"It's Baxter's," she says. "He gave it to me." Pause. "Since I can't answer my own.
"Baby," I start. "Are you okay?" I'm thinking about the hand mirror in the bathroom behind me, wondering if there was anything on it. "You're not back into..." I let my voice drift off.
It takes longer than I want for her to realize what I'm referring to and she says "No, Victor" but she flinches when she says this so I'm not too relieved.
The phone keeps ringing and Chloe keeps lifting sweaters out of her armoire and placing them in the suitcases oh the bed and she's moving slowly, deliberately, nodding to herself, every move seemingly mapped out, only slightly distracted by my presence, but then she sighs and stops moving. She looks over at where I'm shivering, slumped in a giant white chair. In a mirror across the room I can make out my reflection and my face isn't as bruised as I feared. Chloe's asking "Why?" and the phone keeps ringing, a reminder.
"Why... what?"
"Just why, Victor."
"Baby," I say, holding my hands up, about to offer an explanation. "You're a, um, great source of... inspiration to, um, me."
"I want some kind of answer from you," she says calmly. "Don't free-associate. Just tell me why."
I take this in. "I can dig that, baby."
"If there was just some speck of feeling in you, Victor," she sighs, padding over to the closet.
"Oh please, baby-"
"Why, Victor?" she asks again.
"Baby, I-"
"I'm not going to cry. I cried all night," she says. "I'm not going to cry while you're here so just be straight with me."
"Baby, I need... I need..." I sigh, then start again. "Baby, see, this thing-"
"You never really answer a question directly if you can help it, do you?"
"Um..." I look up at her, confused. "What was the question?"
She's carefully placing T-shirts and panties on one side of the largest suitcase. She wraps the cord of a hair dryer around its handle, then places it in a smaller bag. "It's taken me a long time to like myself, Victor," she says, gliding by me. "I'm not going to let you change that."
"But you don't like yourself," I mutter wearily, shaking my head. "Not really," and then, "Baby, please stop moving around."
Baxter's cell phone rings. She picks it up off the bed and listens to whoever's calling, studying me until she finally turns away and says, "Yeah, okay... I'll be ready... I just need to meet with someone... Okay, thanks... Hugh Grant and Elizabeth Hurley?... Okay, great... No, I'll be fine... Yeah, he's here right now... No, no, no-it's okay, don't. I'm fine, really... I'll see you then."
She clicks off, moves directly into the bathroom and closes the door. The toilet flushes twice and then she walks back into the bedroom. I want to ask her who was on the phone so she'll have to say his name but I already know who it was and in the end I don't really want to hear her say his name.
"So can you tell me why, Victor?" she asks. "Why did all this happen?"
"Because, baby..." I swallow. "This is hard... Come on, baby... This is... all I know?... It's all... I am?" I say, hoping it's the right way of explaining.
"Everything you know is wrong," she says. "Everything you know is wrong."
"Oh man," I sigh.
"Just look at your life, Victor. You're going nowhere. You know girls named Vagina-"
"Hey, her name was Yanni, baby. It just means vagina."
"How many thousands of nightclub booths can you hang out in?" she's asking. "You just sit around Bowery Bar or Pravda or Indochine complaining about how much it sucks." She pauses, waiting. "And you do this four times a week?"
"I'm... pretty much exhausted, baby."
"No, you're sick," she says, staring deeply into the luggage, contemplating the arrangement of clothes, hands on hips. "You're soul sick, Victor."
"Baby, it's just"-I raise my head to look at her, confused-"some bad coke, but whatever." I sigh, giving up. "It's irrelevant."
"Everything is irrelevant with you."
"I'm... baffled. Why is everyone dissing me?"
"You spend your life trying to impress people you're impressed with, that's why."
"Why should I try to impress people who don't impress me, baby?"
