Vega walked up to the bar, a huge, turn-of-the-century oaken affair which curved around from one room of the Grip into another in a shallow horseshoe. Noel joined him, envying his easy stride in the tight jeans, and wondering if it was off-hours. Loomis had said the Grip was busy all the time, but only a half dozen men were in the bar. One of these was a curly-haired, Hispanic-looking man who eyed them from the entrance.
“Hey, Miguel!” Vega teased loudly, going up to him, “what’s on your mind, eh, baby!”
Miguel stared at Noel with solid, almost dead eyes, then began talking low to Vega. Noel was spooked by the look. Could this be one of Mr. X’s hired assassins? Or was he merely interested in Noel? Either way, Noel didn’t like Miguel, and stayed at a distance from him.
A bartender appeared suddenly from the other room and came up to Noel. His look was a lot more obvious than Miguel’s; he pointed the tip of his tongue to one corner of his mouth, gazed slowly over the bar, up and down Noel’s body. “What can I get you?” he said with a slight indeterminate drawl.
Vega broke off his conversation long enough to turn around and say, “This is the guy I was telling you about. Noel Cummings. This here’s Rick Chaffee.”
Noel put a hand out; Chaffee hesitated, then took it in the open-banded, high-in-the-air peace shake of the sixties.
“I wondered why old Buddy talked you up so much,” he said, holding on to Noel’s hand. “Now I see.”
“Rick’s the manager,” Vega said offhandedly, then went into a small room off the side.
“Something to drink?” Chaffee offered, fixing a slow lizard stare upon Noel. Unlike Miguel’s stare, however, Chaffee’s was unmistakable. How many times had Noel seen it when men met women; the evaluation look, he called it—how good will she be in bed? What will she do? What can I do to make her hit the ceiling? Slowly, Noel withdrew his own hand, and glanced over the bottles on the back shelf of the bar.
“Beer’ll do.”
Chaffee got a can of Budweiser out of a barrel, punched it open on a screwed-down opener. “California, huh?”
“Frisco,” Noel said, trying to meet the look Chaffee had given him. Rick was about thirty years old, with long, lank dark hair, thin face, fine features, deep-set dark eyes. Scars in various places on his cheeks and forehead. A rough beard and mustache.
“Must be something in the water out there,” Chaffee said. He punched open a Bud for himself and leaned over the bar. “Need work, huh?” Without waiting for an answer, he asked, “You ever come in here before?”
“Just got in town.”
“I guess you don’t have to hang around bars much. You been pushing it much?”
For a second, Noel was confused, then he realized he was being asked if he were a prostitute. He fought down his sudden anger.
“No. Never did it.”
“You could,” Chaffee said. He tapped his long fingers on the bar, leaned closer, and said, “Tell me, would you rather work here or ball me? You can’t do both, you know. I’ve got ethics.”
He’d been waiting for his own reaction to the first proposition. This one was so good, Noel had to laugh. “Could I take a look around?”
“Sure. Look around. You’re too pretty for me, anyway. I’d rather have you pulling in business than have a few good fucks and lose you.”
“Then I can have the job?” Noel acted sincerely.
“You’re on a month’s probation. I’ll need you three nights a week. Eight o’clock to four in the morning. That’s when we close here. Not at three like California.”
“Two, out there,” Noel corrected, suddenly remembering the fact.
“Whatever,” Chaffee said, all business now. “You set up when you come in. We keep two reserves: open and closed. You have to get a key from me for that. Or ask. Count your register when you come in. Note it. Tips are split among everyone on the shift, usually two of us. Free drinks at your discretion. I assume you can mix anything?”
“Pretty much,” Noel lied. He’d have to get a bartenders’ manual and learn it by heart.
“We have three qualities of booze: house, brand, and top brand. Three prices. Always mix with the house unless someone asks for the others and is watching. No sex, no drugs at the bar. If you want to smoke or ball, go downstairs. Bud will show you the office downstairs. You get a half hour for dinner break. What you’re wearing looks fine. Don’t you have boots?”
“Yeah. But if I’m going to be on my feet all night…”
“Start tomorrow. Eight o’clock. You know the pay?”
“Buddy said…”
“It’s not much. That’s why you’ll have to hustle for tips. You shouldn’t have any trouble. I’ll work two nights’ shift with you for a while. Buddy’ll probably work with you on the other day. That’s Max at the door.”
Noel turned around in time to see a large, heavyset man with a nasty, distinctly Teutonic face, dressed in black leather from his boots to his visored motorcycle cap. He’d just come into the bar, looked around, smiled a broken-toothed grimace, and settled himself on a tall stool next to the entrance.
“You have any trouble at all, call Max. He’ll cream the guy. Eh, Max?” Chaffee lowered his voice. “He’s really a pussycat when you get to know him. But he likes to play rough, too.”
Max grunted loudly and, overhanging the stool on all sides, appeared to fall into an immediate sleep.
“Remember,” Chaffee warned, “you’ll be watched here. So no shit. Okay? Oh, and do us a favor? Don’t bring your personal life into the bar.”
Noel assured him he wouldn’t.
Business over for the minute, Chaffee smiled, and leaning over the bar ran a finger down the front of Noel’s chest, stopping only where the jeans began. Noel was so surprised he couldn’t help but flinch. “You’re going to regret not balling with me. Believe me, you’d bring out the best in me. I’d do things to you you’d never get over.”
“I thought you had ethics,” Noel said, sipping his beer and gingerly placing Chaffee’s hand back on the bar top.
“Tomorrow night at eight,” Chaffee repeated without anger, then turned to face a customer who’d just come into the bar.
Buddy came out of a doorway leading to two bathrooms, and to a stairway which, Noel supposed, led down to the office. He waited, but instead of coming over to Noel, Vega remained at the other end of the bar, talking with Miguel. Done serving his customer, Chaffee joined them.
Noel decided he’d made a good first impression and hadn’t overreacted to Chaffee’s overtures. He might as well take a look around before the place got crowded.
The second room was separated by a doorway, open on the barside. Smaller, darker, and quieter than the main room, it was dominated by a large pool table, with just enough side room for a player to stand back and take aim. A mirror a foot wide ran shoulder height along one wall of the room, opposite the bar. Below it, a wooden shelf was just deep enough and high enough to provide a precarious perch. There were no tables or chairs. Only a half dozen barstools.
Next to the second entrance was a huge oil Wurlitzer jukebox. And now Noel could make out several large multifaced speakers hung close to the ceiling, providing the sound. Sawdust was strewn on the wooden plank floors, the whole place spotlighted and pinspotted from a track system above the bar. The walls were painted a deep brown. It looked modest but expensive, he thought. With Redfern speakers like that, the system itself might cost five thousand dollars. Yet it all looked casual, offhand, nothing special. Were other gay bars this way? In this style? Or were Mr. X’s own tastes revealed here? A hint, a clue?
People were slowly coming into the bar, filtering into the second room, coming up to the jukebox. Noel remained near the pool table, trying to be both observant and inconspicuous.
He’d have to learn the argot and behavior patterns fast. Vega had been right. He’d have to keep his mouth shut, speak offhand, obliquely for a while to disarm suspicion. Until he could convince the men he was one of them, he’d have to be qu
iet. And careful.
If Chaffee and Vega were any indication, Noel would also have to be a great deal looser in his speech and manners. They talked to the point, bluntly, coloring their conversation with terms he was often unsure of. But their attitude—that was what was most surprising. He’d always associated homosexuality with feminine gestures and speech. But in here it was just the opposite: an extreme manliness, unruffled, almost frontiersman calm, as though all those Gary Cooper movies had come to life. Sure! That was it! The rough clothing, the swaggering walk, the drawling speech. They were acting out cowboy fantasies. How easy for him to copy! After all he was supposed to be from the West, wasn’t he?
“Something funny?”
Chaffee had come into the smaller room, was now leaning over the bar.
“Just remembering something,” Noel said, annoyed to be caught off his guard. He’d have to be more careful, damn it!
“Care to share it with me?”
It wasn’t a threat, or demand. Chaffee liked him, that much was already clear. He wasn’t the enemy. Or was he?
“It’s personal.”
“How’s your beer?”
“Fine. It get crowded in here?”
“Wall to wall.” Chaffee hesitated, then leaned a little closer over the bar. “Buddy said you knew your way around, but I get a different impression.”
Now Noel was on his guard. “Oh?”
“I think you’re pretty green. I’m not judging, mind you. I don’t give a fuck. But let Mother give you a little advice. You’re going to get guys coming in here who’ll tell you they’ll make you a model, a movie star, a pop star, anything. Listen to them nicely, refill their glasses a lot, even take presents from them. But don’t pay them any mind. Because once you do, you’ll be ground up into little bits by this scene, and some of the garbage around here. I’ve seen it happen to good-looking hayseeds often enough.”
“What about you?” Noel asked, trying to keep embarrassment from covering his face. “Haven’t you played with garbage?”
“A lot. But I’ve learned to keep my hands clean.” He nodded, then moved aside, speaking loudly to a man in the corner, “Hey, dude, you drinking or holding up the wall?”
A minute later, as he passed by, Noel said, “Thanks for the tip.”
Chaffee acted as though he hadn’t heard him.
Noel watched him serve the drink, then, as he watched Chaffee go into the other room, his eye was caught by something in the mirror hung high over the back of the bar. Two men he’d seen in the other room were now standing behind Noel, five or six feet apart, leaning against the wooden shelf. They seemed oblivious to each other, yet linked somehow, too. Staring at their reflections, Noel thought the one in the loose-fitting army fatigues must still be a boy, fifteen or sixteen years old. Sure enough, he held a can of 7-Up.
The two looked at each other briefly, then away. All very subtle, with no sign at all that they were aware of each other; until one changed his pose by a fraction—head back, cigarette lighted. The other shifted his own pose in equally minute reaction, sipping from the can in his hand, moving a leg; all very nonchalant.
It only took Noel a few minutes to realize that each movement was designed to signal an intention, a fear, a question; to attract or repel; an elaborate, silent mating dance.
Finally, the younger one turned to put his drink on the shelf. The other, a dark blond, turned his head to stare at the boy, shifting his own pose several times, signaling, Noel guessed, that he didn’t want the boy to go without him. The boy took a step toward him. They met, said something Noel couldn’t hear, then settled back against the shelf side by side. They talked quietly. The boy smiled. Their hands met in the brotherhood handclasp. Noel thought he heard names exchanged. Must remember to shake hands like that in the future, he reminded himself: Chaffee had done it, too.
Now the two were involved in a series of quick, intense questions and answers. Noel wished to hell he could overhear them, but the bar was too empty for him to move nearer. Suddenly, the boy shifted away from the wall, and the two of them left the room so fast Noel barely had a chance to see them slip out past Max at the door.
Noel gulped down the rest of his beer, unable to hide his excitement. He’d been here less than a half hour, and he’d actually witnessed a key social ritual of this society—a sexual pickup—from inception to consummation. First time out, and he’d struck pay dirt! If only he’d been able to hear what they’d said to each other! Loomis was right. He felt as though he’d parachuted into New Guinea and witnessed a once-a-century ceremony never before seen by a white man.
“I thought you were working tomorrow?” It was Vega, behind the bar.
“I am.”
“You must have something better to do than hang around here.”
“You’re kidding! It’s fascinating. Do you know what I just saw?”
“No and I don’t care. Get out of here. Come back tomorrow. Go!”
Vega turned away to wipe the bar top.
Noel fought down the urge to punch him in the face. Instead, he reached into his wallet, slapped a dollar onto the bar, and loudly said, “Another beer. And keep the change.”
Buddy glowered threateningly, but he got the beer. When he bent to reach it, Noel walked over to the Wurlitzer. The play button was taped over. He punched a half dozen selections at random.
The first song to come on had a long instrumental introduction with trumpet punctuations before a mellow black tenor sang, “I’m a free man. Yes. I am. A free man, baby. Yes. I am.”
Noel’s beer was open, waiting for him on the bar top. Vega and the dollar were gone.
6
Noel didn’t stay to finish the beer. Within minutes, the Grip filled up as though a crowded bus had stopped and unloaded all its passengers. Noel checked his watch. He and Buddy had come in at eight fifteen. It was now nine o’clock.
He’d made his point with Vega. If he stayed on it might constitute a challenge he wasn’t sure he could back up. Besides, with the bar so suddenly crowded, he felt less protected, more open to being forced into contact with possible enemies, spies, friends of Mr. X. Nor did it take long for him to see that the ordinary saloon mentality—lone men drinking silently or engaged in drunken conversation—didn’t hold true in the Grip. Instead, the place was filled with motion, many people talking, moving about from spot to spot, no doubt a lot of sexual hunting, too. The currents around him, though not always definable, were powerful.
Outside the bar, the night air was surprisingly warm, and he decided to walk to the subway. Turning the corner of West Street onto Christopher was like finding himself on a busy midtown thoroughfare in the middle of a business day. It seemed that hundreds of people were out, walking singly, in pairs, or groups of three or more, coming and going slowly on both sides of the street, leaning against parked cars, chatting, standing together at corners, talking and glancing at passersby. Traffic was heavy, with cars creeping along the curbs, slowing for the drivers to lean out and make conversation with pedestrians.
The street was garish, neon-lit from bars, pizza parlors, a transient hotel. And with the lights went the omnipresent beat of rock music, seeping onto the street from businesses, apartments with open windows, car stereos; from radios set on the high steps of a Catholic church where a dozen men sat, from tape decks that swung by as he passed their owners.
Noel walked the few blocks to Hudson Street feeling strange, disoriented. Men were everywhere, and hardly any women at all. Here, joints of grass were smoked as openly as cigarettes, passed hand to hand, even in front of policemen. Single men slinking against the walls as they approached him would chant out a monotonous litany: “Loose joints, coke, hash, LSD, speed.” Men cruising for sex everywhere, whether walking or sitting or standing still. Twice a man followed close behind Noel for a block or more, peripherally visible, trying to catch his attention, or saying something quiet and obscene, before turning away suddenly into a side street, or stopping and retreating in the directi
on he’d come from. A stocky, Spanish-looking man slightly younger than Noel hissed as he approached, then made animal cluckings behind Noel’s back. Two others in close-fitting jeans and denim jackets and body-slick T-shirts barely separated to let Noel through. “Did you get a look at that number!” he heard one say as they fell away. All the men seemed of a type—between twenty and forty years old, all similarly dressed in T-shirts, open-necked work shirts or flannel plaids, with bomber jackets. Some were in full leather costumes, complete with plaited chains hanging from the shoulders or wrapped around their visored hats; some even carried motorcycle helmets, though there were no bikes in sight.
A night town. A foreign, exotic land, not ten minutes on foot from the school where he taught. Noel felt like a zoologist who has just set eyes on the prairie where the animals he will be studying are heedlessly roaming. Consumed by his observations, he forgot his discomfort. He was surprised to be brought up short a minute later.
He’d crossed Hudson Street and gone a block or so. Men were more thickly congregated here, covering the sidewalk in front of a brightly lit bar and leaning against cars. Noel was threading through this languorous gauntlet when he turned to look into the jammed bar. His eye was caught by what seemed to be a very familiar face. He stopped, moving aside, angling for a better view amid all the motion inside. Then he saw the face again, saw it glance out the window at him, and almost dive back into the mob of bobbing heads. Wasn’t that…? Yes! But what was his name? Paul something or other: a bright student in Noel’s social deviance and criminal behavior class. But where had Paul gone so fast?
“You moving?” Noel heard a voice close behind him, and simultaneously felt two hands lightly grasp his buttocks. “Or are you waiting to get into something hot here on the sidewalk?”
Noel jumped away from the man’s hands, and stumbled forward, tripping over someone’s shoes.
“Don’t get so excited. Some people wouldn’t mind,” the man said.
Dazed, Noel caught himself and turned to let the tall, crew-cut blond go by with a lecherous wink. His face was older than his clothes or his voice suggested. Then Noel saw Paul again, this time coming out of the bar. It was him!
The Lure Page 7