentiating between pretenders and contenders as living examples unwittingly illustrate his humorous asides—until a waiter comes by offering gazpacho shots. Rayce takes two and downs them in quick succession as if they were shooters of something more potent. Then he steps up to the bar and comes away with a presumably nonalcoholic drink in a stemmed cocktail glass and Laurel could almost wonder if next he’ll hit up Colin for a powdered headache remedy as stand-in for another forbidden substance. Pursuing this line of reasoning is the same as expecting Colin to employ a candy cigarette as a pacifier, and that’s ridiculous. But she can’t altogether dismiss the nagging concern that the older rocker’s endlessly manic behavior is a form of compensating for a void that cannot be filled.
Rayce pauses his discourse on the sad state of American derrieres to cast a quizzical glance at her. “You’re awfully quiet there, luv.”
“She’s soaking up color for this book she’s writing,” Colin says, bringing the biggest laugh so far.
Rayce and his followers are still amused, and Laurel is still prickled when Amanda and Nate appear.
Amanda is aglow in her flattering new finery and Nate looks even more polished than he did at dinner the other night. Rayce brushes Nate aside and fixes on Amanda.
Playing the lecher every bit as broadly as he did the hunchback, Rayce twirls an imaginary moustache. “And aren’t you the toothsome little morsel, then?”
“You really think you should be calling anyone a morsel? Word has it you’re not much more than a mouthful yourself,” Nate deadpans.
Amanda gasps, as do a few of Rayce’s people, before Rayce bows low, pantomimes the doffing of a hat and comes up grinning. “His Assholiness is in the house!” he proclaims.
Accompanied by nervous laughter, Rayce and Nate execute the casual embrace of old friends who can take extreme verbal liberties with each other, and the display seems as programmed as did Rayce’s other impersonations. Colin must think so too, because he’s obvious about ignoring them.
Amusing little appetizers are coming thick and fast now. Laurel passes up individual seared diver scallops, single-serve pâté-stuffed wontons, deviled quail eggs with truffles, vichyssoise cordials, and those are just the ones she can identify. An usher summons Rayce to the head table and a place of honor between David and Sarjit Singh, head of Rayce’s new recording label; another usher shows Laurel and Colin to a nearby table, where they’re joined by Nate and Amanda.
Colin mutters something and reverts to his thundercloud expression for no reason that she can fathom, unless he was counting on being seated with Rayce. That’s out of the question where she’s concerned; she’ll leave the party before she’ll send the wrong signals by sitting anywhere near David—or his wife. Something Colin doesn’t have to know.
Two other couples take up the remaining places at their table. They must be well known because Amanda’s a bit wide-eyed and affords them more than a perfunctory nod. As has happened at least a half-dozen times this evening, the general assumption is that Laurel knows these personages by sight, so she resigns herself to playing along and hopes for the best.
A small handwritten menu of tonight’s fare captures her attention. She loses herself in deciding if she’ll be satisfied with just the warm duck/ roasted pear/mache salad or go for broke with an entire meal. The meal choices include filet mignon au poivre with garlic creamed potatoes and new peas, vegetarian Napoleon constructed with mascarpone and artisanal goat cheeses, and cedar-planked salmon with a horseradish crust and root vegetables. If she gets through any or all of that, she can finish up with crème brûlée and a tasting tray of chocolate truffles followed by a fruit-and-cheese selection.
The wine menu is varied as well and includes one she thinks she recognizes. She’s about to ask Nate if the Barolo she sees listed here is the same one she enjoyed at his dinner, when she registers that Nate is presently quizzing Colin about using his home gym.
“I meant to ask the same thing. How did that go? Kinks all worked out?” Laurel says to Colin.
“He’s not asking about benefits derived there,” Colin replies. “He’s only wanting to know how I reacted to seeing my former flat redone to his taste. And won’t he be sorry to hear that I didn’t freak and didn’t make a fucking cook’s tour of it—other than for the short stopover in the library before proceeding straightaway to the gym.”
“And that’s it?” Nate says.
“The Klimts are brilliant, but I can’t say I care for the decorating on the lower level.” Colin turns to say something to the celebrity on his left; no further mention is made of his visit to Nate’s showplace.
Salad is served, wine is poured, table-wide conversation is attempted and never develops beyond a tiresome exchange of banalities with a sprinkling of shoptalk thrown in. Minus the glitterati and imaginative food offerings, Laurel could be at just another stultifying bar association dinner. Amanda must feel the same way because her glow is somewhat diminished. Nate appears to be operating on autopilot, as do the other two couples. To blame Colin for casting a pall that’s dimmed the entire table is to give him too much power, but Laurel can’t come up with a better explanation at the moment.
While most of the other diners are still chowing down on one entrée or another, Laurel leaves her lone choice of salad untouched and excuses herself to visit the ladies’ room. She really does have to pee, she’s not just seeking relief from an uncomfortable situation. And her strategy to beat the after-dinner rush pays off; just two stalls of the ornate facilities are occupied.
Supporting the wide-held belief that women only go to the ladies’ room in pairs, the other two occupants seem to know each other because they’re engaged in readily overheard conversation and laughter. Laurel tunes them out, shuts herself into a vacant stall and goes about her business. Then, over the whooshing of flushed toilets and clattering of released door latches, she hears Colin’s name mentioned along with her own, and she’s all ears.
“. . . not buying any of it.” A voice rises above the sound of running water. “He’ll never commit again, not after such a disastrous first marriage. And she’s a lawyer, for fuck sake. She’s not gonna hook up with a rock star, not even for the money. And from what I hear ,she has plenty of her own.”
“I heard that too,” the other voice says.
“And there’s the kid thing. Can you see a tough career woman like her takin’ on a whiny brat and a slowwitted rugrat? I don’t think so.”
“What about the book angle? Think that’s bogus too?”
“Most likely. I think that was just a convenient accident both sides leapt on. Him for the usual reason, her to establish a hold. Funny thing—earlier tonight I overheard him giving her grief about passing herself off as his official biographer. Maybe he’s seen through her too, and she’s so hot in the sack he just doesn’t give a shit.”
“She is drop-dead gorgeous,” the second voice asserts against the sound of more running water.
“That she is, and she’s no less a pro than was Aurora. But unlike Aurora, I doubt she’d consider anything long term once she figures out his legendary rock star cock’s plowed furrows across a couple of continents, with the good chance that among a certain age group, he will’ve fucked every third chick she runs into. She just doesn’t strike me as
the forgive-and-forget type.”
“Gotta agree there. Comes across as too establishment, too—what’s the word I want? Too hidebound.”
“Pre-cisely. Hidebound. That could be why her willingness to take on the ethical risk of fucking a client seems so out of character.”
“Maybe the thinking there is that Sebastian’s powerful enough to make an ethics committee look the other way.”
“Yeah, but if he’s so god-almighty powerful wouldn’t you think he could convert legal clients into management clients on his own? You know what I’m saying? Shouldn’t her name be Lorelei? What’s up with that?”
The muffled roar of an electric hand dryer provides momentary relief to Laurel’s sensibilities. And when the two conjecturists are audible again, they’re already slanting their righteous opinions at another target and moving out of earshot.
Laurel doesn’t make a move until she’s sure they’re gone. At the height of the verbal drubbing she was tempted to climb up on the toilet and sneak a peek at the pair over the partition, but confrontation was never a possibility. What would have been the point? They touched on no issue she hasn’t already examined and reexamined in the small hours of several nights in a row; their only contention that cannot be wholly ignored is David’s alleged underhandedness.
When she does vacate the stall, she finds herself in the midst of enough other guests to indicate the break between entrée and dessert is underway. She scrubs her hands as though prepping for surgery and dries them with all deliberate speed. She takes her time adjusting the bodice of her dress and finger-combing stray tendrils of hair back into place. She smoothes her stockings, repositions the ankle straps of her shoes, checks the fasteners of her earrings. Thus armed, she’s thinking in terms of rejoining a fray rather than a party when she exits the ladies’ room.
Colin intercepts her within three steps of the door. “I was startin’ to think you weren’t coming back.”
If this was an actual concern, his demeanor doesn’t show it. The scowl is gone, replaced by the smile she finds so hard to resist. But now is not the time to follow natural inclinations—not with bathroom gossips watching, listening, poising to distort. She smiles back at him and accepts his guiding hand on her elbow in a manner she hopes conveys nothing extra.
Nate and Amanda are missing when they return to the table. “At my suggestion they’re workin’ the room. Quite a few famous blokes Amanda didn’t meet first time round,” Colin says and goes to work on his crème brûlée.
Laurel holds out for fruit and cheese. It arrives along with a tray of chocoLAtes just as the formal tribute portion of the evening is beginning.
SIXTY-FIVE
Late evening, April 9, 1987
At the podium set up near the head table, David taps the microphone and asks for quiet that comes sooner than might be expected from a crowd that’s been taking full advantage of an open bar and generous pourings of wine.
As expected, David profiles Rayce Vaughn in an entirely positive way, emphasizing the future rather than the past. Six or more subsequent speakers echo his careful praise, none requiring close attention. But when Colin is introduced and moves to the podium, Laurel’s focus sharpens all on its own.
Colin could be referring to himself as he extols Rayce for tenacity, determination, persistence, perseverance—forgivable redundancies considering the subject matter. He only alludes to Rayce’s addictions and self-destructive tendencies; his references to Rayce’s rehab and ongoing recovery are similarly veiled, but no one could possibly mistake his meaning or fail to hear the love and respect in his delivery.
“And now I give you the man himself, a legend in his own mind . . . Rayce Vaughn!” Colin pulls a mock-reticent Rayce from his chair, lifts one of Rayce’s arms high in the universal posture of champions and the room erupts with the noise of 250 people standing in ovation.
Rayce begins in solemn mien after the room quiets down. “I wish first to express my profound gratitude . . . for the absence of antler display here tonight. Given the testosterone level of those in attendance, I was afraid we’d have at least one clash.”
“The night’s still young,” a voice calls out to a short burst of laughter and a few rude animal noises.
“I’m also grateful for tonight’s provisions,” Rayce continues. “Splendid tuck, innit? Hardly had to use any brown sauce at all.”
The aging rocker then explains that his current squeeze couldn’t attend because she’s studying for her A-levels. “I’m told that compares to your college entry exams here in the States,” he says, eliciting huge laughter when the age reference is grasped. The audience is eating out of his hand now, primed to laugh at anything he says, especially when he holds forth on rules of the road and the escalating penalty scale for infractions.
“You blokes of the brotherhood know what I’m talkin’ about—as do your wives and girlfriends, I’m afraid. Ear dangles it is for back-of-the bus quickies, bracelet for the inevitable overnighters, necklace for a string of overnighters, multi-carat dinner ring if the tabloids are onto the mischief. But if you’re luggin’ an orb and scepter home the end of a tour you might wanna be in close touch with your solicitor.”
In the prolonged laughing that follows, Colin returns to his seat and whispers in her ear that there is no high school–age girlfriend at home, but plenty of precedent for the orb and scepter-level payout.
Rayce carries on this way for another quarter-hour. With each additional line of patter and string of quips, Laurel becomes more convinced that Rayce is compensating—heavily compensating. But why should this matter? While she does consider herself to be his friend, she’s way too new a friend to be having such worrisome thoughts.
His transition from frivolous to serious comes fast and doesn’t last long. He speaks forthrightly of squandered potential, of second chances and the ability to recognize and act on both. An uneducated guess says half the people in the room could identify with these sentiments to some extent. The empathetic expressions on a few nearby faces seem to support that estimate.
The guest of honor reverts to clown and executes a series of exaggerated postures even Laurel can recognize as homage to the originator of his species. Another standing ovation precedes David’s return to the podium with a reminder about tomorrow night’s concert—as if anyone could forget after tonight’s lead-in.
There’s no general rush to leave, although crowd buzz suggests several more parties are underway at various locations around town. One segment of the crowd shows no intention of leaving anytime soon; a regular procession of petitioners closes in on Colin as though the ending of formalities signaled the opening of a marketplace. Laurel looks for Nate to run interference while Colin attempts to fend off a band of seekers promoting themselves as publicists, publishers, agents, stylists, and merchandisers, just to name a few. Unable to spot Nate anywhere, Laurel is about to step in herself when she sees David approaching.
“Lovely, great job, my dear,” David says to her in a soft aside before directing at Colin. “A word, please, if these fine folks will give us some privacy.” With little more than a lifted eyebrow David disperses the throng of mendicants and resumes speaking to Colin as though she’s not there.
“The shelter you asked for when we spoke earlier—I can guarantee it, but you’ll have to take the meeting yet tonight. I’m sure Laurel won’t mind. She let on earlier that she’s not really your date tonight, so let’s say your hotel in half an hour?”
“Yeh, if that’s the only way,” Colin says as though he too has forgotten she’s there.
If the bitches overheard in the bathroom are still present and observant, they’ve seen her go from outraged to crestfallen in a matter of seconds. But that’s over with; that’s all they’re going to see—that’s all anyone’s going to see.
“That works out just fine, Colin. If I may have the check for my coat, please, I’ll leave the way I arrived . . . by cab.”
The numbness that got her this far wears off upon en
tering her hotel room. Before removing her coat, Laurel calls room service for something to encourage another form of numbness and leaves instructions with the front desk to hold all calls. Shed of the coat, she’s embarrassed—no, mortified—by her unintentional resemblance to a famous painting. When room service arrives with vodka, ice, and setups, she capes the coat around her before answering the door.
She fixes a drink, turns on the music channel, and sits down on one of the beds with the drinks tray and the coat within reach. Through an approaching haze, she recognizes several of the video performers as having attended the fete for Rayce. For one brief interval Rayce himself fills the TV screen, putting to music the same themes touched on earlier—lost chances, missed opportunities, unfulfilled desires.
A half hour and a second drink have gone by before Amanda comes in, bringing with her enough afterglow to fill two rooms, along with the potential for the gab fest Laurel yearned for a week ago and rejected then for the same reason she should reject it now. Even though she and Amanda now move in the same social circles, Amanda is still a coworker; they’d still have to face each other in the cold light of a morning after.
“Don’t get mad if I say I’m sorry to find you here,” Amanda says.
“Don’t be surprised if I say I’m sorry you found me here.” Laurel takes the first tentative step toward the lay confessional.
“Wow! No kidding? I mean, were you like . . . finally . . . What happened there anyway? Right after you trailed the publicists into the ladies’ room during dinner I kinda lost track and then Nate and I were sent into exile and the next thing I knew you and Colin were going in different directions—him with David and the record exec and you with . . . nobody. Did you really have to take a cab back here? You could have ridden with us, you know. The only lewd suggestion I got from Nate all evening was a job offer.”
