One Fifth Avenue

Philip looked around. I don’t know one person here, he thought. And they were all so young, with their smooth faces and their attitudes, preening and shouting at each other. And the music. Loud, thumping, with no discernible melody. Yet they were all dancing, moving their hips while keeping their upper bodies still. I can’t do this, Philip thought.

“Lola,” he shouted into her ear. “I’m going home.”

“No,” she shrieked.

“You stay. Have a good time. I’ll meet you back at the apartment in an hour.”

Walking back to One Fifth, Philip was relieved and then perplexed. He couldn’t imagine anything worse than being stuck at that crowded, hot, filthy party. How was that possibly fun? But he had gone to parties like that when he was twenty-two, and they were fun. There were scavenger hunts in limousines, endless evenings in tiny, smoke-filled clubs or in enormous spaces with a different theme every night; there was a club in an old church where you danced on the altar, and another one containing an abandoned subway tunnel where people went to take drugs. Manhattan was a giant playground where there was always music, always a party. One hot August night, he and Schiffer had crashed a party of transvestites on a decaying pier on the Hudson River, where several people fell in and had to be rescued by the fire department. He and Schiffer had laughed and laughed, laughed until they were crying. “Hey, schoolboy,” she’d gasped, bent over in hilarity, “let’s do this forever. Let’s never work again and become twenty-four-hour party people. Wouldn’t that be glamorous? And when we’ve had enough, we’ll live in an old farmhouse in Vermont.”

What happened to those days? he wondered. Coming into One Fifth and catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror next to the elevators, he realized he looked a fool, a middle-aged man trying to pretend he was young. When had he gotten so old?

“Philip?” He heard a voice. “Philip Oakland, is that you?” Followed by the familiar peals of laughter.

He turned. Schiffer Diamond had come in and was standing with a pile of scripts folded across her chest. It was obvious she’d just come from the set, in full hair and makeup, wearing jeans, fuzzy boots, and a bright orange parka. A white cashmere scarf was tied around her neck. She looked good—her mocking, amused expression was reminiscent of how she’d looked when he’d first met her. How was it that she seemed not to have aged at all, while he’d become such an obvious victim of time? “Schoolboy,” she said. “It is you. What the hell are you wearing?”

“It’s Halloween,” he said.

“I know that. But what are you supposed to be?”

Philip felt embarrassed and irritated. “Nothing,” he said, pressing the button for the elevator.

The doors opened and they got in. “Like the hat,” she said, looking him up and down. “But you were never good at disguises, Oakland.” The elevator stopped on her floor. She looked again at his getup, shook her head, and got out. And once again, he thought, sh

e was gone.

Hanging out with Thayer at the party, Lola lost track of time. Thayer seemed to know everyone and kept introducing her to people. She sat on his lap. “Can you feel my hard-on?” he said.

Francesca showed up. She and Lola went into the stairwell and smoked marijuana. Then they found someone with a bottle of vodka. One of the speakers fell out the window. The night went on and on.

At three A. M. the room lit up with the red and white lights of several police cars. The cops came in with flashlights, and Lola ran as fast as she could down the stairs and up Third Avenue. At Fifth Street, she stopped, finding herself alone outside in the dead of night. It was cold and her feet hurt and her mouth was dry and she couldn’t think of what to do.

She began walking, wrapping her arms around her chest to keep warm. The streets were still filled with people and taxis, and it struck her as funny that she was walking around outside in little more than a bra and panties. “I love your ass,” Thayer Core had kept telling her. If she weren’t with Philip Oakland, she just might go after Thayer. But that would make her desperate. She’d go crazy hanging out in Thayer’s terrible apartment, with that awful Josh there all the time. That’s how it was for most girls. They were lucky if they found a guy who was interested, and then he lived in a terrible place. She could never live in New York like that. As her mother would say, “That isn’t living, it’s surviving.”

She finally made it to Fifth Avenue. The street was deserted, yellow and spooky under the streetlights. She’d never come into the building so late and found the door was locked. She banged on it in a panic, rousing the doorman, who’d been sleeping in a chair. He didn’t know her and gave her a hard time, insisting on ringing Philip on the house phone. When she finally got upstairs, Philip was standing in the hallway in his boxer shorts and a Rolling Stones T-shirt.

“Jesus Christ, Lola. It’s three in the morning,” he said.

“I was having fun.” She giggled.

“I can see that.”

“I tried to call you,” she protested innocently. “But you didn’t answer your phone.”

“Uh-huh,” Philip said.

“It’s not my fault,” she insisted. “This is what happens when you don’t answer your phone.”

“Good night,” Philip said coldly. He turned and went into the bedroom.

“Fine,” she said. She went into the kitchen. She was angry. This wasn’t the reception she’d been expecting. She marched into the bedroom to confront Philip about his attitude. “I had fun, okay?” she said. “Is that such a big deal?”

“Go to sleep. Or go to your own apartment.”

She decided to try a different tactic. She slipped her hand under the covers and put her fingers over his penis. “Don’t you want to have fun?”

He pointedly removed her hand. “Go to bed. Please. If you can’t sleep, go to the couch.”

Lola glared at him, slowly took off her clothes, and got into bed. Philip was lying there with his eyes shut tight. She lay down next to him. Then she rolled onto her side. Then she accidentally kicked him with her foot.