One Fifth Avenue

Philip rolled over and stared at her face. There was, he thought, nothing like those first mornings of waking up with someone new and finding yourself both surprised and happy to see them.

“I’ll make you forget about it,” he said, putting his hand on her breast. Her breasts were especially firm, due to the implants. She’d received them as a present from her parents for her eighteenth birthday—a ritual that was apparently now considered a standard milestone for girls approaching adulthood. The surgery had been celebrated with a pool party where Lola had revealed her new breasts to her high school pals.

Lola pushed his hand away. “I can’t concentrate,” she said. “It sounds like they’re hammering into my head.”

“Ha,” Philip said. Although he and Lola had been lovers for only a month, he’d noticed that she had an acute sensitivity to all physical maladies, both real and imagined. She often had headaches, or felt tired, or had a strange pain in her finger—probably, Philip had pointed out, the result of too much texting. Her pains required rest or TV watching, often in his apartment, which Philip did not object to at all, because the rest periods usually led to sex.

“I think you’ve got a hangover, kiddo,” Philip said, kissing her on the forehead. He got out of bed and went into the bathroom. “Do you want aspirin?”

“Don’t you have anything stronger? Like a Vicodin?”

“No, I don’t,” he said, once again struck by the peculiarities of Lola’s generation. She was a child of pharmacology, having grown up with a bevy of prescription pills for all that might ail her. “Don’t you have something in your purse?” he asked. He’d discovered that Lola never went anywhere without a stash of pills that included Xanax, Ambien, and Ritalin. “It’s like Valley of the Dolls,” he’d said, alarmed. “Don’t be stupid,” she’d replied. “They give kids this stuff. And besides, the women in Valley of the Dolls were drug addicts.” And she’d given a little shudder.

Now she said, “Maybe,” and crawled across the bed, leaning over the side in a seductive manner and feeling around on the floor for her snakeskin bag. She hauled it up and began digging around inside. The sight of her naked body—spray-tanned bronze and perfectly formed (in an unguarded moment, she’d let slip that she’d also had a tiny bit of lipo on her thighs and tummy)—filled Philip with joy. Ever since Lola had turned up at his apartment that July afternoon, his fortunes had changed. The studio loved his rewrite of Bridesmaids Revisited, and they were going to start shooting in January; off this good news, his agent got him a gig writing a historical movie about an obscure English queen known as Bloody Mary, for which he’d be paid a million dollars. “You’re on a roll, baby,” his agent said after delivering the news. “I smell Oscar.”

Philip had gotten the phone call the day before, and he’d taken Lola to the Waverly Inn to celebrate. It was one of those evenings when everyone was there and the booths were filled with celebrities, some of whom were old friends. Before long, their table expanded to include a glamorous, boisterous group that drew envious glances from the other patrons. Lola kept introducing herself as his researcher, and full of everything that was good in life, he corrected her and claimed she was his muse, squeezing her hand across the table. They drank bottle after bottle of red wine, finally stumbling home at two in the morning through a foggy hot night that made the Village look like a Renaissance painting.

“Come on, sleepyhead,” he said now, bringing her two aspirins.

She slipped under the covers and curled into a fetal position, holding out her hand for the tablets. “Can’t I stay in bed all day?” she asked, staring up at him like a beautiful dog who always got its way. “I’ve got a headache.”

“We’ve got work to do. I have to write, and you have to go to the library.”

“Can’t you take the day off? They can’t expect you to start writing right away, can they? You just got the job. Doesn’t that mean you get two weeks off? I know,” she said, sitting up. “Let’s go shopping. We could go to Barneys. Or Madison Avenue.”

“Nope,” he said. He would have revisions on Bridesmaids Revisited until they started shooting, and he needed to finish the first draft of the Bloody Mary script by December. Historical movies about royals were all the rage, his agent said, and the studio wanted to go into production as soon as possible. “I need that research,” Philip said, playfully pulling her toe.

“I’ll order some books from Amazon. Then I can stay here with you all day.”

“If you stay here with me, I won’t get any work done. Hence, it’s off to the stacks.” He pulled on jeans and a T-shirt. “I’m going out for a bagel. You want anything?”

“Could you bring me back a green-tea-and-apple VitaWater?” she said. “And make sure it’s green-tea-and-apple. I hate the green-tea-and-mango. Mango is gross. Oh, and could you get me a frozen Snickers bar? I’m hungry.”

Philip went out, shaking his head over the indulgence of eating a candy bar for breakfast.

On the sidewalk, he ran into Schiffer Diamond, who was being helped out of a white van by a Teamster. “Hey!” he exclaimed.

“You’re in a good mood,” she said, kissing him on the cheek.

“Sold a screenplay yesterday. About Bloody Mary. You should be in it.”

“You want me to play a cocktail?”

“Not the cocktail. The queen. First daughter of Henry the Eighth. Come on,” Philip said. “You get to cut off everyone’s head.”

“And have my own head cut off at the end? No, thank you,” she said, walking toward the entrance to One Fifth. “I just spent the whole night shooting in a goddamn church on Madison with no air-conditioning. I’ve had enough of Catholics for the moment.”

“I’m serious,” he said, realizing she’d be perfect for the part. “Will you at least consider it? I’ll personally deliver the screenplay when it’s finished, along with a bottle of Cristal and a tub of caviar.”

“Cristal’s out, schoolboy. Make it a magnum of Grande Dame and I’ll think about it,” she called over her shoulder. She was always walking away from him, he thought. Wanting more of their banter, he asked where she was going.

She folded her hands and lay them next to her chin. “Sleep,” she said. “I’ve got a six P. M. call.”

“Catch you later, then,” Philip said. As he walked away, he was reminded of why it had never worked out with Schiffer. She wasn’t available for him. Never had been and never would be. That was what was so great about Lola. She was always available.

Back in Philip’s apartment, Lola dragged herself out of bed and went into the kitchen. She idly thought about surprising Philip by making coffee, but after finding the bag of whole coffee beans next to a small grinder, decided it was too much trouble. She went into the bathroom and carefully brushed her teeth, then pulled her lips back into a grimace to check their whiteness. She thought about the trek up to the library at Forty-second Street on what was going to be another hot day, and she felt irritated. Why had she taken this job as Philip’s researcher? For that matter, why did she need to have a job at all? She was only going to quit as soon as she got married. But without an engagement, her mother wouldn’t let her stay in New York without a job—“it would look whorish,” she’d said. Continuing on her path of random thoughts, Lola reminded herself that if she hadn’t taken the job, she wouldn’t have met Philip and become, as he’d put it, his muse. It was incredibly romantic, being the muse of a great artist, and what always happened was the great artist fell in love with his muse, insisted upon marrying her, and had beautiful children with her.

Until then, being wise in the matter of cliques and social order, Lola could already see that in Philip’s world, this muse business might not be enough. It was one thing to be around famous people, quite another to have them accept you as one of their own. In particular, she recalled an interaction last night with the world-famous movie star who’d sat at their table. He was a not particularly attractive middle-aged man who was distinctly before her time; she couldn’t recall exactly who he was or which movies he’d starred in. But since everyone else was making a huge fuss of him, hanging on his every word like he was Jesus, she realized she ought to make some effort. As it happened, he was squeezed into a chair next to her, and when he finished a long soliloquy about the beauty of seventies movies, she asked him, “Have you lived in New York long?”