3.

Outside, the street wavered. Everything was fluctuating haze above the perfect firmness of these postcard invites clutched in his hand like a deckful of magic carpets. New York loved him: how could he ever have doubted it? Dark buildings leaned over his shoulders dreamily like maenads, red-lipped and flaming. Chill breeze off the river burrowed amorously in his collar, clutching at his nape, his chest. And all things were coated now, absolutely drunk with heavy orange late-afternoon autumn light—he, alone, went wading through bronze butterscotch walls. Oh impossible day! Was that really a building shining in the sun? Was that really a sky, that torn rag of cobalt? And—cars? How I love you, cars! He stretched out his hand toward the placid downtown stream of traffic. He touched his face, marble-cold from the breeze. Who are you stranger, you strange, strange boy? And what have you done with the me?

It just did not compute. Even after, courting pneumonia, walking the thirtyish blocks to Sophie’s, nothing, nothing was clear but the presence of club invite cards in his hand, the four bills burning in his breast pocket along with Vic’s business card, newly emblazoned with a signature: which meant Matt must have passed this test. Astonishing, since he had said merely a handful of words, and almost all of these parroted. But Vic Spector—it seemed he had extracted whatever information he needed here. As if Vic’s huge eyes did all the probing and discovering while the continuous stream of talk he discharged was really just to keep the specimen etherized, calm. Though you couldn’t tell what that needed information might be. I know what you want, and I know why. And yet, it was true—if there was ever somebody who was “hungry,” who would throw himself with total zeal toward learning and working for success here, who could keep an eye on a bottom line at all times, was that somebody not yours truly? Even Miranda’s tour, when lovely brunette Miranda with her conservative striped skirt and listening gray eyes had taken him over the club, saying what sorts inhabited which rooms, rockers in the Opium Den, the fashion crowd in the Champagne Lounge, while the mere plebes of street were consigned behind this nasty black curtain to an unremarkable large dance floor—wasn’t all that classifying very like his facebook rituals with Jason, when over little black-and-white pictures they would call out sailors, losts, normalcies? This he could do. This categorizing he was prepared for, from the earliest days, from sitting in Ms. Benowitz’s second grade compiling elaborate hierarchical charts—like some Paracelsus, like some medieval alchemist dreaming the ladderway up to gold. Who else was better equipped, mentally at least? His little black book, with the bars and restaurants all copied out, all categorized: o secret weapon in hiding, now will I wield you! And Dwight? Matt shivered, slotting the key to the lock of Sophie’s building: Ah, Dwight? How you like me now?

Thudding up the shaking tiled stairs to her door, opening—instantly she rose from the kitchen table, swishing a cataract of black hair over his frozen cheek bent in for the fragmentary kiss. “How did it go?” she breathed. Then he set down the invites on the kitchen table: and she screamed, and he.

Twenty minutes later Jason fell into the room with a bottle of champagne and a pack of paper cups around which assorted cartoon Smurfs were repeating Happy Birthday. He dropped on his knees at Matt’s feet. “My hero.”

“You may rise, my knight.” Grinning, Matt rapped his knuckles lightly on Jason’s skull.

Now Jason was up, sweating, patting his pockets for a smoke, and squeezing Matt’s shoulder all at once. “This is so fucking crazy. Cinema. Motherfucking Cinema. This is so fucking crazy! We are so set for life!” he shrieked. He flopped on the third kitchen chair and began fanning himself with a plump hand.

It was impossible to explain. Yet Matt tried, yammering about the labyrinthine passageways, about Vic, practically a troglodyte in his elegant suit with these obscenely mammoth eyes that walked all over one like octopus pods. Odd, no—everyone else who worked there was rather fantastic-looking. “Down, boy,” he counseled Jason, already bouncing salivarily in his chair.

“Well, it doesn’t seem weird to me.” Jason airily waved a cigarette. “That man is the money. Capital. He doesn’t need to be a pretty boy. He hires them. That’s what he’s got you for.”

Sophie cocked her head, staring at him; Jason stole glances between puffs on his Newport. Not entirely friendly. More as if Matt, a known quantity, had suddenly metamorphosed into someone else, a stranger they were trying to get to know. “Oops,” Matt floundered, abashed more than flattered. “What a blunder that is for them, then, eh? Can I steal one?” Deflecting; deferentially, he waved a Newport in the air. He pressed the lever of Sophie’s new table lighter: once, twice, three times, an obedient orange flame shot out from the torch of the pewter Diana arrested in mid-stride, her metal toga daringly aslant. Their look: it was like that time post-Jason’s birthday, after he had chatted up the gorgeous model waitress and they had treated him with kid gloves, a kind of sad perplexity and reverence. He inhaled. Instantly he cracked a smile, remembering. “But wait. Vic Spector only wants me for my mind. He said so. That I could keep an eye on the bottom line. That I could be strategic and not have fun. That’s why he hired me.” He nodded deeply, triumphantly.

“Ha,” Jason snorted. “Got you pegged already. Matt knows exactly how to be paranoid and not have fun.” He smiled weakly at Sophie.

“But what do you do? Actually?” Sophie’s brow was creased.

“It’s knotty.” Matt put his fingers tip to tip like a Patton. After the room tour, Miranda had walked them back to the main office and sat them in swivel chairs before a desk, handed him a clipboard with handwritten lists attached. Different promoters handled each of the different scenes. You wrote out names of people you invited, some totally “comped,” some to pay reduced admission, in this case ten bucks, half the general cover. For each comped person you received two dollars, for each reduced, five. On the lists Miranda paged through for him, there were circled fractions, comp over reduced, 13/45, 26/78; one list, with XAVIER in red caps at the top, boasted a dismal 7/14. Then Miranda counted out two hundred postcards, apparently “invites” to Down Below, the event every Friday run by Marshall in the downstairs Red Room: the glossy front bore a picture of a pale man with long stringy hair dressed in a Catholic-schoolgirl kilt, holding a mannequin dressed exactly the same. MEET YOUR DOUBLE IN THE RED ROOM THIS FRIDAY NIGHT, the caption read in white Goth print. These were to be marked with his initials and distributed to whomsoever he chose over the next four days. Some should be passed to cool-looking people on the street, others at bars and clubs, up to his discretion; anyone who brought one in on Friday automatically paid reduced. At the end of the night, the ropes girls would tally all those with his initials, write the number on his list. A check would be cut. Simple.

“Simple?” echoed Sophie, wrinkling her nose. “Sounds like a lot of work to me. Though I guess you do get paid more than work-study. If you had five over fifteen, that would be…eighty-five dollars. Which is pretty good, I guess. Though you do have to go out all the time, spend money, and you probably need a lot of new clothes, so—”

“Sophie. This is not a…a money thing. Don’t you know what this means? Don’t either of you know what’s happened? Here, let me show you something.” He emptied his breast pocket onto the table.

“Where did you get all that money from?” Sophie gaped as if it were stolen.

“It’s my signing bonus. It’s for new shoes. Shoes are very important.” Matt leaned back, sighing. “They tell you everything about a person. You know?”

Sophie arched an eyebrow, tilted her head to the chair back. “Mm.”

Jason peeked under the table. “Ha! Let me guess. West Village Fag? Is that what Vic Spector said? Did Matt ever tell you the story of how we first met?” He spun excitedly to Sophie.

“But this is what I’m talking about.” Now Matt held up the business card Miranda had retrieved from Vic at the end of their info session. TREAT THE BEARER LIKE ROYALTY, Vic had scrawled on the back side, along with a messy ballpoint VS.

“Holy shit,” said Jason, chastened.

“Huh,” said Sophie. She turned the card over, over again in her fingers. “Huh.”

“With that card,” Matt tapped the filter of a fresh smoke on the table, “supposedly I can get into any nightclub or bar in New York. For free. The VIP.” He lit and grinned, a maverick, daredevil grin. “Now do you see what I mean? My brother and sister,” balancing the cigarette in the ashtray, he held out his hands for theirs, “we have been lifted to a higher ground. To a higher mode of being. No longer shall we,” he squeezed, gazing ecstatically back and forth between Jason smiling giddily and Sophie rolling her eyes, but now coquettish-coy, “be mere plebeians in this city, in this school! And he who was lost has now been found. And he who was last shall now be first. Do you read me? Musketeers?” He stared into the black almonds of Sophie’s eyes and then into Jason’s melted M&Ms. “Right? One for all and all for one. Are you with me?”

“Okay,” said Sophie, at last blushing happily. “Right.”

“I’m in!” whooped Jason. “Are you crazy? Of course! Hot boys, here I come!”

“Good,” breathed Matt. “And now,” he knocked their clasped hands against the table, “what did we say last time?”

“Wasn’t it Olé?” Sophie wondered.

“I say mazel tov!” shouted Jason. Then he gasped. “Motherfucker! I forgot the champagne!” He jumped up from the table.

“You have broken the sacred ring!” called Matt dolefully.

“Shut up and get the cups, bitch!” shrieked Jason, as the foam dribbled over his fingers into the sink. “L’chaim!”

         

What he had was four days. Less by the morning: eighty-four hours, 5,040 minutes. Over a bowl of milky coffee at Sophie’s, while she padded back and forth getting progressively dressed, he marked the cards’ white underbellies with a special pen of hers, a sparkly silver gel: MM for Magic Matt. When Sophie finally pronounced herself ready, he tackled her to the bed and let her go again, oh, shining pink balloon, off to class, and then he was alone in the apartment: and just as suddenly was he finished with the stack. Time.

For two hours he circled aimlessly through the streets, discounting this one and that one, too old, too young, too fat, potentially violent, potentially homeless, probably non-English-speaking, and just too downright scarifying for a first trial. A pissy rain started to fall. In the bagel café at Father Demo Square he sat on a stool by the plate glass, watching the pigeons scatter and collect again like bits of trash. Stage fright. But what if he tried to write something out? He found a napkin clean of cream cheese and rubbed his pen against the white. Now what? Hello? Greetings? Ugh, my kingdom for a word, just one, just to crack wide the glacier of initiatory ice. Ciao? Ciao bella? Come come now, Matthew, you’re Magic now. What do you say?

What is cool?

What is inarguable, perfect cool?

He closed his eyes. Mick Jagger on a London street, young, raffish, his gawky ass swaying side to side, devil-may-care. James Dean, loose and delinquent, leaning against a hot rod on a suburban street in California, all black and luminous moon-color. Flapper girls in beaded wigs and men with pomaded hair in tuxes dancing with clicking heels to ragtime tunes, the Charleston with long black-clad arms swaying. Hey bearcat. Hmm? Oh: slang, flapper words, yes, from that paperback picked up at a yard sale, years ago; how did it go? Hey, baby vamp. Don’t be ridic. Getting tight. The white mouths of the bodies were opening and saying words from the bibliorum of his brain—an androgyne voice, a mind-voice—Bee’s knees, Enchanté—

He flashed open his eyes to the napkin and began writing.

Hey, baby vamp. How would you like to fox up a darby party at a joint called Cinema? Milk for the kitten—slipping the invite. Bam! It would do for the present; now for a male version. Hey, cowboy. Oh dear no. Flyboy was an aviator, though it sounded kind of distorted hip-hop. Matt tapped his teeth. How would you like to hoof it at…a little speakeasy…razzle-dazzle, this invite lets you. Yes: perhaps for the men, put the emphasis on power, what this will enable, rather than flattery. Well. We have a general idea here, enough to get the ball rolling.

He swept up his sesame seeds, swept himself out into the misting rain. Keeping keen barker-eyes peeled—come on, step right up, ladies, gents, to the Magic Show!

Not two blocks away, he saw:

A girl in tall boots, stamping beneath the broken-down marquee of the Waverly Theatre. An overcoat, retro; she had to be nineteen, twenty. Blond hair, streaked pink in front: she blew it, cruelly, up from her eyes. Maddeningly perfect in all aspects of age, dress, manner—and waiting, no less! Stationary! Ready! Now. Slip out a flat black card from your pocket pack: go speak as if you were made to loop this voice track.

She raised her shoulders, quizzical, as he stepped forward holding the card out before him as a sort of shield. “Hey, baby vamp,” he heard himself whine. “How would you like—a fox like yourself—to come to my little shindy this Friday night?” Could have been worse. She sniffed, noncommittal, wiped her nose, staring at the card, straining to read the writing upside down. “At Cinema,” he urged. “Um, have this card, kitten, I don’t bite.” Nice extra! He yawn-grinned, gazed at her from beneath slitted eyelids.

“Thanks,” she said. She reached for the card, flipped to scan the back. “Maybe. Thank you.” She nodded at him, dull and peaceful.

“Ciao,” he sighed, lifting, lucky improvise, two fingers in wave as he wafted past.

He wafted himself all the way down the next block before pumping his arms wildly in the chill wind. One!

Now he lifted the collar on his peacoat against this nuzzling fog, a private detective in the scummy quais of Paris; he let his feet wander, take him where they would. They took him, print by print, eastward to MacDougal, to a trendy Asian guy with horn-rimmed glasses and dark denim locking a Vespa to a parking meter. Hey, stranger, Matt began, a hopefully un-gay smile plastered to his lips. Got a mo’? The guy held his helmet, took the card, said, Thanks, man, cool: Matt floated south down the street, inwardly doing flips in the half-pipe of his heart. Next he hit a doe-eyed dear coming out of the Dean & DeLuca on Broadway with two steaming cappuccinos: the shameless hussy waist-pushed her purse forward as a gesture of in there and piped up, Two please—do you mind? A harder sell were two gay men in matching olive-green galoshes, who actually laughed when he said the word Cinema, but then—at the end—my, my: couldn’t stop themselves from wanting it. Why not? said one to the shrugging other. It could be a good time.

—Then out of nowhere, cojones²⁹ bestowed by God-knows-what, as they reached, Matt snatched back the card into air. “What do we say?” he sneered. “Mother may I?”

“Please?” they both begged.

“Candy for you and you.” He dealt, generous, and sauntered off.

Unbelievable! At Tompkins Square Park he walked right into a hornet’s nest of three punk girls with their massive, scabbed, mean-eyed dog: they took it. Two Rastafarians on a nearby bench, though insisting in lovely lilted Caribbean English, We got our own par-ty Friday nights, took it anyway and saluted, one mumbling, Cinema, as the other started singing the word in a reggae descant and he was walking backward several feet to salute too and answer their big, brilliant smiles—everyone, everywhere, they took it! Even fashionistas, in the spare steel runnels of SoHo—they scowled, looked jaded down, but they took it. Even scary grunge-style guys in hoodies at record stores in the East Village put down their vinyl and took it. Even—Mayday, how can you think of walking up so close and—skaters! Skaters at the Astor Cube held still their boards in one rough gloved hand, coughed gruffly, and took it! A magic amulet, the word: merely to say Cinema—and no longer nerd but arbiter of social state! This was like being made impervious to fire; he stuck his hand again and again in the flames to test his power.

Riding an escalator groundward at Barneys Downtown, where he’d been to piss posh, he mused, he probed. Yes, the invite protected from social fallout, but under its umbrella there was an undeniable something he was doing right. He was strategic, there was that, in his approach to the runway of their faces: after long years of sitting on rocks by the reservoir mulling things like why exactly did the cool kids tolerate Jeremy Reese, one couldn’t help but immediately see—this one is leader, this a sycophantish vizier, this a bitter quasi-refusé who will bite any hand that nears. Now how to manipulate the spiel felt fairly instinctual. For a leader, appeal to that we-are-men-and-women-of-the-world quality (perhaps starting by skimming a condescending eye about your humble surrounds); for a number two, stoke the lapdoggish desire of pleasing a better (emphasis on exclusivity, the currency of Cinema’s name: what—you mean to say you haven’t heard of this place?!!); if conditions forced a refusé, you aimed for a spirit of defiance, rebellious Guy-Fawkes the-revolution-is-now, and-this-is-step-number-one zeal (Yo man—direct address: direct eye contact: show no fear as you bolt right up to the person, tough). Starting school, he’d simply never had the mechanism in which to burn such dormant fuel. Though, true, then he had been looking for friends, a different matter altogether from these sixty-second pragmatic battles. And let us not be overmodest. There was clearly some je ne sais quoi to this speech: you could just see it in their faces. Time after time while he watched, their world-weary disaffection dissolved as they got caught off guard, oddly charmed. Well, why the surprise, cat eyes? Master Matt Acciaccatura is not your same old dead fish in the box.

Tired and happy like after a good cry, he walked over to Third North: the suite vacant, thank the Lord. He folded an armload of outfits into a bag to move to Sophie’s, at least through his first Cinema this Friday night. How small Third North, how quiet the halls! He felt huge as a grownup in the nursery at naptime: their little corkboards with intramural volleyball sheets, cutout construction paper and photos. They were probably jawing away about some kegger in a dorm room—while he was out joining all New York! I am gonna Make You Fabulous, Vic Spector had said. Well, and then he’d come back in this very hallway, rap on their doors, and laugh, laugh shattering glass.

He paused by Mary’s door. Dorks moving up in the world, Mary! We’ll get there eventually! I’m out there dinging a miraculous stroke for all loserkind! But if only there were something to do for her too. Well, she wouldn’t enjoy coming to Cinema. A girl like that: she probably had never taken a drink in her life, and can you imagine her dancing to that music? But what would she enjoy? He didn’t know thing one about her. He never heard her talking through the fire door, or playing music, or doing anything besides crying and whatever it was that made those soft clinking noises, probably shifting her desk drawers. If only he could just provide hope for her: your troubles will end, look at me! No one could have imagined mine would cease, and see! But how empty without some idea of how she could go about it. Maybe there was a good club for girls like her. Nocturnal Weepers Anonymous. Maybe Sophie would have heard of something, some feminine hobby circle. Yes, sometime when he had more leisure, he would finesse this, or try. He would absolutely make a move, ask Sophie’s advice, then make his approach.

Right now they had their work cut out for them. At the year’s start, he’d received one of those E-Z apply credit cards: now was the time to set his solvency afire. Matt collected Sophie from the Chan Library; hand in hand they walked south along Mercer, while he sipped at her throat and growled snippets of the speech into her slender ear.

She was in hysterics. “That’s not what you say!” She put a horrified hand to her mouth. “Oh my God,” she murmured. “Who would have thought.” Then she grabbed his arm with both hands, drew it near her, and with this tillered him down Spring: toward, at the very first store she chose, a pair of military-futuristic round-toe, calf-high, molded leather boots. $495.

“I think we found your shoes,” she whispered, standing awed beside him.

         

So Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Matt, skipping classes, scoured downtown, hitting marks with invites; late in the afternoon he met Sophie to walk through dressing rooms into impossible outfits, trying everything from glam-rocker shirts to draped Armani wool trousers; then, carrying packages over their arms, they returned to her pad, where he snacked on lightest things like shumai and miso (fasting for a last-minute edge of glamour) while boning up on downtown chitchat. Clippings from Paper, Brit mags like The Face, ID—DJs, hot house tracks, avant-garde designers, the venues of upcoming bands’ tours—he arranged in thematic piles on the coffee table, pressing their sundry informations between his mind’s tight pages.

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday at nineish, she kissed him luck (a big presentation in Ren Art on Friday, she must hit books), and Jason stepped in to aid with what was easily the most nerve-wracking of promoterly tasks: club distribution. The first night, halfway to Space, Matt halted on the sidewalk. “Tell me you brought your fake ID,” he implored Jason.

“Yes, yes.” Jason dragged him onward by the coat sleeve. “You only told me twelve times.”

Leaving the roaring bars and restaurants spread about upper West Broadway, they soon saw a crowd at a glass-fronted club. There was a square of red carpet surrounded by two stanchions, a woman standing scowling between these in a black leather coat with fur collar, and a very large black man in a parka sitting beside her on a stool. Matt pushed his way to the front, holding out Vic’s business card before him.

The woman laughed as she turned it over. “Vic. We love Vic here. You tell him Raven said hello. You do that?” She unclipped the rope and let Matt and Jason pass through, then shut it and her face to two pudgy blond girls just then edging up.

“Holy shit,” mouthed Jason, walking backward under the blue lights of a narrow corridor toward echoey music.

They beelined to what appeared to be the main bar. “Cosmo, please.” Bored.

“Same,” noted Jason, equally listless.

Opposite, red velvet banquettes rolled away in strange organic shapes: dotted before these were clear cubes lit inside with white lights. And around such cubes were beautiful people. Beautiful. As if formed out of golden plastic. One woman bent to light a smoke, her hair illuminated by the cube so every strand glowed separately blond, glossy, perfect. Her upper-arm curve looked delicate as an unfleshed bone. And so long—was she six feet tall? Where did they grow these people? Matt sniffed. “Decent crowd.”

“Adequate,” agreed Jason.

The crowd twisted into new shapes. Now and then a man, or almost always a man, approached to order a drink with utter sangfroid. Just so unutterably cool, these people, and all here together without any exception, like an independent country: Beautifulland.

“Well,” Matt said after his cigarette expired. Draining his cosmo. “I’m ready to go home. You?”

“Ha,” remarked Jason, grimacing.

“Actually, you know, we have accomplished something very important tonight. We’ve seen the scene, you know, sussed it out—gained some very valuable information.”

“Hello?! How many of those stupid things have you handed out today?”

Matt glared. “Listen. It’s harder in here.” He checked over his right shoulder. “First of all, you’re watching.”

Jason snorted. “That’s the least of your problems.” He dabbed at his mouth with a napkin.

“Thank you,” Matt articulated crisply. “Ever candid with me. So—you see. I’m out of my league in this place,” he hissed between clenched teeth.

“Matt,” Jason rolled his eyes. “Because I love you dearly, I’ll tell you this just once. If you go back home right now, I am never going to listen to you complain again about how shitty your life is. Vic Spector hired you for a reason. Now go out there,” Jason made a shooing motion toward the far side of the room, “and work your thing. Oh, look.” He pawed at Matt’s arm. “Behind you. Her?”

A stunning Asian girl in a tube top. With a bill pinned between fore and middle fingers: clearly waiting for the bartender. “Go, go!” hissed Jason. “Before she leaves!”

“Cool your heels, yippiekayay.” Matt shut his eyes. We do not know this girl. She does not go to NYU, does not know anyone from Tenafly. Okay? They’re all strangers.

He opened his eyes, curved around the men, slid in to her side. “Hey, bearcat.”

She pivoted her face on her palm toward him, blinking, inquisitive as a fish.

“I know it isn’t any of my beeswax, but how would a lovely mamselle like yourself like to join in a little shivaree at Cinema this Friday night?”

Who knew, sir, what the hell was being piped into the airducts of this city…. Matt walked through bodies back, barely aware of Jason’s awestruck “Were you flirting with her?” as he collapsed against the bar, held on to it for steadiness.

Because she took the invite. That night, every one he approached: they all did.

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Matt, head spinning with pink cosmopolitans and echoing with a whole night’s murmurs, threw off his pants and loped into bed with Sophie—all but woke her up, raining golden joy. This is it, Sophie. This is it. To think, he had run in circles around Dwight and the preps: why had he given up on real-world cool, the bars and restaurants written in his black book? For these people were the real deal, the cream of the crop of every social caste! And to be not just a spectator but part of it, a mover ’n’ shaker in the central secret life of the city of this time—as Scott Fitzgerald to Paris in the ’20s, Toulouse-Lautrec at the fin de siècle.

How you like me now, Taylor? How do you like your Rat?

The fact was: when he sidled up to spiel, the fashion crowd, the rock chicks at CBGBs, all stopped, then from his, this, lowly, once-dork hand—they took it. The whole maneuver became easy, an abracadabra he did night by day and day by night; he could practically do it in his sleep.

And then, suddenly, of the stack of invites: there were none. Friday at 3:13 P.M. It was a red-dreaded kid with a CCCP army parka and stovepipe pants outside Tower Records who sauntered away with his last one. Done. Matt leaned upon a parking meter, gazing off down Lafayette to Houston, where yellow taxis darted toward the Friday evening everyone, every working stiff or schoolkid in New York, was waiting for—that brief island of life that made it all worthwhile. He was cleaned out. His pocket was empty. In six or so hours, he would be at Cinema. Done. He began to walk, mechanical, down the street. Place your bets, gentlemen. Les jeux sont faits.