To brighten the evening for Hogan, I took him over to Café Noir with a couple of young gallery assistants, both brunettes and both newly liberated from home and college. We sat in the back, where the girls could practice their smoking.
“Très louche,” one of them said.
In fact, the bar area up front was even noisier than the gallery, filled with international club kids, many of them French. However, our partially enclosed retreat in the rear of the restaurant, behind a beaded curtain, was relatively secluded and calm. We could actually converse as we ate our grilled shrimp, falafel, and couscous. Once the girls went off to the bathroom together, Hogan gave me some news.
“This Morse guy is connected with the Olivers in more ways than one.”
“You’ve been talking to Margaret again?”
“I asked her if Philip had a clue about his wife’s little dalliance. She said that nothing gets past him, it’s more a question of what he can remember.”
“In this instance, it might be a blessing to forget.”
“So I asked if she’d ever heard Philip mention Paul Morse.”
“Did she know the name?”
“Not just the name but the smooth face and the baby-blue eyes. Seems several of the women at O-Tech think Morse is dreamy.”
“He’s been to the office?”
“To see Andrews.”
I was stumped. “About making videos for the company?”
“She wasn’t sure. Turns out Andrews is an art collector, too. It’s a vice he picked up from the company founder, I guess.”
The girls came back, bringing a maelstrom of small talk. I paid the check, and told them we could all go to the Treasure Chest but they’d be on their own. Hogan and I had to meet a friend downstairs in the dressing room.
The girls looked at each other and shrugged. “No problem.”
The club was only a few blocks away, in a bleak stretch of oversized buildings beyond the west edge of SoHo. Long and low, this particular structure looked like a displaced bowling alley, with an anxious crowd shifting on the sidewalk outside. The real action would come later, after two AM, but the arts festival party had already drawn a large clot of hopefuls to the velvet rope. I went up to Steve, the doorman, and told him we were four. He nodded and unhooked the rope and fastened it behind us again. Inside, the place was still half deserted.
“What the hell?” Hogan said.
My friend is not a big fan of hip clubs. I guess workaday Bayside has deprived him of an appreciation for the way room leads onto room, through half-hidden passageways, past various levels and checkpoints, each with brass stanchions and taciturn guards—all the refinements of exclusion that give the journey its addictive, masochistic allure. Hogan resents the sense of an infinite regression of privilege, of ultimately not being cool enough for the innermost sanctum. (Unless, of course, you are.) To him, it’s all undemocratic, the antithesis of American classlessness, equal opportunity, and fair play.
“Somebody ought to haul the owner’s ass into court,” he groused.
What can I tell you? The guy actually believes in such things. SoHo, however, wasn’t designed for sentimental ex-Marines. Every dealer knows that his product is half object and half mystique. Intimidation sells art. As long as that’s the case, I’m happy to let the non-rich and the cultural bumpkins tremble at my gallery door.
Apart from the LMAF contingent, the crowd that night was a typical Penny Lane mix—about one-third straight, one-third gay, and one-third transvestite. Some hot young “women” of indeterminate gender were dancing in go-go cages.
“There’s our boy,” I told Hogan.
Across the room, near the still empty bandstand, the tall, peach-skinned young man held an expensive video camera on his shoulder, taping a dancer in a neon pink miniskirt.
“Good equipment,” Hogan said. “But guys who look like Morse usually end up in front of the lens, not behind it.”
“Who is he?” the girls wanted to know.
“Jack’s boyfriend,” Hogan said. “Didn’t he tell you?”
They laughed, a little too eagerly. “Introduce us?” the prettier one asked.
“Later.”
I steered the young pair to a banquette and got them some drinks.
“Practice being beautiful for a while,” I advised. “The competition is going to get pretty stiff in here soon.”