2.

Monday morning arrived at last—10:20: well and good, he had actually overslept; even Josh was out of bed and vanished. Right now Professor Mason would be waving chalk around a blackboard, scratching Tokugawa, divine right of kings in spindly yellow script, but today there would be one more seat unfilled in the auditorium, one triangle desk still folded where yours truly usually sat. For today was the day of the Day.

With a practiced hand—en garde!—Matt drew out the stack of cards from under his pillow, placed there both to hide from Josh and as if sleeping on them might help him memorize. It wasn’t so very much, merely some definitions and answers, just whatever info Jason had returned on the train with yesterday regarding the profession of promoter, plus whatever snippets of persona they three had devised chez Sophie last night. AGE: 23. After all, he had best be legal. PROVENANCE: New York City. Colorful as it was, New Jersey presented grave image difficulties. GUEST LIST: Why, your assiduous promoter’s register of invitees. COMP: Complimentary admission for those happy guests let in gratis on the promoter’s say-so. REDUCED: Reduced admission; please, this is easy. ROPES: Barrier of entry to the common creep; he.

Matt jumped from bed into the autumn day that wanted him.

When he phoned, a bored man refused to pass him to Vic (lucky, for Matt’s voice cracked and quavered most uncoolly), instead simply informing him that the meeting would be at three. Four hours off! A dilatory Matt killed the minutes with a stroll, an extended breakfast and reverie session, thumbing sightless through a student paper, till finally it was time to make his way to Sophie’s. And there on the green eiderdown she had laid his outfit—so thoughtful, his lady, she had even ironed out the hanger marks of the collarless charcoal Helmut Lang button-down, along the waistband of the black Costume National pants. At 2:22 he was staring at a boy in her bathroom mirror, checking each last molar for stray bits of cereal, for stray bits of him leaking through…and precisely twenty minutes later, his shaking fingers were pressing green bills on the cabbie by the curb before Cinema. The white dais was still here, and the double silver doors shining in the bright sun, but now it all looked bare and simple, a little abandoned temple here by the river. Matt trotted up, tugged on the rightmost door.

He entered a bare and spacious purple-carpeted lobby, which a model-like man in a newspaper-boy cap was crossing. Both hands wrapped about a stack of cards, the man paused, tipped his olive-skinned face to one side. “Are you here to see Vic?” He blinked limpid horse eyes when Matt nodded. “This way. I’m Adrian.”

Matt followed swaying Adrian down a set of stairs lined in black felt, through a room edged by silver tables and chairs stacked in piles and smelling faintly of vomit and Lysol, into a low-ceilinged tunnel, up a stairwell ending at a door—

Into a large corridor. When the door clicked shut behind, it dissolved into a mirrored wall. “Over here,” droned Adrian, already climbing a pediment to another, unremarkable white door. Inside—a conventional office: desks; computers. Phones, the underhum of conversation. “You can have a seat here.” Adrian waved to a black leather couch before, snuffling, he glided off, disappearing behind a white wall.

“Sorry, Xavier, this time of year is crazy, you should know that,” Vic’s voice announced from behind the wall. “Besides, I—to be honest, I don’t really see what we have to talk about.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s nothing personal, I love you, I was thrilled to take you on again after all these years, but the numbers just aren’t there. Miranda, show him his numbers.”

“I’ve already seen my numbers!”

“Xavier. Thursdays just haven’t been holding their own. Let’s be honest: you’re not performing. Andrew is furious with you, livid, did you know that? Omigod, whoaaaa. Look, between you and me, he wanted me to fire you. ‘Get that lazy cunt out of my room, please, Vic, I don’t want him involved with my party’: that’s exactly what he said to me. I—I—hadda talk him down. So you should really thank me, all right? Is this the thanks I get?”

“Two hundred?! That—”

“Is the best I can do. Miranda, is my three o’clock here?”

“Yes,” chirped a girl.

“So, Xavier…” Steps rang out on the wooden floor until a handsome African-American man with shaved head and well-defined pecs beneath a green knit shirt appeared with Vic. Again Vic was wearing a black suit, hands jangling around in its bulging pockets; there was something raccoonish about the way he moved, irregular and shrewd: darting, twitches. “Maybe take a few weeks, you know, cool off, think about what we talked about today. All right? All right.”

A stricken Xavier shook his head, but he and his built shoulders passed with admirable grace out the hall door. Jeez. Adrian, Xavier: did you have to be modelesque to work here?

“Matty.” Vic whirled at him as soon as the door had closed behind Xavier. “Right on time. C’mon, c’mon, step into my office. Miranda,” Vic paused by one of the doors to shout, “I don’t wanna be disturbed for any- one, you got that? C’mon in, Matt.”

Step in. To the open door.

“I’m so sorry you had to sit through that…” Vic’s eyes were two giant pools of commiseration, as he waved Matt into an ordinary office; ordinary desk, an ordinary phone, a corkboard overflowing with photos: Vic, with vaguely oily people and what appeared to be a macaw. “Have a seat.” Vic sat down heavily, tucking in his suit’s stray lapels over his stomach. “It’s a sad story, really. Xavier is the greatest,” he sighed, flicking a thick black fountain pen absently. Finally he shrugged. “Well. So…thanks for coming by. I hope it didn’t interfere with any of your classes.”

“Excuse me?”

“Heh heh heh.” Vic slapped the desk with the flat of his hand. “Don’t tell me, don’t tell me you don’t even remember when you got class. What are you, a freshman?”

So much for being twenty-three. “Is it that obvious?” Matt murmured, with a brave smile.

“Obvious! The kid asks ‘is it obvious’!” Vic looked around incredulously at an unseeable audience. “Are you serious? Listen, kid.” He hunched in close. “Prob’ly anyone could tell you that. And me—when you’ve been in the business as long as I have, you just, you know these things. That’s your business: to know things. You just—you just pick up on them, see?” His meaty hands lifted and flipped, as if to show himself unarmed. “See, when you meet somebody, all right, there’s all kindsa signals they’re sending out; they have no idea but they’re projecting themselves all the time…” He grinned and crossed his legs. “Sounds complicated but it’s really, it’s really very simple. Now you, you know, you’re just starting out, so one of the easiest things you could go by is shoes. Shoes tell you everything you need to know about a person. You look at someone’s shoes—bam! You got ’em. You know immediately, they’re a homeboy, a rocker, a suit, a Euro, whether they’re just a mook, a guido, whatever…” The pen tapped two quick impatient raps on the desk. “All of it—it’s all in there.”²⁸

“I see. Right, sure.” Perhaps his Special Boots were giving GAY GAY GAY. Matt uncrossed his legs and tucked the boots discreetly beneath his chair.

Stagily, Vic mimed wiping his brow in relief. “Whew!” He glanced under the desk, bugged his eyes, and let out an abrupt burp of a laugh. “Because they really are wannabe. They’re throwing off your whole look. Here you are doing like deconstruction Ann Demeulemeester or maybe that’s Lang, and you’ve got the boots of some B&T mook who comes in off the subway and buys the first thing he spots on Eighth Street. Am I right? Ugh, don’t apologize—” Vic tsked dismissively, gave a contemptuous toss of his head. “Here, look, I’ll show you.” His right shoe exploded on a pile of papers atop the desk. “See this? I had it made for me, bespoke, in Japan. Look at the heel—and the fineness of the leather—go ahead and touch it, there you go; I mean, if you think you can get that at Barneys, you’re out of your head!” His hazel eyes blazed, defiant.

“Very nice.” Matt smiled politely. “The leather is excellent.”

Vic dropped the shoe unceremoniously to the floor. “Ha! Ha ha!” He fell backward in the chair. “I love it, I love it! Oh, you got a lot to learn, kid, it’s gonna be very exciting watching you grow here. Verrrry exciting. A kid like you—ah! The possibilities are endless! I can tell just from looking, you’re a natural. You see,” Vic’s head swiveled robotically over his shoulder and back, as if checking to make sure no one was listening, “not everybody has what it takes to be a promoter.” Hush-hush; apparently a promoter was some species of covert agent. “It’s a very complicated business, it’s an important business. Only people who are gifted in very special ways are cut out for it.” He began rocking his hands in waves, soothingly, like a magician or hypnotist. “Takes a lot of brainpower, takes a lot of skill. It’s about—you know what it’s about?” Vic leaned over the desk toward Matt, crushing the papers below his elbows, with a starry late-night look as if he might be about to propose. “You gotta just look at somebody, and”—he snapped his fingers, scornful—“talk to them in their language. That’s the secret. You follow me? What’s the secret?”

“Talk to them in their language,” Matt fired back.

Vic was caressing his own hands, rubbing them together in a reassuring manner. “Good, good. You see…you’re like, a promoter is this little pivot, between all these worlds. You got me? Now I’ve got an analogy for you, college boy. Just for you. Picture a circle.” Vic inscribed a circle on the back of an envelope with the fat sleek pen. “And now imagine—what is this, the radius, right—so you’ve got all these radiuses.” Vic made a number of strokes. “And this, this center here, it’s, what? Think. What is it—what’s so special about it?”

“Equidistant? I mean, it’s in the middle, exactly?”

“Nah. Of course it’s in the middle, that’s why it’s ‘center,’ genius. Now I want you to think. Is it a part of this radius?”

Matt nodded.

“And that one?”

“Yes.”

“And what about this one? And this one? Okay! So you see, all these radiuses—they think this centerpoint is one of them. But they got it wrong, every time. The center belongs to nobody. It just seems like it does—it talks to everyone else, in their language.” He threw down the pen. “See? That’s you, that’s promoting in a nutshell. What’s amazing is how few people can do it. You think I can ask Adrian,” Vic shuddered, “or Charlton, or any of those other rocket scientists I have working in my office? They’re either too stupid or too busy getting their rocks off, they don’t have their eye on the bottom line. I need talent who can think: about our bottom line. That’s where their minds have to be. But Adrian, every week the idiot drinks up his own tickets—I don’t think he’s given a single one out! Ever! That’s why he’s always gonna stay an errand boy. Or take Xavier. He’s a promoter, and he used to be not bad. But his numbers are going down. Why? Here I am, I need him out there nabbing fashion queens from Desmond at B Bar, I need him poaching from Rob and Larry’s Sunday tea dances, I need him picking off suits from Maximillian’s downtown, and where the hell are the queer ravers from Save the Robots or a place like that?” Vic jabbed his index figure definitively at the center dot in the circle. “I want all the gays from him, you follow me? But every Thursday night, there you go, there’s Xavier sitting at a table having fun with his own fifteen friends. Well, so much for him!” Vic snapped, fisting up the envelope, with a ferocious belly laugh tossing it into the trashcan. “Right?”

“Absolutely.” Matt made his face aghast at Xavier’s insensitivity. The nerve!

“Okay, kid. I think we understand each other. Am I right? Talk to them in their language. And listen—it’s about energy!” Vic threw himself back in his chair, as though repulsed by an invisible force field. “You gotta be electric, a live wire! You gotta be hungry, that’s the key; first time I saw you I noticed, I said this kid is hungry.” He looked right and left for applause. “Am I right? You want it.”

“I do.”

“Fabulous.” Vic grinned. For the first time in the meeting, he seemed calm. He traced the desk with a finger, as if softly rubbing the embers out of a post-sex cigarette. “Listen, kid, you think I don’t know you. Quiet,” he nearly cooed, one hand executing a pacifying, downward clamping gesture to forestall Matt from interrupting. “But what you don’t understand—is, I do. I know what you want, and I know why. And that is what I am here for. The reason I am on this planet. I help very special people achieve their potential. Okay? I see things. And I see you.” He squinched up his eye as if peering through a scope.

“I—”

“Ah, ah, ah”—Vic waved his hand dismissively—“I don’t need your thanks, all right? That’s the last thing I need. I’ll be, it’ll be thanks enough when I see you creaming along. Oh my God, you’re gonna be amazing.” He slapped both palms on the desk. “Well, it’s a done deal. I personally am very satisfied. You satisfied?”

Matt nodded. “Perfectly.”

“So let’s put you on, you’ll be doing Fridays in the Red Room, the party’s Down Below, I think that’s really the right scene for your crowd, young but it’s edgy and hip, you know, very downtown, so Friday you’ll meet Marshall, it’s his room, I’m sure you two will get along.” He rapped his nails on the desk. “Perfect, so we’ll have Miranda give you mebbe two hundred invites for Down Below, she’ll set up a voicemail box for you, when you go out she’ll walk you through everything, and—oh! I almost forgot! You’re not ready to start!”

No fucking kidding! What happened to I’m gonna teach you everything, kid?!

“We gotta come up with your name for the business cards. Let’s see now, Matt, Matté—”

“My name?”

“Your club name. I mean, some people use their real names, but I wouldn’t advise it, I reeeally wouldn’t. Oh God, people’ll never let you alone. You know? So let’s see now. Matt, we’ve got Matty-Matt, Mattias, Mattel…You know your name is very hard, you know, not easy at all for this, at all.” He glowered at Matt, suddenly suspicious, as if Matt were engineering this on purpose. “Matt. Matt. I know—Matthilda. Matthilda; it’ll be great! No no, everyone’ll think you’re a queen, there’s already two in that room, we want a little straight crowd mixing in there Friday…This is where it gets difficult, you know, this is where it takes,” manically tapping at his blotter with the stubby pen, “a lotta skill. Matt. Matt. Oh: I’ve got it, I’ve got it! Oh it’s fabulous. Fabulous. Magic—Matt. Isn’t it incredible? Magic Matt! Isn’t it fabulous?”

“Fabulous,” he heard himself say.

“All right.” Vic grabbed the phone, jabbed a few numbers, checked his nails. “Hello?” he barked into the phone. “Brett? Well, get him. Yes, it’s Vic.” Vic seemed to have forgotten him so thoroughly that Matt was up from the chair and halfway out the door before Vic’s eyes lit on him again. “Wait a second, wait a second, c’m’ere.” Vic threw a heavy black wallet onto the desk, began jamming his fingers around in it. Scornfully he tossed one, two, three, and then, after an infinitesimal pause, a fourth hundred-dollar bill onto the desk. He slapped down the wallet, snatched the bills up in his fist so that they crackled. “Here. Go buy yourself a decent pair of shoes. I told you, kid, don’t thank me.” He was waving Matt off. “Consider it a signing bonus,” Vic yelled as Matt inched through the door, the crackly bills burning in his right hand. “Oh, nothing.” Vic curled into the phone. “New promoter. Friday. That’s riight, Brett. You better watch your crowd. Heh heh. Well, you never know!”