Party Girl: A Novel by Anna David Page B

pretend like they do but are just planning when they can stick a tongue in my mouth.
    And I’m so enamored with everything she’s telling me that I let some other things slide, like the fact that she’s closed off most of the rooms in the house and won’t say whether or not she’s married. I figure I’m getting such amazingly descriptive answers from her on all kinds of other topics that it will more than make up for some of the other odds and ends the story may lack.
    I save the whole age question until the very end, starting it off the way I always do when I suspect it might be a sensitive topic.
    “So Absolutely Fabulous is completely obsessed with putting people’s ages in every piece,” I say.
    Linda’s lids fly open and she looks at me with wild eyes. “I never say my age,” she says.
    “Oh, so Tina didn’t say anything to you about this?” I ask, even though I know the answer. Damn publicists. Linda shakes her head.
    “Well, I told her on the phone that this was pretty important.”
    Linda seems really cold suddenly, not at all the evolved and loving being she’d been a few moments earlier. “I never say my age,” she says again. “Just tell your editor I wouldn’t tell you.”
    I take a deep breath. “That’s the thing about Absolutely Fabulous,” I say. “They don’t accept answers like that. We’re not allowed to let people not answer questions.”
    “That’s ridiculous!” she snaps, and then, realizing how harsh that must have sounded, she smiles. “Fine. Just tell them I’m thirty-something.”
    “If I don’t get an exact number, they’ll just look it up from DMV records.” I say this in a really low voice that some might label a whisper. But the woman has the aural capabilities of a trained dog.
    “DMV records?!” she shrieks. “Is that even legal?”
    Smiling at her, I think how much I hope that this ridiculous age issue isn’t going to cause a permanent fissure in what I’d imagined would be our lifelong friendship. “Look, I’m on your side about it,” I say. “I think it’s ridiculous. But Absolutely Fabulous has all these policies that people just end up adhering to.” I smile again. “You look amazing,” I say, but not in a way that might make her think I’m coming on to her. “And really, age is just a number.”
    Glancing down at the ground, I think about how much this situation calls for a cigarette. When I look up again, I see that Linda has tears in her eyes again. This time, I’m a lot less thrilled.
    “You can’t let this happen, Amelia,” she says, suddenly reaching over and grabbing my hand. “I can’t have people knowing my age. I’d rather have the piece not run than have it say my age.”
     
    While I’m interviewing Linda, Brian leaves me a message informing me that my Kane piece has been moved up in the rotation schedule, and that I need to be able to turn it in in the next twenty-four hours. His voice is distant, which definitely doesn’t help cushion the news that I’m going to have to stay up all night if I’m going to be able to make this happen.
    Luckily, Alex is as available and ready as usual. And, also as usual, he’s a stickler about his two-gram policy. If I’m alone, I usually only want to do one gram—and yet, if I have two, I will do two. Surely Alex has all this figured out. But since, for a drug dealer, he’s extremely reliable, I always buy the two grams and then try to hide the second one from myself so that I don’t do them both in the same night. But I can never think of a hiding place that’s good enough for me to be able to forget about it, which is probably because my apartment is about the size of a postage stamp.
    Alex makes his delivery, and I give him the crisp bills still warm from the ATM, slide the folded-up Lotto tickets into my pocket, go upstairs, and lay the coke out on a Jay Z CD. I don’t have the butter-flies and sense of anticipation I usually have before doing coke because the night