It's windier after the explosions and extras are letting makeup assistants wipe fake blood off their faces and a helicopter flies noisily over the scene and an actor who looks like Robert Carlyle shakes the director's hand and dollies are dismantled and stuntmen congratulate one another while removing earplugs and I'm following Jamie Fields to her trailer, where an assistant hands her a cell phone and Jamie sits down on the steps leading up into the trailer and lights a cigarette.
My immediate impressions: paler than I remember, still dazzling cheekbones that seem even higher, eyes so blue they look like she's wearing fake contacts, hair still blond but shorter now and slicked back, body more defined, chic beige slacks stretching over legs that seem more muscular, br**sts beneath a simple velour top definitely implants.
A girl from Makeup wipes strategically placed smudges off Jamie's face, forehead and chin with a large wet cotton ball and Jamie, trying to talk into the cell phone, waves the girl away and growls "Later" as if she really means it. Trying to smile, the girl slinks away, devastated.
I position myself on the sidelines, leaning sexily against a trailer parked across from Jamie's so she'll have no problem immediately spotting me when she looks up: me grinning, my arms crossed, coolly disheveled in casual Prada, confident but not cocky. When Jamie actually does look up, irritably waving away another makeup girl, my presence-just feet away-doesn't register. I take off the Armani sunglasses and, simulating movement, pull out a roll of Mentos.
"Been there, done that," Jamie whispers tiredly into the cell phone, and then, "Yeah, seeing is believing," which is followed by "We shouldn't be talking on a cell phone," and finally she mutters "Barbados," and by now I'm standing over her.
Jamie glances up and without any warning to the person on the other end angrily snaps the cell phone shut and stands so quickly that she almost falls off the stairs leading into the compact white trailer with her name on the door, the expression on her face suggesting: Uh-oh, major freak-out approaching, duck.
"Hey baby," I offer gently, holding my arms out, head tilted, grinning boyishly. "Like, what's the story?"
"What the hell are you doing here?" she growls.
"Uh, hey baby-"
"Jesus Christ-what are you doing here?" She's glancing around, panicked. "Is this a f**king joke?"
"Hey, cool it, baby," I'm saying, moving closer, which causes her to move up the stairs backward, grabbing onto the railing in order not to trip. "It's cool, it's cool," I'm saying.
"No, it's not cool," she snaps. "Jesus, you've got to get the hell out of here-now."
"Wait a minute, baby-"
"You're supposed to be in New York," she hisses, cutting me off. "What are you doing here?"
I reach out to calm her down. "Baby, listen, if you-"
She slaps my hands away and backs up onto another stair. "Get away from me," and then, "What the hell were you doing at Annabel's last night?"
"Baby, hey, wait-"
"Stop it," she says, glancing fearfully behind me, causing me to turn around too, then I'm looking back at her. "I mean it-leave. I can't be seen here with you."
"Hey, let's discuss this in your trailer," I'm suggesting gently. "Let's talk in the trailer." Pause. "Would you like a Mentos?"
Incredulous, she pushes my hand away again. "Get the f**k off this set or I'll call Bobby, okay?"
"Bobby?" I'm asking. "Hey baby-"
"You're supposed to be in f**king New York-now goddamnit get the hell out of here."
I hold my hands up to show her I'm not hiding anything and back away. "Hey, it's cool," I murmur, "it's cool, I'm cool."
Jamie whirls around and before disappearing into the trailer turns back to shoot me an icy glare. The trailer door slams shut. Inside, someone fiddles with a lock. Then silence.
The smell of burning rubber is suddenly everywhere, causing a major coughing fit that I ease out of with the help of a couple of Mentos, then I bum a Silk Cut from another cute makeup girl, who looks like Gina Gershon, and then I'm lingering next to other people who might not have noticed me at first, until I move down Westbourne Grove, then down Chepstow Road, then I stop in at a really cool shop called Oguri and after that I spot Elvis Costello at the corner of Colville Road exiting a neo-Deco, turquoise-tiled public rest room.
13
Feeling really injured, trying to formulate a new game plan in order to halt vacuous wandering, I proceed to various newsstands in desperate need of a New York Post or a New York News to check out what course my life is taking back in Manhattan, but I can't find any foreign papers anywhere, just typical British rags with headlines blaring LIAM: MAN BEHIND THE MYTH Or A DAY IN THE LIFE OF BIJOU PHILLIPS (an article I may or may not appear in, depending on what day) or CHAMPAGNE SALES SOAR AS SWINGING LONDON LEARNS TO PARTY. I stop by a Tower Records after downing a so-so iced decaf grande latte at one of the dozens of Starbucks lining the London streets and buy tapes for my Walkman (Fiona Apple, Thomas Ribiero, Tiger, Sparklehorse, Kenickie, the sound track of Mandela) and then walk outside into the stream of Rollerbladers gliding by in search of parks.