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Maher is here,” Tammi whispered as she ushered me to a corner. “First night out, everything primo. We just had Brazilian mangos delivered to each suite. We have peacocks in pens downstairs—they’re so bii-iiig you wouldn’t believe!—and the bellhop brings them up at exactly two a.m. One already died on the way here. Really bad karma. But who cares! Which room do you want? I can give you San Francisco mayor Willie Brown in six, Elle the Gender Bender in four, or Matt Dillon in two.”
    The parties, the clubs, the nightlife—it was fun for a while. But my dreams didn’t revolve around a measly gossip column in a second-rate glossy. I wanted my own roll of bills, my own limo, my own classy clique, my own designer coif and duds, vetted by my own stylist, my own, my own, my own.
    So, at the end of my twenty-fifth year, I decided to cash in. I asked Zip for time off the column so I could work on a feature. I wanted a yard, not just inches. It took me three weeks, but in the end I had a six-thousand-word exposé, a detailed tell-all about the habits and habitats of the celebs on the gold-plated clipboards.
    “The I ’s Have It: The Klatch of Blondes Who Stole Manhattan” was my first cover story for Gotham’s Gate . It was somewhere between Candace Bushnell and Walter Winchell. The tone was lofty, strident with just the right touch of class-conscious alarm. It was full of substantiating detail, anecdotes no one could cull unless they’d been there, and delicious little morsels only an insider could snatch. I threw enough bricks, in short, to build a chimney.
    It was a sensation; I was finally launched as a “journalist.” I was invited to parties with New Yorker writers and auteurs from Vanity Fair . And after that, something truly miraculous occurred: Hollywood optioned the story. They planned to make it a screenplay and Gwyneth Paltrow would play Tammi. I asked how much and they told me we didn’t even need to talk money. They would give me five hundred large up front and another two big bills once the picture was flickering.
    It was the easiest half mill anyone ever made. People say that kind of thing never happens, but it did. First time out on a cover story for a glossy, and I made a killing. The facts of the transaction ran in all the insider rags. I got featured in a story in the Sunday Mag about big bucks for small fries—it was short and it was mean…but still.
    After the splash, Zip gave me a Christmas bonus that could’ve bought me a bridge. Then he gave me a journalistic blank check: I could write anything I liked for my next story. I no longer needed to log daily hours. All I had to do was show my face in his office once a week and report my progress.
    I got myself a loft in TriBeCa, and Chuck Uptite, the installation artist, did my interior design. It was all industrial chic, stainless-steel medical cabinetry everywhere. Rolling emergency-room gurneys as sideboards, medical instrument stands for tables. I mixed flavored vodkas at the glimmering glass bar. My recycling bin was full of gourmet takeout containers. I kept a stack of invitations by the toilet, so guests could cherry-pick premieres. I had two cell phones and a pager and never answered any of them.
    The bartender at my new corner haunt concocted a cocktail in my honor: the Vanitini. Vanilla vodka, sweet vermouth, and a splash of grenadine. Vanitinis were sweet, but I didn’t pucker. I was getting used to sweet: sweet as a perfect assignment, sweet as a five-figure bonus, sweet as a half-mill movie deal. The next time I got quizzed—Who’s on Top?—the answer was simple.
    The answer was Vane.

3
Night Rewrite
    A t The Paper, night arrives with the copy editors. Midnight rolls with the presses. Somewhere in between, the hands on the clock tend to bend.
    When I hung up with Cabeza, I sat still for a few minutes, trying not to breathe. I put a new stick of gum in my mouth and chewed slowly. The right thing to do to was to confess a