Last Night at Chateau Marmont

‘That bad?’ Carmen laughed and motioned for Brooke to pull the vodka from the freezer as she prepared the tomato juice and Tabasco sauce. ‘How are your parents holding up? Cynthia seems like a real nice lady.’

‘Uh-huh, she’s lovely. They’re grown-ups and they made their own idiotic choice to come visit. It’s Julian I’m worried about.’

‘Nothing he hasn’t seen before, love. No one deals with them better.’

Brooke sighed. ‘I know. But he’s depressed for days afterward.’

Carmen plunged a celery stalk into the thick Bloody Mary and handed it to Brooke. ‘Reinforcement,’ she announced, and kissed Brooke on the forehead. ‘Now get back out there and protect your man.’

The actual eating part of brunch wasn’t half as bad as the cocktail hour. Julian’s mother threw a minor hissy fit over the crepe filling (although everyone else loved the chocolate ones Carmen whipped up, Elizabeth thought they were far too fattening for an actual meal), and Dr Alter disappeared for a spell into his study, but as a result, neither of them insulted their son for over an hour. Good-byes were blessedly painless, but by the time she and Julian put her father and Cynthia into a cab, she could see Julian was withdrawn and unhappy.

‘You okay, baby? My dad and Cynthia were so excited. And I can barely—’

‘I don’t feel like talking about it, okay?’

They walked in silence for a couple minutes.

‘Hey, we have the whole rest of the day free. Absolutely nothing to do. Want to go to a museum while we’re up here?’ Brooke asked, taking his hand and tugging gently on his arm as they walked toward the subway.

‘Nah, I don’t think I’m up for the Sunday crowds.’

She thought for a moment. ‘You’ve been wanting to see that 3D Imax movie for a while. I wouldn’t mind going with you,’ she lied. Desperate times called for desperate measures.

‘I’m fine, Brooke. I really am,’ Julian said quietly, pulling on his wool scarf. She knew he was the one lying now.

‘Can I invite Nola to the showcase? It sounds so fabulous, and you know Nola can’t miss any opportunity at fabulousness.’

‘I guess – but Leo said it’s going to be really small, and I already invited Trent. He’s only in New York on this rotation another couple weeks and he’s been working like crazy. I thought he could use a night out.’

They talked more about the showcase, and they discussed what he would wear, which songs he would play, and in what order. She was happy she could draw him out, and by the time they reached their apartment, Julian seemed almost like himself.

‘Have I told you how proud I am of you?’ Brooke asked when they stepped onto their own elevator, both clearly relieved to be home.

‘Yeah,’ Julian said with a small smile.

‘Well come inside, baby,’ Brooke said, pulling him down the hallway by the hand. ‘I think it’s about time I showed you.’

3

makes john mayer look like amateur hour

‘Where are we?’ Brooke grumbled, stepping out of the cab and looking around the dark and deserted side street in West Chelsea. The tall black pull-on boots she’d found at an end-of-season sale kept sliding down her tights.

‘Heart of the gallery district, Brooke. Avenue and 1 OAK are right around the corner.’

‘I should know what those are, shouldn’t I?’

Nola just shook her head. ‘Well, at least you look good. Julian’s going to be proud to have such a hot wife tonight.’

Brooke knew her friend was just being kind. It was Nola who, as usual, looked stunning. She’d jammed her suit jacket and her sensible pumps into her oversized LV tote and replaced them with a massive multistrand necklace and a pair of those sky-high Louboutin heels that were somewhere between a bootie and sandal, a style approximately six women on earth could pull off without being mistaken for a professional dominatrix. Things that would look downright trashy on everyone else – scarlet lipstick, flesh-colored fishnets, and the black lace bra that peeked through her sheer tank – on Nola managed to look both edgy and playful. Her pencil skirt, which as one-half of an expensive suit had been appropriate enough for one of the most conservative work environments on Wall Street, now showed off her toned backside and perfect legs. If Nola had been any other female on earth, Brooke would have hated her mightily.

Brooke looked at her BlackBerry. ‘Between Tenth and Eleventh. That’s exactly where we are, isn’t it? Where is this place?’ She saw a darting shadow out of the corner of her eye and yelped.

‘Oh relax, Brooke. It’s much more scared of you than you are of it.’ Nola waved off the rat spotting with a cocktail-ring-adorned hand.

Brooke hurried to cross the street, seeing that the even-numbered addresses they wanted were on the opposite side. ‘Easy for you to say. You could pierce its heart with one stomp of that heel. My dumpy flat boots put me at heightened risk.’

Nola laughed and scampered gracefully behind Brooke. ‘There, I think that’s it,’ she said, pointing to the only building on the block that didn’t look condemned.

The girls followed a small staircase down from the sidewalk to a windowless basement door. Julian had explained that these kinds of showcases were constantly on the move, and music-biz people were always looking for the next hip place to help generate buzz, but still, she had been envisioning a venue like a smaller version of Joe’s Pub. What was this? No line fanning out to the sidewalk. No marquee announcing the night’s talent. There wasn’t even the requisite sullen girl with a clipboard, petulantly telling everyone to take a step back and wait his turn.

Brooke felt a small wave of anxiety until she heaved open the vaultlike door, stepped inside, and was enveloped in a warm cocoon of semidarkness and low laughter and the subtle but unmistakable scent of marijuana. The entire space was the size of a large living room, and everything – the walls, the sofas, even the paneling on the small corner bar – was swathed in plush burgundy velvet. A single lamp rested atop the piano and cast a soft light onto the empty stool. Hundreds of tiny votives were magnified by the mirrored tabletops and ceiling, a look that somehow managed to be impossibly sexy without so much as a twinge of eighties-throwback.

The crowd looked like they had been hand-plucked from a poolside cocktail party in Santa Barbara and dropped in New York City. Forty or fifty mostly young and attractive people milled about, sipping from lowball glasses and exhaling plumes of cigarette smoke in long, languorous wafts. The men were dressed almost uniformly in jeans, and the few who still wore their daytime suits had ditched their ties and loosened their top buttons. Almost none of the women wore stilettos or the short, tight black cocktail dresses that made up the Manhattan uniform; instead, they were all roaming about in beautifully printed tunics and tinkling beaded earrings and jeans so perfectly worn in that Brooke actually yearned to strip out of her black sweater dress then and there. Some had hippie-chic headbands around their foreheads and beautiful hair falling to their waists. No one appeared the least bit self-conscious or stressed out – another Manhattan unlikelihood – which of course made Brooke doubly anxious. This was a far cry from Julian’s usual audiences. Who were all these people and why did each and every one of them look a thousand times better than she did?

‘Breathe,’ Nola whispered in her ear.

‘If I’m this nervous, I can’t even imagine how Julian feels.’

‘Come on, let’s find ourselves some drinks,’ Nola flung her blonde hair over her shoulder and held out a hand for Brooke, but before they could move through the crowd, Brooke heard a familiar voice.

‘Red, white, or stronger?’ Trent asked, magically appearing next to them. He was one of the only men in a suit and looked uncomfortable. It was probably his first time away from the hospital in weeks.

‘Hey there!’ Brooke said, hugging him around the neck. ‘You remember Nola, right?’

Trent smiled. ‘Of course I do.’ He turned to Nola and kissed her on the cheek. There was something in his tone that said Of course I remember meeting you, because you randomly went home with my friend that night and he was very impressed with both your willingness and your creativity in the bedroom. But Trent was much too discreet to joke about it, even after all these years.

Not so with Nola. ‘How is Liam? God, he was fun,’ she said with a huge smile. ‘Like, really fun.’

Trent and Nola exchanged knowing looks and laughed.

Brooke held up a hand. ‘Okay then. Trent, congratulations on the engagement! When do we get to meet her?’ She couldn’t bring herself to say Fern’s name, didn’t trust herself to say it without laughing. What kind of name was Fern?

‘Considering we are almost never not at the hospital at the same time, possibly not until the wedding.’

The bartender motioned to Trent, who turned to the girls.

‘Red, please,’ they said in unison, and all three watched as the bartender poured from a bottle of California cabernet. Trent handed them each a glass and downed his own in two swift swallows.

He turned to Brooke with a sheepish look on his face. ‘I don’t get out much.’

Nola excused herself to do a loop of the room.

Brooke smiled at Trent. ‘So tell me about her. Where’s the wedding going to be?’

‘Well, Fern’s from Tennessee and has a huge family, so we’re probably just going to do it at her parents’ place. Next February, I think.’

‘Wow, moving right along. Well, that’s great news.’