"Sorry if I'm a little sweaty." He grins. "I was just down in the gym. But sweet Jesus it's cold in here. And I have no idea where the goddamn thermostat is."
"Oh?" I say, stuck, then try to nod. "I mean... oh." Pause. "There's a gym... here?"
"Yeah"-he gestures with his head-"in the basement."
"Oh yeah?" I say, forcing myself to be more casual. "That's so cool... man.
"They're all at the store," he says, turning back to the computer, lifting a Diet Coke to his lips. "You're lucky you're here-Bruce is cooking tonight." He turns back around. "Hey, you want some breakfast? I think there's a bag of croissants in the kitchen somewhere and if Bentley didn't drink it, maybe some OJ left."
Pause. "Oh, that's okay, that's okay. I'm cool." I'm nodding vacantly.
"You want a Bloody Mary?" He grins. "Or maybe some Visine? Your eyes look a little red, my friend."
"No, no..." A pause, a shy smile, an inward breath, then exhaling, barely. "It's okay. It's cool."
"You sure, guy?" he asks.
"Um, yeah, uh-huh."
Expelled his first term from Yale for "unruly behavior," Bobby Hughes started modeling convincingly enough for Cerutti at eighteen to skyrocket from that gig into an overnight sensation. This was followed by becoming Armani's favorite model and then various million-dollar deals, sums unheard of for a man at that time. There was the famous Hugo Boss ad where Bobby was flipping off the camera, the tag line "Does Anybody Really Notice?" below him in red neon letters, and then the historic Calvin Klein commercial of just Bobby in his underwear looking vacant and coughing while a girl's voice-over whispered, "It will co-opt your ego," and when GQ still ran models on the cover, Bobby's face was there endlessly, dead-eyed and poised. He was the boytoy in two Madonna videos, the "sad lost guy" in a Belinda Carlisle clip and shirtless in countless others because he had a set of breathtaking abdominals before anyone was really paying attention to the torso, and he was probably the major force in starting that craze. During his career he walked thousands of runways, garnering the nickname "The Showstopper." He was on the cover of the' Smiths' last album, Unfortunately. He had a fan club in Japan. He had great press, which always pushed the notion that beneath the drifting surfer-dude image Bobby Hughes was "alert" and had a "multifaceted personality." He was the highest-paid male model for a moment during the 1980s because he simply had the best features, the most sought-after look, the perfect body. His calendar sold millions.
He gave his last interview to Esquire during the winter of 1989, which was where he said, not at all defensively, "I know exactly what I'm going to do and where I'm going," and then he more or less just vacated the NewYork fashion scene-all this before my life in the city really began, before I was known as Victor Ward, before I met Chloe, before my world began to take shape and started to expand-and then the occasional grainy photograph of him would show up in certain European fashion magazines (Bobby Hughes attending a consulate party in Milan, Bobby Hughes standing in the rain on Wardour Street dressed in Paul Smith green, Bobby Hughes playing volleyball on the beach in Cannes or in the lobby at the Cap d'Antibes at dawn wearing a tuxedo and holding a cigarette, Bobby Hughes asleep in the bulkhead seats on the Concorde), and because he had stopped giving interviews there were always tabloid rumors about his engagement to Tiffani-Amber Thiessen or how he "almost" broke up Liz Hurley and Hugh Grant or how he did break up Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh. He supposedly had firsthand knowledge of certain S M bars in Santa Monica. He supposedly was going to star in the sequel to American Gigolo. He supposedly had squandered the fortune he'd accumulated on failed restaurants, on horses and cocaine, on a yacht he named Animal Boy. He supposedly was heading back to modeling at an age that was considered "iffy" at best. But he never did.
And now he's here in the flesh-four years older than me, just a foot away, tapping keys on a computer terminal, sipping Diet Coke, wearing white athletic socks-and since I'm not really used to being around guys who are so much better looking than Victor Ward, it's all kind of nerve-racking and I'm listening more intently to him than to any man I've ever met because the unavoidable fact is: he's too good-looking to resist. He can't help but lure.
"Um, I'm kind of lost," I start, hesitantly. "Where... exactly am I?"