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I’ner clothes, air-conditioning ducts, beams, a playpen and then a baby that looks as if it has been dipped in blood, which sluled, on a pile of rubble Nearby a s continuously fro out the side of his head Dead belle and heads blown off bodies, even one of a chisel-faced boyfriend of a model I knew back in New York, many of thenition) In a daze, wandering past me: Polly Mellon, Claudia Schiffer, Jon Bon Jovi, Mary Wells Laurence, Steven Friede, Mariah Carey

Paths arePlace Vendome, and the paparazzi arrive first, followed by CNN reporters and then local television crews, and then, finally, a rescue tea antiterrorist police wearing flak jackets over paratrooper ju victieons lie dead, so to fly, low to the ground above the debris, and later the feet of children in aushered out of thatand bodies will have to be identified by birthmarks, dental records, scars, tattoos, jewelry, and at a nearby hospital are posted the na with their condition, and soon the rescue workers outside the Ritz are no longer in rescue mode

23

I sit in a revival theater on Boulevard des Italiens I collapse on a bench in the Place du Parvis At one point during the day I’alle At another point I just keep crossing then recrossing the Seine I wander through Aux Trois Quartiers on Boulevard de la Madeleine until the glimpse I catch of myself in a mirror at a Clinique counter moves me to rush back to the house in the 8th or the 16th

Inside the house Bentley sits at a co a Gap tank top and headphones fro itself at different angles across the screen My throat is aching from all the smoke I inhaled and when I pass a riray with dust, my eyes yellow I

On the computer screen: the actor who played Sam Ho lies naked on his back in a nondescript wood-paneled bedroouy, htly older, also naked, and in profile he’s thrusting between Sa keys, scanning the i in and out Within a iven a er pectorals, what’s visible of his ck shaft is thickened, the pubic hair lightened The nondescript bedroom is transformed into the bedroom I stayed at in the house in Haing over the bed, the vase filled with giant white tulips, the chroht red in the flash, are corrected

I bring a hand up toit This move the headphones

"What happened to you?" he asks innocently, but he can’t keep up the facade and starts grinning

"What are you doing?" I ask, numb, hollowed out

"I’lad you’re back," Bentley says "Bobby wants ain

"This is a new program," Bentley says "Kai’s Photo Soap for Windows 95 Take a peek"

Pause "What does it do?" I s

"It helps make pictures better," Bentley says in a baby’s voice

"How does it do that?" I ask, shivering

The sex-scene photo is scanned again and Bentley concentrates on tapping es torn from a booklet and spread out on the table next to the corafted sea Sa hard disk"-Bentley glances over at me-"is mandatory As well as a certain a, "That’s cool, that’s cool," because Bentley keeps grinning, but a hot wave of nausea rises, subsides, silencing raph disappears The screen stays blank Another two keys are tapped and then a file number is tapped and then a coraphs that fill the screen in rapid succession