I'm Glad About You(49)
“Hey, Fraden.” A voice called to him from the crowd of reporters, a hand with a Bic pen lifted itself above their heads.
Most of his fellow culture beat scribes were serious-minded girl reporters with digital recorders, who asked the same questions over and over and nodded professionally as they did so. Lou Schaeffer, on the other hand, was two hundred and forty pounds of sweating romance. Schaeffer thumbed his glasses back up his nose and squinted past Seth, as if something, anything worth writing about, might be hovering. The guy always looked completely out of place at these things. A beached whale with stringy hair, Schaeffer always had three or four pens clipped to the pocket of his bargain-basement cotton shirts; he would have fit in better at a sci-fi convention. But his prose was impeccable. If they actually did give out Pulitzers to losers who wrote about culture on the internet, Schaeffer would have six or seven.
“Who are these chicks?” Seth muttered, squeezing past the tiny girls to take his place next to the beached whale. “Is this the B-list? Are there two press tents?”
“You missed Clooney and the wife, Aniston, SJP, Damon was here, Susan Sarandon, David Geffen showed up—”
“Come on.”
“You’re asleep at the wheel, my little friend. We started an hour ago.”
Was that possible? Seth checked his watch and ran the times through his head. Seven p.m., the invite said seven and the screening over at the Ziegfield starts at eight. Is tonight the Ziegfield or is it the fund-raiser for PEN? He felt a pebble of sweat creeping down the side of his face. You missed Clooney. That was a mistake, someone over at the Times was going to make note of it. Clooney always stopped to chat with the clowns in the press line, everybody in town would have a decent quote. Except for him.
“Hey, Marissa! How you doing, you look incredible.” Schaeffer waved at a pretty teenager in a peach mini dress. Brown hair curled down her back and a wide belt with the biggest silver buckle he’d ever seen cinched the dress at the waist. Her eyes were bright but honestly, the kid looked like an anorexic ten-year-old. “She’s only got a few minutes, guys,” her publicist announced. He hovered sternly, to make sure they didn’t take advantage.
“What are you working on, Marissa?” Schaeffer was on it. Seth just listened and scribbled down the answers.
“Well, I just did four days on the new Noko Matsui film, that was a total blast.”
“Oh yeah? You like working with Noko?”
“Oh my God, he’s a genius, he’s such a genius.”
“What’s your favorite movie that he’s made?”
“Is that a trick question?”
“Not unless you don’t know the answer.”
“You’re awful,” she grinned.
“I’ll pick one for you. You get to do any action sequences?”
“No, I just got shot.”
“You get to fall off a roof or anything?”
“I did! How did you know?”
How did he know? Seth was convinced that Schaeffer just sat around his apartment all day, surfing the internet and storing every meaningless fact he could find in that f*cking big brain of his. One time over drinks Schaeffer admitted he had a photographic memory, which may have been a lie, except for the fact that Schaeffer wasn’t exactly proud of it. He was drunk and morose, and confessing that he had gotten kicked out of MIT for some ridiculous cheating scandal, hacking computers or selling prewritten papers to terrified freshmen, something totally needless and stupid. And now here he was, chatting up starlets and writing dazzling paragraphs about who these pretty girls were dating, or what talk show they were going to be seen on next. Seth didn’t get it. But he liked the guy. Compared to all the vapid know-nothings who regularly showed up on this beat, fat Schaeffer had the air of a tragic desperado about him.
In fact, at that very moment Schaeffer was waving wildly at the next starlet down the line. He was flushed with delight, or that might actually just have been the heat. The whole thing was dreary as hell. Seth started digging through his shoulder bag, looking for the ultra-handy celeb cheat sheet that Arwen always stuffed in there, to let him know who and what to expect at these things. He couldn’t find it. “Shit. I’m taking off,” he said. “Did I really miss everybody? ’Cause if it’s just B-list from here on in, I got two other parties I have to cover before midnight.”
“You telling me you wouldn’t want to tap that?” Schaeffer muttered, by way of reply. Seth glanced up, finally, so that he might make an informed answer to the everlasting male question. The answer leaped rather quickly to mind.
I already did.
Alison Moore, in a skintight lavender mini dress, clocked his presence. Then she leaned over and kissed Schaeffer on the cheek.
“Hey, Schaeffer, you look awesome. Hi, Seth. I heard you were covering these things for the Times, but I’ve never seen you at any of them.”
“He’s always late and often lazy,” Schaeffer informed her. “You look fabulous.”
She did look fabulous. Her figure was flawless in that dress, and the color was so fragile and pale it took you a moment to register that it was there at all. Cascading seed pearl earrings were her only accessories; she didn’t carry a clutch. Those great long bangs were still there, the long legs too. Her eyes were even greener in person, but maybe that was the dress. She looked free, spare, and fearless, like someone who might split and duck into your Chevy, take a road trip to Montauk, and make out in the backseat all night.