4.

In those three days before spring break, crocuses unfolded from the meager dust. Magnolias bloomed. One marvelous prematurely vernal evening—Wednesday, this was—sent everyone hanging out windows, reclining on stoops, reverberating the downtown streets with the noises of clicking shoes and late-night chatter floating free as dandelion seeds. And the one dark spot in all of this:

What To Do With Jason.

Oh, Matt tried. Bartender? No, he might as well help Jason into a busboy’s uniform as suggest a thing so beneath him. Office staff? Er, the little matter of daylight, responsibility, attention to detail. Then what? Security guard? Tech crew? Skills—why did so many jobs require actual skills! Did they need another person stationed outside the club…ah, please. Like Jason could represent the club’s image? And just imagine: Lacey and Angel—they’d rip him to ribbons. Sir, I think you’re just spinning your wheels.

—Well, it wasn’t exactly our fault! The boy has: a structural flaw. Lose some weight, you know? Hercules helps those who help trim their own waistlines first.

“But you’re not going to say that to Jason” was Sophie’s dry comment when they were spending a last fifteen minutes at her place before she took a shuttle for the airport.

“Of course not.” Nodding along fluently.

“Because that sounds pretty superficial and awful.” Her serious eyes scanned his.

He sighed. Picked a white fluff from her lashes. “It’s just the truth, though. Realism. Dry-eyed materialism. Nature, red in tooth and claw,” he babbled on, while she remained silent and grim. “You’re really to blame, you know.”

“Me?!” She blew up her bangs out of her face angrily. “Why?”

He was grinning, mischievous. “If I hadn’t mentioned it to him…”

“I was just—wakening you to your fucking senses! And you asked me!”

“Sh, sh, Sophie.” He lavished her neck, cheek with pecks. “I was just kidding!”

But the joke never took. And her goodbye kiss by the door smacked the faintest bit cold.

Now what? Stranded in the empty pad, Matt passed a dull forty minutes poking through some uninspired magazines and downing sesame snacks. Before Liza phoned and in conspiratorial tones revealed an urgent scheme: “Do you want to get facials?”

What?

“My treat.” Her voice breaking up, husky, on the ee of treat.

“Isn’t that sort of…ladies only?”

“Oh, Matt.” As if: how could he be such a shy egg, such a naïf? “My dad does it all the time.” A lambent pause. Then: “I won’t tell anyone if you don’t,” her breathy whisper loosed through the earpiece like smoke into Sophie’s studio.

         

There was this facial; there was the bottle of prosecco Matt drained afterward, curled on the couch with electric Lester, watching Liza walk out in at least twelve versions of outfit before she settled on a brown crinoline dress with spaghetti straps (real spring Prada, she let him know over a shoulder). And so, rubbed thus with rich unguents outside and in, as Matt lolled on the leather, lifting Lester scruffwise to stare into his sublime and omniscient green eyes—while outside the day went plunging from languorous spring evening into irrevocable black and dark—there seemed indeed no righter place to be than precisely here. All cares sculled far off, driftwood, in the darkness…so that even when Jason’s name came up on the cell-phone screen, Matt saw no reason why he shouldn’t press the green button to Accept. “Jason! Hello!”

“Hey, Matt.” Heavy breathing.

Oh, crap. “I wanted um, to call you—Vic’s been sick this week.” Jerking up hastily, Matt jammed the phone to his ear. “So I haven’t had a chance, didn’t seem like the right time. To ask. But as soon as he gets better—ow! Jesus Christ! Stop!” Lester had seized this moment to dig claws into his shoulder.

“Wh-where are you?” A discomfited chuckle.

“I’m at Liza’s. Helping her dress. Well, not like that, just the old what-to-wear.”

“Right. Yeah, I heard she’s the new Coco.”

Of course: Liza: Marco: Jason. Though wasn’t she on the outs with him these days? So: all cards were on the table. “Vic’s idea. I mean, Coco just quit suddenly, so it was a, a staffing emergency. I had to go over to his place—that’s how sick he is. And maybe something will open up for you, like this! Or we’ll just find something; let’s talk tonight—”

“Well, actually, that was why I’m calling you. I’m feeling not so good, I think I’m not going to come to Paradise.”

“No! Maybe it’ll—make you feel better? They say alcohol—”

No, he would stay in. No, he didn’t want any OJ or soup, thanks anyway, would sleep, try to take an early train to Scarsdale. Yes, he would say hi for Matt to his mom. Sounding calm and self-possessed, if a bit stuffed up, when he pledged, “You have a good break too.”

And: click. Well, that was easy! So much for Sophie, fantasizing all sorts of dire conclusions….

“Who was that?” Liza wondered, strolling on bare stilt legs back into the room. “Oh my God, Matt!” Slapping at the ripply hip of her dress. “You drank the whole thing?”

From its dark-wood coffee table, the bottle radiated a vacant green light into the dim sitting zone. “Er…whoops?”

“Dude, you mooch…” Sighing, she patiently headed back to a cabinet.

“Mooch…” Coming up behind her to lean against the threshold to the kitchen. A beautiful word. Moon and smooch. S-moo—

“Here, you do it.” Whirling on him, she pressed the fresh bottle to his hands. Her flushed underlip bit, her cold fingers brushing his, her atmosphere of smoke and a musky French-ish perfume suddenly veiling him in…before she mussed his hair and winked. “Be a gentleman.” And sashayed past him to fidget with a CD in the five-disc changer.

The music transformed into samba. The cork gave way, complaisant, in his palm. And when he eased into the spot she patted beside her on the couch, when he spilled the foam into vintage etched glasses, when Liza smiled at him, it was a smile tipped out of the corner of her mouth and eyes, then reached over to light his cigarette—flash of black polish and fluted marble—Matt thought: oh, it was impossible not to: this is the life. This is what it’s all about.

“So listen,” she yawned, one arm triangled atop the couch back, her white flesh dipping a hollow in its gleaming black pelt, “my birthday’s coming up. Three weeks from today, April fifth. Which is a Friday. And I was thinking—can I have a party?”

How easy to make her happy! She clapped her hands, holding them upright, stiff and straight, and let out the softest, hoarsest, most delicately restrained Yay. She wanted a birthday cake big enough for all comers, to pay for everyone’s hits of X that night all by herself. She wanted to wear a flapper’s beaded wig and a dress with tassels. And why not? Why couldn’t Jonathan sell a fat load in advance (at a discount, even? surely no kickback for me)? What had she asked of him, these last weeks, trucked hither and yon, aiding and abetting him from the goodness of her meretricious heart?

“It’s going to be the best party of all time! Yee-ow!” Liza vaulted her arms like an Olympic gymnast, bucking her torso in the direction of the far wall. But then—“Thank you,” she murmured, turning demurely toward him. And with her head tilted back, her eyes lowered beneath curled lashes, her gaze on him felt as if the shyest, most elusive unicorn crept up to you and at last laid its modest head right in your lap.

Spring break turned out to be boring. Spring break turned out to be mind-fissioningly, unutterably stultifyingly dull. A whole half semester’s worth of catch-up lay sterile on the shelves of his sturdy bookcase: but the will, alas, was lacking. And how could he ever have thought this would be a swell plan? I’ll just stay in the city. By myself. Go to a few museums; annihilate the overdue reading. Please! If the contest was between The Sexual Habits of Primates and staring vacantly at the ceiling, those swollen randy bonobos would come up short every time.

Plus, sans Sophie, where was the point in treating oneself to a savory crêpe at Le Gamin? Sans Liza, uncooperatively absconded till Friday into the wilds of Nantucket, did he really want to show up at the opening for the flagship store of a chichi leather-goods firm, stand aimless in the fern-shaded emporium among throngs of faintly familiar faces? No, truly: Matt stepped out from his cab, peered a moment through the plate glass, then turned on a heel to walk southward down Madison.

Though: “I’m getting so much done, Mom,” he swore over the phone after a dispiriting matinée of Contempt at Film Forum. Oh no, he really couldn’t afford to come out to New Jersey—I mean, he could, but, um, what sort of position would that put him in for the end of the semester?

“You mean you can’t bring your books here?”

“Well, but the thing is—it’s research, you know? So. I need to use the library. NYU has a really amazing library; I mean, all these documents, and microfilm—”

Microfilm did it. The magic pomp of technology swept her every time. “Oh yeah, I bet they don’t have that even at the Englewood Library—”

“—or at least not the same selection!”

“Gee. They work you too hard there,” she decided. Then: “I guess you’re almost done anyway. What do you have, a coupla months left?”

Right, right, something like that. And he vamoosed off the line before landing himself in a fresh pot of boiling water.⁵⁵ Christ! Surely he wasn’t going home this summer? He must stick that on his list of things to think toward.

As it happened, Sophie was full of all things summer when she and her new pageboy haircut returned on Sunday afternoon, having spent the stay in Chicago diligently dispatching applications for internships at emerging indie designers around the nation. Around the nation? “What do you mean?! You didn’t say that part on the phone. Where are these places?” he wanted to know.

“Chicago.” She shrugged. “San Francisco.” Musing over where in the kitchen to place the emerald-green artisanal blown-glass vase he had just presented her.

“You’re going to Chicago for the summer without telling me?”

“Matt! I’m telling you now. It’s a possibility, for a few weeks,” she commented, matter-of-fact, as she stepped back, hand on hip, to admire her vase on the window ledge. “And you know, it wouldn’t hurt for you to try applying for an internship either.” He rolled his eyes. “At least start thinking of your career path.” His fingers drummed at the side of the table. “I mean, it’s not like you’re going to be a promoter your whole life!” She glanced over at him, a clear, blameless expression on her face. “Right?”

Now, how many people did she know of who had been interviewed by Index at age eighteen? Was that anything to sneer at, say? Couldn’t she once be glad for him instead of twisting his accomplishments to seem like so much inconsequential crap? “Who knows? Have you ever met Brett and Carl?” he asked airily, though of course she hadn’t. “They’re, like, thirty-five. They seem to be leading a very nice life.”

“Thirty-five!” She rested the vase on a shelf above the sink. “You’re not going to do it at thirty-five.” Now she turned, serious. “Are you?”

“Maybe.”

“That would be very, very sad,” she muttered. Then she marched over and plonked the vase right back on the original window ledge. “I think it looks nice there,” she declared tersely.

That was the beginning of their tiff: which ended, like spring break—they finished off just as the minutes drained to midnight—with an urgent bout of X-rated make-up, rather spicier for that basis than their sessions of late. The one real event of his wearisome vacation.

And perhaps he had run to seed a bit over these humdrum, solitary days. For he didn’t quite have his thinking cap on when, a mere thirty-six hours after school began again, he discovered that word of his birthday favor to his new, evidently motormouth of a ropes girl was not without consequence. It began with a telephone call, on his cell, after ConWest lecture, Tuesday, at two.⁵⁶ “Heyyy,” a snazzy male voice said. “Is that Matt? Do I have Magic Matt?” An affable laugh at Matt’s morose yah. “I hope you don’t mind,” the voice continued, in a free and easy tone suggesting he was certain that Matt couldn’t, “Liza gave me your number. David Breck. We met, for just a moment, the other week at Peter Kent’s?”

David Breck. Matt squeezed against the wall, letting a rush of kids stream past in the corridor as he flipped through the mind’s Rolodex. Was it maybe that guy in the beige suit? Who’d come over and said good night to Peter at one point, Peter’s best friend from St. Paul’s? Hadn’t Liza described him as the son of a big Hollywood producer?

“I’m sorry we didn’t get a chance to talk more then,” the voice went on, smooth, genial. “But I was wondering if you had some time over the next couple of days…there’s an idea I was hoping you could help with.” No, definitely better not to discuss it over the phone. Oh, whenever Matt was free. Was that all right? It wouldn’t take up too much time. He would be really grateful, David Breck explained, though so self-assured that he sounded rather to be doing Matt a favor.

So mysterious and hush-hush. And evidently to my advantage, this idea, most definitely the intended vibe. Hmm. Well, I mean, obviously the guy was friends enough with Liza; and Peter, churlish to refuse him… “All right. Do you know Café Gitane, Mott Street?”

Matt waited to reach home before calling Liza, catching her in the middle of a nap. “Oh, did he call you?” she mused. But she had no idea why: David Breck had given her the same business about not discussing over the phone. “I’m sure it isn’t anything bad,” she claimed. “Peter likes you. And they’re, like, one person. Remember I told you that party was part of this thing, this, like, social club? Anyway, the thing is, it’s really David’s baby. I bet you anything it has to do with that. David’s super into it. He’s like obsess—” A delicate sneeze away from the phone. “Obsessed. I’m so sick, Matt,” she moaned. “I don’t know if I can come out tonight,” though, in the end, she decided that she would really like to see the inside of that new bar Caramel, grippe or no.

David Breck was already seated on the banquette when Matt threw open the door at Gitane and got his tall, elastic form up cheerfully, extending a hand for the shake. He let his other hand rest on the back of Matt’s a longish moment, smiling broadly, two winsome blots of blood glowing in the apples of his cheeks. “Thanks so much for meeting me.” He gestured to the chair. “Please sit down.”

So patrician. Please sit down. Hello, it’s a public place—which I picked! And as Matt bent over the menu, David’s manner continued to chafe: the “charming” way he bantered with the waitress, coaxing out a smile from her sullen face; how he generously twirled his fingers at Matt reading, indicating he would let Matt take his time, sensitively watching over the ordering process as if it were all happening under his auspices.

“Now, Matt,” David Breck began, serious, after the waitress scooted off. But then a brilliant smile split open his face. “Isn’t this place great? I’ve never been here before, thanks for the suggestion.” He lifted an eyebrow to commend Matt’s discerning taste. Jeez, how much gayer West Coast guys could seem. “Well, Matt. I wanted to talk to you on serious club business.” He leaned back against the wall, in his ivory turtleneck sweater all Handsome Young Man.

Serious club business. Like you know from serious club business, you fop.

The waitress brought their lattes; David lavished her with another screen-test smile, then crooked his bendy-straw of a body back toward Matt. So, how much did Matt know about their little club? I mean, it was nothing much, it was only that when he and Peter came to NYU, they were disappointed. By the social offerings. At Harvard, did Matt know, there were final clubs? Right, and at Princeton, eating clubs. At Yale, they had secret societies. At other schools frats, good frats, not these…David Breck searched the ceiling with a profound expression of disgust. Well, Matt knew what he meant, no doubt. And that was back when Peter’s parents first moved to Paris, so they had this perfect space, just uptown. Why not start their own club? David beamed at Matt in pure Eureka! A place where, every week, you could hang out, meet new people like yourself, as guests that members brought, for example. Like how he had met Matt! David’s hands shot up to signal how very fortuitous that meeting was. There were all those other advantages, like forming a network for later, but David shrugged these away. Though, it was true, how else could you get so connected to people who would be helpful after college…. David took a sip of latte, looking off into space as if drawn up entirely into the vast network he was building there. Then his gaze lit on Matt: it was just really too bad that they hadn’t run across each other earlier! Because this round was over, they were just doing initiations now; an apologetic smile. But next semester, as early as September, get in touch, and of course Matt should come along anytime with Liza as a guest…

Matt began to protest, to show how little he was interested in such a connection, please, when—what? “Liza’s in the club?”

David looked slyly embarrassed, as if out of modesty he hadn’t meant to show that ace in his hand. “She didn’t tell you? Last fall she joined us.” He failed to hide the beginnings of a designing smile by blowing on his mug. “She doesn’t come much anymore, though.” For a moment, David appeared off, blinking inappropriately, before he lathered on the whitewash of a fresh smile. “From what I understood, the other night, it seems as if maybe what she used to get with us she gets at your club these days.” David tilted his water glass deferentially at Matt. Touché.

Now this was all turning out awful, terribly sordid. Plainly David had some sort of poisonous crush on her. Jesus, I’m not stopping you! “Maybe it’s the nightclub setting,” Matt noted diplomatically. The slightest bit different—wouldn’t you say?

David began a rapid, overeager nodding. “Oh, absolutely. The other evening she was telling me everything about when she goes to Paradise. And that’s actually why I asked you to meet with me today. Because I had this idea.” It was Eureka all over again, David waving both hands by his head—Crazy, I know, but with the right studio, this project could really fly! “Matt.” David stared right at him with benevolent intensity. “I want to buy some Ecstasy for our initiation party.”

Lickety-split Matt swiveled 360, making sure no one was near. “I’m not a dealer,” he hissed across the table.

“Oh.” Calm. Undimmed. Folding his arms again. As if to say, Why not? Why aren’t you what I want you to be? So typical rich-kid. “But Liza said,” David paused, lips curled vaguely sinister, I’m smarter than you think, “that you always get the best—”

“Ssh,” Matt spat. The waitress was speeding by from the bathroom, but she didn’t glance over. “Yes, yes, but I am not—that.” Jesus!

“Sorry.” Stubborn, in an affronted voice, David went on: “Maybe I should explain. It’s very in-house, very discreet. April fourth. Just our initiates, and about ten core members of the club. I could even give you a list of names.”

“You’re not listening,” Matt singsang. I could just leave, stand up and flee—wait. Names. Remember, that night at Peter’s? Those two blondes? He cleared his throat. “Who are they? The…initiates?”

Yes, yes. In a tally of ten or so girls and guys, among whom Matt again distinguished Taylor Harrison and Walker Jones, was that other he’d overheard at Peter’s.

Of course. How could he have failed to connect the dots? But afterward the events of that evening, when he was so drunk and coked-up, had just seemed nothing touching reality. Well. So appropriate! So Dwight! Sneaking up the social ladder, insinuating himself like a rock climber…While we’ve been wrapped up in Paradise, he’s steadily ascending in this land of the limitless rich! God, how did he manage it? No pedigree, not the scion of a noble house: a hick, sweet Jesus, a hick from Buttfuck, Minnesota! And now: initiated!

—Or was he? Let’s see. How very badly did David Breck want this Ecstasy? Maybe we could stipulate, Let’s make a deal: you nix Dwight and you’ve got yourself a party. But no, no: what kind of revenge was that? So whiny, so weenie-like. Surely you can invent better. With or without X, Dwight’s joining, unless you…Nine days to come up with a stratagem. You’re a bright boy. “You know,” Matt breathed out, “the fourth, did you say? Well—I can’t promise. It’s not what I do, but as a favor…” Really, how hard could it be? Jonathan sells, you resell. “I’ll look into it. I think I might just manage it.”

“Excellent!” David laughed happily. “I know Peter will be thrilled. He was really excited by the idea. Everyone will be. Thank you!”

Of all things. Ecstasy. Coke, sure, but impossible to imagine X in that place, the chalky pills on the marble tabletops, raucous beats of house music quaking the frail golden sconces. And when they stumbled out, before those liveried doormen! I wonder if David knows what he’s signing this in-group up for. Now David was paying the check, handshaking, blabbing how thirty or so tabs (tabs! as if it were LSD) would be great, money no object: a dumb, officious aedile to the very last.

In the taxi, speeding westward along Houston, Matt emitted a little cackle, startling the driver into glancing round. Back in the room, he threw his coat at the chair, dove headfirst onto the bed. By all standards he was dancing o’er the green graves of the prepster mafia. Downtown was practically pelting him with invitations and presents: and, lifting a flute of champagne at a fashion-show after-party in a SoHo loft, climbing the spiral stair at a triplex penthouse in the Chelsea Hotel over a raucous magazine launch in progress, giving his name to the list girl of a cocktail thing at Cipriani’s Downtown to celebrate some record release, hadn’t he had occasion to reflect, Ah, me, apropos his success relative to the preps? Yes, by now he was nearly a household name at school, kids made up stories (that he was really the black-sheep son of an Italian count, was fornicating with Liv Tyler, was fabulously rich with villas at Ibiza, Majorca); indeed, he even intimidated—all around NYU kids got nervous, blushed, looked back to see if he’d noticed them, evidently wondering if he knew their names. He was unstoppable, he was a juggernaut, he was riding three horses at the forefront of the Golden Horde—

Yet there was still one kid to KO.

For almost two hours, like a miser about a pile of gold, Matt capered about the hearth rug, plotting revenge. There was planting the pills on Dwight, somehow calling the police: but certain to rebound on him and, anyway, far too grisly. Not expulsion, not criminal charges, just an embarrassment, some suffering, mayhap not getting into the club. But how? What action would they consider too much? Perhaps he could arrange for a massive breakage of some expensive thing, have the blame fall Dwightward? The dollhouse? But no, what a recreant he was to even consider ruining poor unknown Annabel’s toy. Ditto with insulting the servants in some shape; don’t drag other people’s misery into this. Or get Dwight to disobey some rule…Did they have any rules? But how foolish, how easily explained: and to have Dwight slip publicly through such a clumsy noose? Not a breach of protocol: something no one could talk his way out from, something incontrovertible as science.

Use that gray matter, can’t you? Or just think of the alternative, if you miss your chance here! Dwight beyond reach, fancy-free forever! Will you really pass him the wafer, will he really close his eyes as he joins in communion with them, by your hand?

—That’s it.

He couldn’t resist pouncing on the phone. “Jason,” Matt hissed when, miraculously, the boy answered! “Um, hello, how are you. I was wondering—that bad X. The Doves you sampled the other week. Do you still have a few?”

“Marco and I didn’t take any more, if that’s what you mean. After throwing up all night, ugh.” There came a wan laugh. “God, if that’s heroin, I am so never trying again.”

“That’s not my question,” Matt snapped. “Did you throw them out? Do you still have them?”

Ah, and he did, he did, he did.