Not So Model Home - By David James Page 0,11
Malibu for substance abuse. I’m sure you’ve all heard of it. All the big stars have gone there. Charlie Sheen, I think. Anna Nicole Smith went there. I’m clean now. Wine doesn’t count.”
“Even zo, you like your wine. I saut zat you go there to stop drinking too?”
“That was for hard liquor. Wine is different. This is California. You get arrested for not drinking wine. Plus, it’s good for your arteries. Keeps them open or something to do with trans fatty acids. How should I know, I’m not a chemist.”
“I vould zink you know a lot about ze chemicals, Aleksei,” Gilles said, getting in one last dig.
Aleksei raised his nose in the air. “I will not dignify that comment. That’s about it. Ian has been very good to me.”
Gilles replied, “I’ll bet he has.”
“Always trying to have the last word, aren’t you, Gilles?”
Aleksei was young. I was guessing about twenty, if that. Like any man who attracted Ian’s eye, he was abnormally handsome. Again, we had the huge-hair syndrome, but his was swept upward in a single, light brown wave that made him look like a Russian James Dean. And again, the lips—perfectly pursed. It finally occurred to me how many of them had collagen injections in their lips. Everything was all too perfect, too structured. But if you looked a little closer, you could see that Aleksei was already showing huge amounts of wear and tear from the crystal meth. His cheeks were almost imperceptibly sunken, the face a tiny bit shriveled, and he had a jumpiness that showed up in tapping fingers, restless feet, and gazing around nonstop. He couldn’t stop fidgeting in his chair, and his hands were fluttering like a pair of Monarch butterflies on their way back from Mexico for the winter.
Gilles was about to lob out another verbal cluster bomb when Keith raised his hand to silence him—again, without looking up from his over-texted BlackBerry. Oddly enough, when I thought even a volcanic eruption couldn’t stop Gilles from talking, Keith’s hand had calmed the waters temporarily.
Jeremy motioned for Keith to talk next.
“I’m Keith MacGregor. I’m an event planner, nightclub promoter, and bulk texting expert in Los Angeles.”
This pronouncement was met with blank stares all around the table.
“I help build, design, and promote cutting-edge nightclubs in Los Angeles. Like Area, the Skybar, Element.”
“You had nothing to do with any of soze clubs,” Gilles chimed in again, giving the shit pot another good stir.
“I said I build and design nightclubs like them. I didn’t say those clubs exactly. I am very much involved in the design of Water, Tube, and Sonic,” Keith replied with a bit of cocky bravura.
“I figure as much,” Gilles added. “No wonder nobody goes to soze clubs.”
Keith looked up at Gilles like a dog about to attack. Head lowered, eyes glowing like red coals looking up at you from beneath hostile brows. Then he smiled, poured himself some more cranberry juice, took a long drink, and was quiet. Keith’s appearance? Not like the rest. Instead of the polished, sleek look of most of the others, Keith looked, well, disheveled. Between the wild, longish hair, the beard stubble, and the dark circles around the eyes, he looked like a vampire who partied way too much. Jeremy was right—Keith looked like personal hygiene and grooming took a back seat to everything else in his life.
Aleksei reached for his wineglass again, which I noticed had been magically refilled. His grasp slipped and the glass tipped over on the table, spilling the contents.
Ian broke in, “Drake, would you be a dear and mop up Aleksei’s spill?”
Drake got up with just a hint of frustration on his face, picked up the glass, mopped up the spill, and headed for the kitchen.
“Drake, where are you going, boy?” Ian sneered with a barrelful of attitude.
“What? The glass is chipped. I’m throwing it away, Ian!”
“Let me see that glass,” Ian demanded.
He studied the glass, turning it this way and that. He then put on his reading glasses that hung on a jeweled chain around his neck.
“I don’t see anything, Drake.”
Drake let out a sigh that could’ve woken the dead.
“Right there, Ian!” he said, pointing to an area on the rim.
“My God, Drake! You’d have to have the Hubble telescope to see that chip. Okay, throw it away, Drake. You win!”
Drake left the room and went into the kitchen, where we were treated to the sound of the glass being thrown at great velocity against a wall, shattering into a million