Inside the restaurant, Carrie sits between Ra and his female manager. Someone from the New York Times keeps taking everyone’s picture. Ra doesn’t talk much. He stares a lot and touches his goatee and nods his head. After dinner, Carrie goes back to Ra’s manager’s house with the manager and Ra to smoke. It seems to be the right thing to do at the time, in the summer, in the heat. The smoke is strong. It’s late. They walk her to a cab.
“We call this place the zone,” the manager says. She’s staring at Carrie.
Carrie thinks she actually knows what she’s talking about, what this “zone” is, and why they’re suddenly all in it together.
“Why don’t you come and live with us in the zone?” Ra asks.
“I’d like to,” Carrie says, meaning it but also thinking, I’ve got to get home.
She rides uptown, but before she gets home she says, “Stop the cab.” She actually gets out and walks. She’s still thinking, I’ve got to get home. The city is hot. She feels powerful. Like a predator. A woman is walking down the sidewalk a few feet in front of her. She’s wearing a loose white shirt, it’s like a white flag and it’s driving Carrie crazy. Suddenly Carrie feels like a shark smelling blood. She fantasizes about killing the woman and eating her. It’s terrifying how much she’s enjoying the fantasy.
The woman has no idea she’s being stalked. She’s oblivious, jiggling along the sidewalk. Carrie envisions tearing into the woman’s soft, white flesh with her teeth. It’s the woman’s own fault, she should lose weight or something. Carrie stops and turns into her building.
“Good evening, Miss Carrie,” says the doorman.
“Good evening, Carlos,” Carrie says.
“Everything okay?”
“Oh yes, everything’s fine.”
“Good night now,” Carlos says, sticking his head around the open door of the elevator. He smiles.
“Good night, Carlos.” She smiles back, showing all of her teeth.
THE BLUE ANGEL
In the heat, going outside is bad. But staying inside, alone, is worse.
Kitty is knocking around in the big Fifth Avenue apartment she lives in with Hubert, her fifty-five-year-old actor boyfriend. Hubert is making a comeback. He’s shooting a film in Italy with a hot young American director, and then he’s going to L.A. to shoot the pilot for a TV series. Kitty will join him in Italy in a couple of days and then go to L.A. with him. She thinks: I’m only twenty-five. I’m too young for this.
At five o’clock, the phone finally rings.
“Hello, Kitty?” It’s a man.
“Yeeeees?”
“Is Hubert there?”
“Noooooo.”
“Oh, this is Dash.”
“Dash,” Kitty says, somewhat confused. Dash is Hubert’s agent. “Hubert’s in Italy,” Kitty says.
“I know,” Dash says. “He told me to call you and take you out if I was in town. He thought you might be lonely.”
“I see,” Kitty says. She realizes he’s probably lying, and she’s thrilled.
They meet at the Bowery Bar at ten. Stanford Blatch eventually shows up. He’s a friend of Dash’s, but then again, Stanford is a friend of everyone’s.
“Stanford,” Dash says. He leans back against the banquette. “Where’s the new place to go? I want to make sure my ward here has a good time this evening. I think she’s bored.”
The two men exchange glances. “I like the Blue Angel,” Stanford says. “But then again, I have particular tastes.”
“The Blue Angel it is,” Dash says.
The place is in SoHo somewhere. They walk in, and it’s a seedy joint with plywood platforms for dancing girls. “Slumming is very big this summer,” Stanford says.