Party Girl: A Novel by Anna David

the playpen, or at least that they went to high school with, but I’m not very good at keeping those people around. Old friends never seem as exciting and cool as the new ones and Stephanie—who I met a year and a half ago, when I started working at Absolutely Fabulous— had seemed rather exciting for a while. But I’m not going to let her make me feel guilty for the rest of my life , I think, and decide to play her cold game, too, and not even respond to the e-mail. If I see her in the elevator, I decide, I’ll be cordial but distant.
    I write the Ken Stinson piece in record time and the New York editor e-mails me back within minutes to tell me how thrilled she is with my work on this—an altogether unprecedented event. A few minutes later, Brian walks in smiling, saying the New York editor was just raving to him about my work, and hands me a piece of paper. I glance down at it and see that it’s an assignment to interview Kane—a British singer who specializes in inexplicably popular adult contemporary music and tends to date actresses.
    “You’re giving this one to me?” I ask, surprised. Within the world of Absolutely Fabulous , this is a choice assignment and would typically go to a more senior-level reporter who specializes in music.
    “Yeah, I figured he’ll like you,” Brian smiles. I tell myself that my luck has clearly turned and things are going to start getting better from now on. Names like Rick, Gus, Adam, and Stephanie sit lodged in the back of my mind, threatening to fill me with self-loathing, but if I can keep busy enough, I know I can ignore them all for the time being.

9
    I read everything I can find about Kane on the Internet and then go to meet his manager—a dour woman with a sensible brown bob—in the lobby of the L’Ermitage hotel. She escorts me up to the seventh floor without saying a word, silently leading me down a hall and opening up a room, where Kane is waiting.
    Though not by anyone’s standards attractive, Kane nonetheless radiates massive amounts of star quality—or perhaps it’s the gleaming diamonds in his ears and around his neck. He stands in the middle of the hotel bedroom in a white linen suit, wearing a beaming grin.
    “Come in, come in,” he says, leading me through the room’s sitting area and into the bedroom, then shutting the door. To his manager, he calls out, “Janet, we’ll call you if we need you.”
    I feel immensely relieved to be rid of the grim, personality-less manager—every now and then you’ll encounter a rep who insists on sitting in on the interview, which is about as nerve-racking as the notion of a parent sitting in on an adolescent’s date.
    Kane settles his enormous frame onto the queen-sized bed, his white boots dragging dirt onto the down comforter, and pats the space next to him. “Come join me in bed, darling,” he says, his rather lovely British accent making the sentence seem less like a sexual come-on and more like a sensible suggestion.
    And, truth be told, either one is fine by me. Getting a flirtatious rapport going with people I’m interviewing is one of my tricks of the trade—my other main one being confessing intensely personal information to subconsciously motivate them to do the same. It also doesn’t exactly hurt my ego if a guy significant enough to be interviewed by Absolutely Fabulous flirts with me.
    So I climb onto the bed willingly, just a tad nervous that Manager will come in and catch me, the allegedly professional journalist, in this compromising position. But I soothe my nerves about this by being extra vigilant with my questioning, and Kane compliments me on both my questions and my overall personality.
    Then again, at a certain point it becomes clear that Kane is complimenting me on just about everything, and the conversation is turning into something more akin to a date than an interview. “I don’t have any brothers or sisters, do you, Beautiful?” he lobs back at my sibling query, and though