13.

The sun revolved on its wire. The moon too. There came a dread chill that sheeted your hands in glacial cold should you step outside a bar to take the air for a smoke: then, just as rapidly as it had arrived, the frigid tinge to the weather melted off, leaving in its stead a balmy atmosphere, an unseasonable season, so that when Matt—sodden by drink, he was napping until five on the evening of February 16—flashed open his eyes sudden as if some finger had pressed his button, what he smelled was a faraway and chimerical spring.

Let the wild rumpus begin.

For tonight scores of those kids across the city to whom he had dealt invites—at midnight in a crowded cocktail lounge, at eleven in a corridor of Judson Hall—all this last week were diving into bags or lifting magnets from refrigerators or feverishly looking around their pads for a postcard Lucas Cranach Adam and velvety Eve, a Master of Umbria luminous soap-bubblelike Eden, a Bosch Garden of Earthly Delights, upon the glorious gloss of whose verso one could read PARADISE and MAGIC MATT PRESENTS.

Now, at his directives, the Red Room was metamorphosed to heaven by tacked-on lapis panels radiant with halos above ardent angels, and underneath the star-pricked vaulted azure ceiling it hummed and buzzed with black-dressed drinkers and smokers and dancers and laughter! Betwixt the walls’ chiaroscuro arches framing open Mediterranean sky above ideal green fields, alongside the faux-marble bar where V-mouth glasses clinked, among the gilt-edged ivory couches heaped with sleek bodies, between the very notes of dancey, ambient music loosed by his brand-new DJ in place of Declan’s ’80s hit parade, Matt flew, air-kissing here and there, across the space—while the surprise of salary Miranda had just handed him thumped in an envelope nestled in his hot breast pocket. Who would have guessed the raise? Weekly base pay of seven hundred fifty smackers on the little white line of a check made out to you-know-who-yes-him: him, the center of the swirling Heliogabalan universe, so let us raise the names of praise, let us wrap our flesh in flame—

“Your kid just fucked up bigtime!” Jonathan twisted his shoulder violently backward, flinging Matt round. Barely a foot off, the stringy hair hung disheveled about Jonathan’s sweaty face, and his upper lip was curled. “Your fucking Jason just came screaming at me, ‘I wan’ some Ecstasy! I wan’ some Ecstasy!’ I mean, in front of people! You just can’t do that, eh, I mean, the club is cool, but c’mon!”

Dear: Jason must be trashed off his ass. And Xing again: didn’t he just? “I—I’m deeply sorry, Jonathan,” Matt stammered. “I’ll talk; it won’t happen again, I assure you.”

“That’s not good enough!” The lines of Jonathan’s mouth quivered in rage. Wow. Louche, laid-back Jonathan was utterly vanished: in his place, this spitting hydra. “You know, it’s really your fault!” He stabbed a long pasty finger at Matt’s chest.

Matt jumped ever so slightly: but no one behind him seemed to have noticed. “My fault?” he hissed. I mean, really. Enough is enough. “How’s that?”

“You gotta step up to the plate!” Jonathan practically yelled. “Look: look, eh, we probably should have had this conversation a long time ago. Before Marshall fucking—shit. Such a stupid thing for him to do, it just—it endangers everybody. Really, really stupid.” He checked over both his shoulders. “Whatever. Eh, I guess we shouldn’t talk about it, at least not until somebody finds him. All right?”

What on earth? Somebody needed to find Marshall? And what could possibly be endangering? Did Vic know about this hush-hush stuff? Vic must—though, Not cutting it, that’s all the info he’d been provided.⁴⁷ But Matt nodded as if in the know too.

Now Jonathan closed his eyes. When he opened them again they were less horror-movie. Still, there was something out of place about him now, vulnerable and off-kilter in the changed room, as if he were a bit of trash barely clinging on while the tide of Marshall’s skeevier era ebbed away. How long had he been here? How long had he known Coco enough to slip by her at the ropes, with an innocuous hand wave? Yes, that was the odd thing: as if in looking so innocuous, Jonathan actually stood out, the one shadow-spot in the room, the one auditioner that was not projecting but slinking across the stage. “Listen. Having your own party,” he started in a strained voice, “it comes with a lot of responsibility. I’m sure Vic told you.”

Matt nodded. Responsibility, yes.

“Well, what do think that means?” Lighting a smoke, Jonathan picked over the crowd with a worldly glance. “I mean, think.” He paused, looking Matt carefully in the eye. “What do you think, eh,” Jonathan said, “would happen to this room if there were no drugs? Or shitty drugs? Say someone comes here to party, and instead he gets some speedy crap? Eh? You think that person’s gonna come back?” He flitted his gaze over the crowd again and smiled cruelly. “I like what you’ve done with the space, Magic. And your new DJ—he’s pretty good.” He sighed, turning toward the bar. “It’s so tricky running a party. Especially at the beginning. You wouldn’t believe how fickle some people can be.” He shook his head consolingly—then stopped, dragged deeply on his cigarette, staring off into space stone-faced; chapter closed on all that.

In the vacuum after Jonathan stopped talking, Matt heard the noises of the crowd come from very far away, washing over him and blithely receding, like happy voices on an island he was trying to swim to: so lovable, so human, endearing; their link suddenly endangered. “No,” he said simply. Surely not.

Jonathan gave Matt a stagey smirk. “Think. Use your head. What do you think Vic hired you for?”⁴⁸

There was perhaps still that unanswered question about Astral and exactly what kind of “test” he had passed with such evident flying colors. There was now also this strangely incriminating incident with Marshall—why had Marshall been fired? Why hadn’t Vic wanted to explain it all plainly?

Jonathan waved at the bartender; Lucie popped a Heineken, coolly deposited it on the counter. Now he huddled over it, taking a couple of moderate sips, casual as any workingman enjoying a brewski after shift. “But it’s no big deal,” Jonathan noted to his bottle, whose label he was regarding like an interesting, intimate message. “I mean, luckily, luckily I’ve been working with Marshall for so long I already know most of your crowd, so they come to me directly. It’s just other people. And by the way, I should have told you, I don’t mind sharing the wealth. I play fair, that’s how I’ve always done it with Marshall, five bucks a head, if everything’s going well. So they’ll approach you, because it’s your room. They’ll ask who’s holding. And all you do is just screen: you make sure they’re cool. Then you just put us in contact, but discreetly. You know, like you did with, with that guy the other day. Eh? That was just fine. That was great.” He turned back to size Matt up, but tenderly, like the mother of some kid with skinned knees; can he go back to play? “Know what? I’m gonna give you five hits, for free. Eh? You just make sure that little shit gets one. ’Sides, if we’re going to do this right, you may as well have someone to sample. If you want, you know, to test. When I get new supply.” He grinned as he pressed Matt’s hand.

Finally. Someone to put it into plain English. For who has time for these ludicrous guessing games? Obviously Marshall had been doing this forever; perhaps Marshall was even supposed to have explained it to him but had been too zozzled all the time to do so. It really did make sense now. Whatever they want, you take care of them—precisely what Vic had said about Astral. Whatever: a mighty broad hint, you dodo. And maybe Marshall’s not cutting it for Vic had to do with this X stuff too: failing these responsibilities, letting events happen like what Jason just did; Marshall certainly had been way too cracked out to make a system like this run smoothly. Well, it was about time he’d had this little talking-to. How easy: probably Jason, if asked, would be a happy sampler, given the way he and Marco seemed to be snarfing X down these days like candy corn. The rest of it was merely bringing two ends together, supply-demand, just screen and point—then a little extra green-back in your wallet; at this rate, he was priming to be a young rajah. So later, when Timothy from Marc Jacobs and Yeoh-lee from Indochine came to ask, Where could we, he, gladly, knew exactly what to do with himself, at last.