3.

Yet when Jason received Matt Monday afternoon, in the gray-lit bedroom where the one window left open to clear out the smoke was letting in line after line of fat, placid raindrops, his manner could only be construed as tepid. Yes, tepid, as he opened the bag of oranges and bananas Matt presented him (quite thoughtfully: this was a boost for the little gremlin’s poor, serotonin-squeezed axons), and flung it on the pilled couch beside a stack of battered, damp magazines, and lit a smoke, and scratched his chin, and made such a pathetic attempt at smiling that Matt had to wonder—well, maybe the boy just doesn’t like us anymore? Simple as that?

But plug right on, soldier. Now, Jason, the other day, that club name, it got Matt thinking. I mean, why shouldn’t Jason pick up a few responsibilities around Cinema? In short, well, would Jason like it, or, rather, wouldn’t it, um, in fact be really awesome—for J-Force to join the staff? in some capacity? which they could figure out?

“Oh.” Interested. Jason combed up the hairs off his nape with a furtive hand.

“I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. There’s tons of things you’d be great at doing around the club. That is, if you’re interested…”

“But like what? I mean, I’m not,” now the corners of Jason’s mouth twisted up, ironic, “Magic Matt. No one picked me to be their protégé.”

Aha: score one for Sophie. “Oh no. The club would be lucky, I’m sure they’ll be really glad to have you.” Or, rather, maybe wouldn’t care too much, if the job proved small enough. “I mean, Vic’s always said he could use people with brains. I’ll just ask him.”

That notion seemed to ruffle Jason further. He stubbed out his half-finished smoke. “But I don’t even know—what could I possibly do?” His voice sounded a forlorn note in the fusty room.

“Well, I don’t know yet! That’s the thing. I don’t know every last, last role around the club. I just wanted to check in with you first, see if you were interested. I mean, there’s no point to asking him if you’re not! Right? But, hey! I think you’d be totally fabulous! At whatever there is. Eh?”

“Sure. Whatever.” Jason hungrily dug out another Newport. “Why not.”

“Can I bum one?” asked Matt, not that he wanted menthol but just for the extra convivial feeling…

“Help yourself.” Jason tossed the pack over to the bed.

All right, then. Not exactly the effect he’d intended—was a thank-you totally out of order here?—but good enough. By the time Matt got sick of the menthol, Jason had warmed sufficiently to give an account of the X party the other evening, how in the bathroom he’d stared at a candle flame for what felt like half an hour but turned out only to be five minutes, and have you ever really stared at a flame? I mean, really looked, and seen how it seemed to be dancing, to a kind of beat, only you couldn’t hear, though you almost, that was the thing, you almost could—“Whatever.” Shrugging. “That’s how it seemed.”

Matt bobbed his head empathetically. “I think I know what you mean.”

Jason smirked at Matt. “Really?” Shrewd.

“I think so.” Matt blinked, smiling, dazed. “Sure. I can imagine it.”

Jason drew an arm over his head and leaned back, taking his time, an overfed he-odalisque in grimy white T. “So why don’t you X, Matt? Never? Like, the other night, when you said you and Sophie were going to…” He rolled his eyes at the implausibility of banal, decorous Matt daring such a bold venture. “Like you ever do that.”

“Well. I’ve told you! I get depressed, after. Evidently you don’t, don’t need those treats.” Matt gestured broadly at the black plastic deli bag. “But me—whew!”

“Right,” muttered Jason quietly, bending to ash his smoke. Then: “I’d like to X with you sometime, Matt.” He quickly lifted his head to fix Matt with a serious stare. “Just you and me. I think we could, could…” His warm brown eyes open, searching.

Aww. “I’d like that,” Matt agreed, curling up his arms across his chest eagerly. “Absolutely. We’ll find a good night.”

And that was that. A good deed done there, sir. What a devil is insecurity! All you needed was a little tête-à-tête, an I-Still-Like-You-Buddy, Of-Course-You-Are-Someone, to set things in order. “So I’ll talk to Vic, figure out some possibilities. I’ll call you later in the week.”

“Right, right,” Jason murmured from the couch, rueful, waving.

With a light mind, then, over the phone that evening Matt reported back to Sophie on the success of the stratagem. “He really seemed to loosen up by the end. He told me some stuff, about X-ing, actually wants me to do it with him one of these days—”

“Really?!” Sophie squealed. “What did you say?” Like it was the most scandalous part of the story.

“I said yes. Sure. What?”

“Mmm, and you’re going to?” Sophie chomped on something excitedly in the background.

“Who knows? The point is, I mean, I couldn’t say no.”

“I guess so.” A bowl clinked at counter. “But it’s a promise you can’t keep.”

“Well, I can. It’s not like I’m allergic. I mean, if it’s such a big deal.”

“Right. Well, good, if that’s how you feel. Hey, Matt. So tonight, I got the best film out of the library, this black-and-white gangster movie, French—”

He groaned.

“What?”

“I really have to work tonight. Can I, um, interest you in hitting a few bars?”

“Ahhhhhh: no. Not likely.”

“Sophie. Come on! I have to. It’s already Monday…”

“All ri-ight. Say hi to Liza for me.”

“Hey, now. It’s your own fault if you don’t want to come with me.”

“My fault! Oh-ho. It’s your fault for having this fucking, flunky-ass job that—”

“Not fault, fault. I just mean: I’d a hundred times rather be with you, my sweet.”

“Oh yeah?”

To convince, on a whim, on a blessed inspiration transmitted from celestial radio waves straight into his voice box, he picked up the chorus of Hall and Oates’s seminal “Because your kiss, your kiss, is what I miss—”

“Goodbye!”

“When I turn out the li-ght…”

And the last thing he heard before hang-up was a beautiful glass blossom of breaking laughter.

         

But just as Matt had opened up the matter of where to stick Jason came another snafu vis-à-vis staffing at Paradise. For when he stopped by Cinema close on five to pick up the week’s invites, who should be coming out the silver doors but two attractive African-American gentlemen in sports shirts and jeans—one of whom squealed and pinched his shoulder. “There you are!” he (she?) crowed, batting his eyelashes, considerably less effective a gesture now…Matt was still groping, trying to reassemble the familiar face out of his/her soft powdered cocoa-colored nose and mouth, when Coco—Carter—launched into the tale of how she was leaving, joining the staff of a club in Paris, “called Les Bains. Which means The Baths. So naturally, I said—”

“Girl, you said, count me in!” the other man shrilled.

“That’s right!” Carter dissolved in effervescent hysteria, a hand flapping over his chest as he jumped up and down. “Magic, actually I’m soooo glad I ran into you, because I wanted to tell you myself—”

“Huh, you wanted to tell him Good Bye,” said the other man. “See ya.”

“Oeur voir!” Coco yelled gaily, pumping her arms as she hotfooted it from the dais to the street. “Good luck, baby!” She blew air-kisses from her long brown fingers.

If only ropes were right for Jason! But his tubby buddy in gauche clothes, trying to seem imperious…Who could take such a VIP seriously?

The call came the following day, when Matt was still in ConWest lecture (which was on, not altogether inappositely, Machiavelli’s Prince): Miranda, letting him know Vic was sick but wanted to take a meeting at his place to deal with this replacing-Coco situation—at three, if Matt was free? Well! So Vic wanted his input on this issue. Why, yes, yes he was clear for three indeedy.

The address surprised: it was that nothing-zone of lower Fifties on the East Side, and from the front the building looked like an ordinary, haute-bourgeois brownstone, but inside—not remotely Biedermeier, a zigzagging set of minimalist stairways leading to open floors off from a large, high-ceilinged room artfully done up with futuristic plastic furniture. Very ’60s, like Sophie’s spaceship ashtray: a maroon couch set of modular curved separates dominated the room; behind it, pink plastic lamps sprouted candescent pearls atop a long black plastic sideboard; ten paces off, by the kitchen, hovered a globed aquarium in which, when Matt arrived, Vic, dressed in a black cashmere robe left open at the top and showing a fecund field of chest hair, along with a tiny, very tasteful silver crucifix, was dribbling bits of fish food.

“Magic, there you are,” Vic announced proudly. But he sounded sinus-stuffed, and the half-moons under his eyes looked dangerously bluish. From one robed arm he continued to shake, magisterial, translucent particles into the aquarium: rainbow-colored creatures wheeled through the water, their sinuous bodies disappearing and revealing themselves, practically half folded to open again like banners among the varieties of subaqueous rainforest. “Thanks for stopping by. I never get sick; for me this is, like, whoa. The world’s coming to an end.” Vic slammed the fish-food cylinder onto the kitchen bar, then walked to a framed kelly-green psychedelic Pop Art print on the far wall. As if in response to some question Matt had posed, Vic addressed this bit of art and then another, marching round the room; I bought this in 1979, oh yeah, I knew them all, Warhol, Keith Haring, Basquiat, I knew Basquiat when he was still a baby spraying graf-fiti on, like, sub-way trains, though the pictures themselves didn’t seem to be Warhol, Haring, or Basquiat, just lovely pieces of late-twentieth-century anonymity. Maybe upstairs? Then the room ended at a glass wall: beyond, Matt spied an extensive terraced garden, but Vic refused to even let him really look, let alone go out there. “My garden is a work of art,” he declared. “Now’s not the time; you’ll come back in a couple weeks.”

Oh? That sounded promising. Amiable. A good mood all round.

Vic blended himself a drink with pineapples someone had sent from Hawaii, then that reminded him of a whole load of lox that someone else had sent from Sweden, which he couldn’t try now, too sick, it would be a waste: and before the word Coco had even been floated, Matt, perched uncomfortably on one section of the extravagant couch, had completed a plate of Scandinavian lox with flatbread and heirloom tomatoes and cream cheese. These were from specialty markets he hadn’t heard of, yet Vic never tired of making astounded faces at each profession of ignorance as Matt was forced to mm and ah upon every luscious, singular gift of nature and cultivation that had been fussed over only to find a final resting place right here in his very own belly.

At last, Vic swooped down on a chair beside the couch. “So, Magic. How do you feel about your party?”

“Fine,” he squeaked. Play it safe. He coughed. “I feel fine.”

“There you are.” Vic’s arms folded awkwardly over the large chest. “See, someone like Carl or Brett, they would just be telling me how fantastic their party was, nothing like it in New York, filling me with bullshit, you know, because it’s not as if I don’t have eyes, it’s not as if I don’t know what’s going on in my own city!” Looking at him darkly as if that were indeed just what Matt had been claiming. Now Vic tilted his head sideways, amused. “You know, the other day, when Donatella Versace came to Paradise, you know what they said to me?”

Matt shook his head.

“Well, Brett, Brett just went ballistic. Blaming everyone from Lacey to Coco. Someone should have told her to go to the Champagne Lounge! Carl, you know how he is. By the time he got it in his thick skull, that guy is so stupid, you have no idea, it’s unbelievable, finally, he goes—” Vic sat higher in his chair and in Carl’s mincing British pronounced: “The commoners shouldn’t be talking to the upper clawses.” Now Vic collapsed, dislodging, as if from a noisemaker somewhere in his chair, a series of raucous, ferociously unsick guffaws.

Matt’s fingertips burned, his palms, his arms. “Ha-ha,” he gritted out finally. He mimed dabbing tears of mirth from his dry eyes. “So they’re funny. I didn’t know that!”

“Oh well. You have to understand. They get desperate. They’re like dogs. I mean, not like my Sasha or Mila; they’re like bulldogs. Doberman pinschers. You’re on their turf—they growl, they snap.⁵² There’s no thinking going on there. I mean, it works pretty well. They’ve been around, I don’t know, ten years. That takes work. You’re young.” A gently corrective smile on his face, Vic gazed at him, almost greedily, as if through his hazel eyes Vic could suck out whatever in Matt was young. Now he popped a hand over his face. He peeked over the top cheekily. “I almost forgot. Here’s what Brett said: When you go fabulous that fast, you’re finished.”

“Finished.” Oh, I. See. “Talk about finished. How about Carl’s Whitesnake hair.” Matt sniffed cruelly. Certainly knew that look from Jersey.

Vic chortled. “Oh, you’re terrible.” He scratched the stippled underside of his jaw. “The thing is, they do have a good crowd. Even if they bring me twenty people on a Friday night, if I get one Amber Valletta out of it, it’s worth ten of your college punks.” Vic raised his eyebrows significantly at Matt. “However,” he went on, looking off as if to ignore the rage that was taking over Matt’s face (please—hadn’t Vic specifically asked for college kids!!), “the fact of the matter is, you’re doing really, exceptionally well now. You’re really firing on all cylinders. And our PR people are, like, ecstatic about you, all the press you’ve been doing. As a result, taking all of this into consideration,” a sage Vic linked his fingers together around one robed knee, “I have decided to give you a raise. To a thousand a week. Which is, as I’m sure you know, exactly the same as Carl and Brett get,” he explained primly, flicking a bit of lint off the couch. “Besides, you’re at a new level now, you’re coming in on hiring. I mean, we have to think about your new ropes girl. I was thinking—what about your girlfriend?”

Sophie?

“I mean, she’s hot—what is she, a model?” Ah: Liza. “She seems to know everybody.” And how would Vic deduce this: was it all done with one-way mirrors, security cameras? That mysterious look-but-don’t-see thing; he had certainly never caught Vic anywhere in Paradise. “She’s young, she’s beautiful, she dresses,” Vic nodded defensively along with each criterion. “I think she’d be perfect. Fresh face. We could give her—three hundred a week.” Vic crossed his arms. Not a penny more.

“Oh. Well, the money wouldn’t matter to her…”

“An uptown girl, huh?” Vic disbursed a salacious wink.

“And she’s not—she isn’t my girlfriend. My girlfriend’s, um, Japanese.”

“Aha! I shoulda known! Nothing but the best!” The robe fell apart to reveal an expanse of leathery forestland as Vic reached over and batted Matt powerfully on the shoulder. “My girlfriend’s Korean. You know what they say—once you try sushi!”⁵³

Whatever that means. Matt nodded weakly.

“All right, Magic.” Vic got to his feet, drawing the robe around him and tightening the belt with a peevish tug. “Call your friend; she says yes, you call Miranda, get her on payroll, we can use her this week. Let me know by this evening, otherwise we’ll get one of our alternates, I’ve got people to call. All right? All right?” Vic had walked him over to the door; now he stooped suddenly at a thick paper bag. “Here you go. A little present. Dom. Some idiot gave it to me. Shows how well he knows me. I mean, what am I gonna do with this stuff? Just a waste.”

“You don’t…drink champagne?” Feeling moronic even as the words came out of his mouth.

“Magic.” Vic pursed his lips sarcastically. “Have you ever seen me drink? I mean, I’ll have a sip, if it’s really something special, but in this business, believe me, you just don’t, when you’ve been around awhile. And now that I’m sick, it’s just, ugh.” A phone began mewling from somewhere back in the apartment: Vic waved, more to shoo Matt out the door. “Right, Magic,” he mimed a phone, “call Miranda.” Then Vic hurried off, the robe floating around above his heels like a cape.

And would now be a good time to mention Jason? But—Vic’s busy, sick, probably not the best moment. Besides, shouldn’t we think this out first? Come up with a plan, present an appropriate position to Vic. She’s hot; she dresses: not exactly Jason’s skill set, that. Ugh, but what was? Matt clicked the door shut behind him and tripped down the four steps outside, swinging the bag of champagne under a leaden March sky.

         

The idea of Liza at the ropes was taken as different strokes by different folks. Liza herself, when he phoned just after six, let out a low caterwaul of pure delight. Vic Spector wanted her, really, he knew of her existence, had seen her? (Flattered, obviously, and indeed, as he himself well remembered, it was like having someone pick you from some celestial look-book in which you never knew yourself enrolled.) Really, but Vic Spector thought she could do the job? Well, absolutely! Matt encouraged her, thinking: hardly brain surgery. Merely check to make sure whoever came by had hands stamped by Lacey or Angel; if not, use her best judgment (on whether hot or not, dressed versus dull). “Maybe I’ll wear my satin sleeveless shirt, you know, with the ruffles on the side? And, wow, you haven’t seen these, I just got the most awesome blue suede boots, I’ll show you tonight at Ciel Rouge…or maybe red, this backless Alexander McQueen thing?” Matt left her flicking hangers relentlessly through the closet of her mind. “Thank you,” she murmured after they set up a plan to meet at nine. “You’re welcome,” he said, a bit awkward. Because in truth: he was queerly disengaged from the whole matter, certainly hadn’t been seeking out a way to signal her with favor.

That was the angle he tried to spotlight on the phone with Sophie immediately after. He shied away from any hot-button terms that might reveal he understood that what it really meant when she stuttered a jumpy laugh, said Liza! and Wow, I never would have thought she would bea…good person for that, was: my Sophie, afflicted by a little jealousy, aren’t you. “I’m not at all sure about it either,” he agreed, assuming a worried voice, “but Vic just basically ordered me—he has such weird ideas sometimes.”

“Totally. I practically have déjà vu. Weren’t we last saying all this about his hiring you?”

“Well, I’ve turned out pretty, pretty well.” He stiffened before he realized: she’s pushing your buttons out of insecure pique; just hold on till the tantrum blows off. “Anyway, we can just try Liza, see how it works out…and, I mean, I knew you would never want—”

“Oh, never,” she broke in. “You got that right. Ugh. Actually, I was thinking. Um, how would you feel if I didn’t go to Paradise this week?”

“Really?” Now that was taking it too far.

Her voice softened. “It’s just, then I could leave for break a whole day earlier and get to Chicago Friday—because, the thing is, my aunt’s driving up on Saturday and I could be there before…I mean, I’ll come if you want me to. Totally. I just, I know my family will be really stressed out, picking me up.”

And then, to bundle the whole conversation up into a little unhappy ball that could be hurled away, he relented.⁵⁴ “I’m going to miss you,” he averred. “It’s going to seem so empty, so unParadisiacal!” Though: easier, probably. Yes, true. On a night with Liza debuting at the ropes, with that reporter from Interview, having to minister, to run back all the time to Sophie’s table and pep her up when she was feeling bored, tired, would maybe have been a little much. “But you should definitely do what you have to.”

“Thanks,” she said quietly. “Hey—did you ask Vic about Jason?”

“Well, he was sick. So. It didn’t seem like a good time. And I mean, shouldn’t I figure something out first? Like, what Jason’s suited to do?”

“I guess so.” She sighed. “He’s going to be pretty bummed out about Liza.”

“W-why? I mean, not like he’d be a good ropes person! He can’t expect that.”

“No, I know. But I’m just saying—his feelings are still going to be hurt.”

“Well, I’ll devise something for him soon. By Friday, let’s say.”

Afterward, Matt folded up the phone and fell back on the suggestible bed pillows. And why had he raised the possibility of working at Cinema with Jason without thinking it through first? God. Should he tell Jason in advance, somehow prepare him?

Oh, let’s just let it slide away in silence. Matt tossed the cell to a corner of the bed. Better not to foment an issue; just see Jason Friday, introduce the matter offhand. And after all by Friday we’ll have thought up something for him to do too? Done. Matt catapulted himself toward the shower—only an hour until Liza in red, or in cream, would be waiting for him at Ciel Rouge tapping a blue suede boot in the air with her customary show-impatience. Ropes girl. My God, she was practically in his employ. I mean, she was. Who would have thunk it, to see her gliding past him on the waxed hallway of Third North, first day of the world, a millennium ago! A blot of warm pulsed through his pelvis, stirring it faintly as a lake fern.

CHRONOLOGICAL GLOSS BY DR. HANS MANNHEIM

So perhaps you sit in Oklahoma, or Idaho, or Guardalavaca, and you are saying to yourself or to your loved ones, great God! This small child, this unskilled labourer Matthew Acciaccatura, earns $1,000 each week in base compensation for luring students to a venue where they may dance and drink and make use of recreational drugs, besides, now let me tell, he can count an additional $500 in revenue from sales of the drug named Ecstasy (for he profits $5 from each of the 90–100 pills sold at $25); also he receives bonus of $5 per body he draws; at this rate, he may make some $150,000 in the year 1996. Am I in a sane frame of mind? This is what you say. Yes, I appreciate your dismay. May I remind you that during this identical period, I, one academic doctor, lived with my wife (also academic doctor) in a “studio” of roughly 3.5 metres by 5 metres, not to count kitchen and bathroom, and, though a trained professional, could discover no employment?

So you dig for your railway schedules or telephone the long-distance bus lines such as Greyhound and Red & Tan. You are saying, I wish to partake of these riches as well. Well, you cannot. Why, you say? So the child Matthew is talkative and possesses expensive clothing; why cannot I do the same? Because this world we discuss is gone.

Allow me, please, to rewind your timepieces once more. In 1996 we danced along to the merry “Macarena” and “No Diggity” and wept with The English Patient and Shine, “feel-good tearjerkers.” In 1996 elections were held in Bosnia, and the Taliban captured Afghanistan. TWA Flight 800 exploded. And, what concerns us very closely, in this era Mayor Rudolph Giuliani launched a “crusade” against New York night-clubs.

Please comprehend: in 1996 a night-club like Matthew’s could service 10,000 patrons in two weekend nights; over a year, New York would host approximately 25 million such patrons and gross an approximate $2.9 billion in admission and alcohol sales. In 1996 there existed a civilization at its height, led by youths such as Matthew and fueled by Ecstasy, which kept myriads dancing all the night, many of their veins racing with the additive methamphetamine. Let some anthropologist with access to a greater library than mine study how very widely this subculture was covered in the magazines and newspapers, how high songs with the electronic background and rapid beats of so-called techno rose on the musical charts. Or yourselves perform a search—it is so easy, in this present computerized era—upon the names Richie Rich, Suzanne Bartsch, Michael Alig, and you will locate the vibrant atmosphere in which Matthew operated. Dressed in tinfoils and large fairy costumes, or wearing minks costing tens of thousands of dollars, the inhabitants of this country went to large-scale nightclubs and stayed to dawn, then they attended after-parties and stayed through the afternoon, next they went home, they swapped the news of their entertainments, they went shopping for their subsequent ensembles, and were anxious in every way until that time once more approached to enter the dancing palaces.

It was a world. But then something changed: the “Quality of Life” brigades of Mayor Giuliani laid their chilling hand upon this bloom. Thus what I speak of, what you hear of in these pages, is as an Atlantis now.