12.

In the morning, the room was still there. Lit up brilliant now and with Sophie breathing, hair spread over the pillow beside him, which meant it had to be real.

The sheer absurdity of it abashed him, that he might be living in this jewel of a Manhattan town house. He collapsed back against the head-board’s solid wood. It was quite possible that his mother had never even been inside such a beautiful domicile her whole life. Matt tucked arms behind his head, like a millionaire on a raft in a swimming pool, umbrella drink to hand. A fresh breeze blew in the window opened last night to clear out the smoke; distantly he heard the stirring of cars, but in a soft blurred way, romantic, pleasant. No other noises: no human commerce, the sounds of people going out, those half-caught conversations that invaded and despoiled your mood.

Scratching his bare ass, he felt his way into the shower, groggy with lack of sleep and the weight of last night’s events, or dreams, or just the liquors’ residuals. He dressed, combed impassively in the mirror. Sophie was still sleeping in the sleek black river of her hair, which he wanted to climb into, close himself inside. Strange to see her there. Well, yes, that was it: they’d never slept together anywhere but her place. This would be a different era for the two of them. He might actually want to sleep in his “own room” at times; it would change things.

Last night he had, admittedly, ignored Jason’s and Sophie’s dismay at the arrival of Liza and Ryan, and then Liza’s Jeremy and Marco from the other evening, and Ryan’s friend Isaac to boot, so that even when Sophie followed Matt from the common room into his bathroom, where he was refilling a water glass, and hissed, How long are they going to stay? he’d merely asserted, Probably not too long, but done nothing to effect it. But surely that wasn’t disloyal? Ryan was his new suitemate; rude to ignore him. At least Jason seemed to have a nice time with Marco, certainly more than on their first meet at Liza’s, though God knows why, that sullen golem. But brightly Jason had asked, Did your gaydar pick up on… with a subtle toss of the eyes toward the hall, before skipping out the door to rejoin Marco for the walk back to the dorm. Yet his ladylove: who else had there been last night for her to play with? No wonder if she fell asleep before everyone went, splayed on his comforter, the black stocking legs all tangled up in her funny skirt.

Matt ripped three squares from a piece of paper and wrote I. Love. You. Attached them to the footboard under her toes so she would see them when she first woke. Then he kissed her and, armed with his new cell, headed out the door.

There was one errand he was itching for: to stop by, see Vic, mention the move. After all, between this cell phone and living alone—how much more ready, standing at attention could he be, for whatever professional mission Vic wished to lob his way? And besides…maybe just to find out, ahm, a hint how he’d done with Astral the other night?

He found Vic kneeling on the office floor holding strips of rare beef above his dogs, playful, shaking out their ears coquettishly as they reached up. “Heh heh,” said Vic, more to the slavering dogs than to Matt, “do you feed your dog Kobe?⁴⁶ I didn’t think so, I didn’t think so,” Vic brayed. “Here, c’mon, give it a try, give it a try.” Vic was shoving cold raw animal into Matt’s hand. “Sashaaaa…. So just hold it out—don’t be scared—just take it right by her…”

Teeth closed over the fleshy ball of Matt’s palm—“Aaaah!” Devil spawn! Did the monster draw blood? No, but Jesus Christ: look at those puncture marks.

Mouth open in what might be a smile, yellow-eyed Sasha fixed her manic glare on him while gamely bobbing her head.

“Now, you were scared.” Vic was scowling at Matt. “Sasha can sense that, she’s a very intelligent dog. They’re Australian sheep dogs, they breed ’em for that. People will tell you border collies are the smartest, but lemme tell you, my dogs—aren’t you, girls? Aren’t you just the smartest?” As Matt washed the wound in the little kitchen sink, he could still hear Vic crooning, “That’s Magic. Magic. He’s gonna run a room. What do you think, girls? Should we let him?”

The dogs swayed back and forth on the couch uncomfortably, faintly whimpering.

“Magic,” Vic was raising himself up heavily to his feet when Matt returned, “I’m glad you could make it; c’mon—step into my office.” Could make it? Though they had no appointment? Vic tucked himself excitedly behind the desk. “I have some very very good news for you. Are you ready for this? You’re gonna have your own party.” Puckering his lips, Vic deposited his chin on a palm. Then he opened his hands wide, as if acknowledging the obvious. “The Red Room—it’s all yours.”

“Are you serious?” His own room? To have and to hold, to shape and to form, whichever way he pleased?

“Marshall’s just not, you know, I’ll be honest with you, he’s just not cutting it anymore, you know?” Vic eyed Matt warily. Then a roguish smile broke out over his face. “Should I tell you? Last week—that whole Astral thing? It was a test. I wanted to see—c’mon,” he vociferated in patriotic tones, “I needed to know, for the sake of the club, if you could handle that kind of responsibility.” He cocked his head. “I had my eye on you the whole time. Did you guess?”

Spied on? “Ne-never.” Ah, exactly how whole is your whole, sir? And the bit with Jonathan, that little biz?

Vic tittered coyly. “I told you, kid, I’m everywhere, I see everything. You don’t see me, but I see you. Oh my God, it was hil-a-rious.” He passed his hand in front of his face in disbelief, peeked out cheekily. “Oh my God. But you did great. Getting them seated, champagne, getting them comfortable, whatever they need, see, that’s what stars expect from us. Making sure no one gets in their face, they can do whatever they want to, let down their hair a little. Right? Well, you did great. I didn’t even have to tell you what to do. Did I tell you? You’re a natural.”

Why don’t you just come out and say Ecstasy, if you mean Ecstasy? Just say it: You got Astral Ecstasy; good.

“Anyway. So congratulations. You know, this is a huge step for you. Unheard of for a kid your age. I must be crazy. Am I crazy?” He cackled to the ceiling. “I must be. I mean, even Sasha can tell you’re scared. You can’t do that,” he pleaded, suddenly solicitous and intimate. “A promoter can never show fear. Fear is what you wanna make other people feel. You got that?” Matt nodded slightly. “Well, don’t worry, kid, luckily people are a lot more stupid than my dogs. All right. Now, the invites for this week, they’re obviously print-ed, and the next week, unfor-tunately,” he shuddered in disgust, “we’ll have to get rid of ’em. I want you on for next Friday, which is what?”

“The sixteenth,” he croaked.

“Sixteenth of February, that’s what I thought. So,” Vic thrust a business card forward like a tiny stop sign, “this is Andy Wilton, our designer, okay, just tell him Vic said to call, you’re Magic Matt—he’ll know who you are. Do it immediately, soon as you leave here. You’re gonna have total control. Find a name for the party, an image, you’ll probably want to do the first two, three invites, get more of a jump on things than Marshall, but any extra, I wouldn’t advise it. You want to stay contemporary. The vibe of downtown, it’s always changing. It’s like what they say about the butterfly. You know that thing, the, the Butterfly Effect?” Vic catapulted himself back in the chair at Matt’s shake of the head. Then he crossed his arms, canny. “What do they teach you in college, anyway? This is why I didn’t need college. You learn more about the real world from me.” Vic jabbed the desk: real. “So, all right, okay…” But he trailed off, gazing beyond Matt dreamily. Suddenly his shoulders violently shrugged and a burst of mechanical laughter exploded from his chest: a frightful jack-in-the-box. “I just can’t believe you never heard it before—that’s all. I’m, like, disoriented.” But evidently the empathetic smile on Matt’s face was not enough. “Miran-da!” he rapped out in a reprimanding tone.

“Yah, Vic?” Her voice arrived an instant before she did, trim in an olive and burgundy knee-length dress.

“Tell Magic that thing about the butterfly. The Butterfly Effect,” Vic demanded.

“How a butterfly flapping its wings in Japan can start a tidal wave in New York?” she deadpanned, smart-alecky. When Vic threw up his hands she flounced away.

“You still don’t believe me!” Vic was incredulous. “Watch this. Adrian—Adrian! Is he there?”

“What, Vic, I’m in the middle of…” droned a voice from farther off.

“Whatever you’re doing, Adrian, is not important.” Vic rolled his eyes at Matt. “Get over here.”

Sound of trudging. Then Adrian appeared, in shades and a tailored shirt and pants, evidently post-party ravaged yet still gorgeous. “What?” he snuffled.

“Tell Magic how the Butterfly Effect works.”

Adrian scratched his temple. “You mean how like a butterfly, if it’s flying somewhere, like really far, can start like winds or like a hurricane…”

“That’s enough, Adrian, thank you.” Vic waved him away. “Ha! If Adrian, who doesn’t know anything—believe me, you must be the last person on earth,” he crowed.

“Wow,” remarked Matt, trying to fit an appropriate amount of startlement into the word. How tiring it must be to work in the office here.

“Anyway, the point is how all the little things together can be powerful. The vibe downtown is like that. It registers everything. The wind’s always changing. That’s what makes this profession so exciting.” Vic raised his arm out proudly, as if, having climbed a mountain, he was indicating the extent of his domain. “I wouldn’t trade it for anything. And I would know, I’ve done everything—you know, I’ve told you, right?”

“Oh, yes. You were a stockbroker,” Matt elaborated appreciatively.

“A broker?” Vic’s extended hand now flipped over in the air dismissively. “Kid, that’s not even—let’s see. You wanna hear? You ready? How ’bout I used to do protests with the SDS and the Black Panthers in Oakland? Then I was on a compound in Moroc-co for a couple of years, the seventies.” Vic ticked these off on his fingers, smirking at each. “Oh my God, I ran a punk store in London right near Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren’s, I started my own art gallery in the eighties here, I’m talking early, when it was still legit—” And just as he might have called the humble pinkie into service along with an implausible fifth adventure, Vic stopped. He slapped the desk and a giant smile absorbed his face till he seemed possessed, addled. “And this is it. This is the center of the world, I promise you,” Vic said huskily, as if he’d been waiting all his life to disclose this secret to Matt. “All righty, Magic.” He stood up and held open the door. “I’ll see you when I see you. Call Wilton.”

“Oh—Vic, I, I wanted to tell you; I got my cell phone and I, uh, moved. I have my own place. Now. I. Got it. So.”

“Would you believe this?” Vic punched the door, swerved his head out into the corridor as though looking for witnesses. “I love this kid! Always thinking ahead.”

If that’s what you prefer to call it! The dogs flew whining at the door just as Matt walked from the office. Fuck you, you twisted dogs, and fuck your whole fucked inbred species! I have my own party. Oh, it was too much. Was he giving off some strange new pheromone? The Dirk thing was blessed enough, and now this. Two new rooms!

He rang up Sophie and Jason on his new cell, but no one was home. So he bought a sixteen-ounce Diet Mountain Dew and, electrocuted by the caffeine, strode all down Eighth Avenue like an emperor at the head of his triumphal march. Regally he surveyed the cars fleeting past in bright colored waves. The sky was astonishing at this hour, blue-gray clouds in one mammoth blanket up to a dramatic line—after which was pure pale gold, so pale it was almost white but everywhere, without distinction, shining with odd irradiation. Right now were there people leaning out of office buildings above and around him, were there other people staring from hospital beds at that flag of grace, that pale gold immaterial fabric? And why should explorers sailing on the ocean not have seen such a thing and known it for paradise, not felt how if only they could scud the waves over to just past the cloud line they would enter that palpable grace? And why should unbelievers everywhere not have seen such a sky and known, without reasoning, with only a revolution in the coronary valves, that God exists, that anything else is deception?

Now the first seed spore of the idea began blooming inwardly, walking down Eighth, which turned into Hudson, which passed by a tiny baseball diamond where kids shrieked, whose sounds dissolved like bits of snow rising up from the earth into that sky. Paradise. The theme for the party. He would turn the hell world of Marshall’s Down Below into Paradise. A new decor, with a painted ceiling, spots of gold light. Then the name of Vic’s designer, Andy Wilton, turning over in his brain like a whirlpooling twig suddenly made him think: the Wilton what-was-that? Diptych? That English painting he loved so much in tenth-grade European History that he had paid three dollars for a color copy? With cobalt-cloaked angels bending their wings in a meek, elegant line around a slender maiden who was supposed to be Mary. As wonderful as any an image for the first invite. There in the room he would give everyone a feeling of earthly paradise, a haven where all fantasies became material, fabulously real. And wouldn’t it really be such a paradise for him? The ending point of struggle?

Matt didn’t leave the streets until darkness had shaken all its soot over the world and the enchantment of the luminous sky was blotted out to black.