Greg McBride walks in and stops by my chair. "Did you watch the Winters Show this morning? Riot. Total riot," and we give each other high-five before he takes a seat between Dibble and Lloyd. God knows where they came from.
Kevin Forrest, who walks in with Charles Murphy, is saying, "My call waiting is busted. Felicia screwed it up somehow." I'm not even paying attention to what they're wearing. But I find myself staring at Murphy's vintage owl cuff links with blue crystal eyes.
Video Store then D'Agostino's
I'm wandering around VideoVisions, the video rental store near my apartment on the Upper West Side, sipping from a can of Diet Pepsi, the new Christopher Cross tape blaring from the earphones of my Sony Walkman. After the office I played racquetball with Montgomery, then had a shiatsu massage and met Jesse Lloyd, Jamie Conway and Kevin Forrest for drinks at Rusty's on Seventy-third Street. Tonight I'm wearing a new wool topcoat by Ungaro Uomo Paris and carrying a Bottega Veneta briefcase and an umbrella by Georges Gaspar.
The video store is more crowded than usual. There are too many couples in line for me to rent She-Male Reformatory or Ginger's Cunt without some sense of awkwardness or discomfort, plus I've already bumped into Robert Ailes from First Boston in the Horror aisle, or at least I think it was Robert Ailes. He mumbled "Hello, McDonald" as he passed me by, holding Friday the 13th: Part 7 and a documentary on abortions in what I noticed were nicely manicured hands marred only by what looked to me like an imitation-gold Rolex.
Since p**n ography seems out of the question I browse through Light Comedy and, feeling ripped off, settle for a Woody Allen movie but I'm still not satisfied. I want something else. I pass through the Rock Musical section - nothing - then find myself in Horror Comedy - ditto - and suddenly I'm seized by a minor anxiety attack. There are too many f**king movies to choose from. I duck behind a promotional cardboard display for the new Dan Aykroyd comedy and take two five-milligram Valiums, washing them down with the Diet Pepsi. Then, almost by rote, as if I've been programmed, I reach for Body Double - a movie I have rented thirty-seven times - and walk up to the counter where I wait for twenty minutes to be checked out by a dumpy girl (five pounds overweight, dry frizzy hair). She's actually wearing a baggy, nondescript sweater - definitely not designer - probably to hide the fact that she has no tits, and even though she has nice eyes: so f**king what? Finally it's my turn. I hand her the empty boxes.
"Is this it?" she asks, taking my membership card from me. I'm wearing Mario Valentino Persian-black gloves. My VideoVisions membership costs only two hundred and fifty dollars annually.
"Do you have any Jami Gertz movies?" I ask her, trying to make direct eye contact.