The Lure

by Felice Picano

  “Maricón!” the smaller one shouted suddenly, spitting the word out with a mouthful of phlegm.

  The other one broke out of the hold he was in and attacked his friend, diving headfirst into his stomach. It was another few minutes before they were dragged apart by friends, one to a car, the other inside the bar to wash up.

  “Maricón!” the smaller one shouted outside the Grip as he rode by in someone’s Ford, sticking his finger up in the air in a fuck-you gesture.

  The lover was in the bar at the time. He leaned against the wall and began to sob quietly, his shoulders heaving, his head hidden. Suddenly he turned around, his face livid and contorted with hatred. “I’m going to eat that fucker’s heart!” he shouted, staring around the bar with wild eyes, then ran out.

  Everyone in the Grip was animated by the incident for the next half hour. Noel was especially agitated. The men’s fight had brought out all the hostility he’d been hiding against Buddy Vega. He realized with horror exactly how much harm they could do each other.

  All he would have to do was call Vega a maricón …

  10

  It was about ten o’clock the following night and Noel was revising the glossary of new words he’d picked up working at the Grip, so engrossed in it that when his phone rang twice he was halfway to picking it up before he stopped himself in midgesture. Sure enough, there was no third ring. He waited. It rang twice more, then stopped suddenly. Wasn’t that the Fisherman’s signal? He waited again, but the phone was silent, so he went back to work.

  He had more than seven pages, almost a hundred entries of words, their pronunciations, definitions, and usages. All dependent on the fact that they might be changed at any time—the argot being a living language. But all hundred words were real. Most of them totally unknown to anyone but the denizens of the gay world who used them. Even if he did nothing more on this project, Noel believed this glossary would be an important achievement. How you called something signified how you perceived it, how you related to it.

  Calling someone you slept with a “trick” or a “number” or a “lover” or a “friend”—all common, though different gradations, meant something. The same held for whether you called a close acquaintance a “brother” or a “sister”—generally a closer term. It fascinated Noel.

  The phone again. Signal complete. “Lure in,” Noel said. He hated the code name business and the spywork bullshit it came from.

  “That you?” It was Loomis.

  “You called, didn’t you?” Noel asked. His blood was pulsing like mad in the thumb holding the receiver. “Or was that a test?”

  “No test. You going to that party tonight?”

  “You said I should.”

  “Right. But be a little careful, Lure.”

  Now his blood was really racing. “Careful? How?”

  “Just try not to behave in too unusual a manner. Fit in a little more.”

  “What’s up?”

  “Nothing much. Maybe nothing at all. Just a few things I’ve heard. You’ve aroused some suspicions.”

  Shit! Noel thought. That’s all I need. “Like what?”

  “Nothing much. But just in case, I’m going to have someone cover you.”

  The Fisherman had never done that before. Now he was really jumpy. “Will I know who it is?” he asked, trying to keep calm.

  “No. Naturally not.”

  “Who’s suspicious?”

  “I’m not sure. But it’s someone connected with the Grip. Not one of the other employees. Maybe the silent partner. Our friend owns the place, even though his name isn’t on any of the papers.”

  “X you mean.”

  “Mister X,” Loomis corrected. “Yeah. I don’t know who it is. You notice anyone coming in to talk to Chaffee a little off-color?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Well, just be careful tonight, that’s all. It’s probably nothing.”

  Vega did it, Noel thought, as soon as he hung up the phone. Goddamn you, Buddy, are you working for Whisper or for X? Who else could it be, if not Vega?

  It certainly wasn’t Rick Chaffee, Noel concluded at midnight when he saw the manager of the bar. Noel had been invited for a pre–Window Wall get-together at Rick’s downtown loft, only a short walk from the disco club. The manager of the bar greeted him like a long-lost brother, and it was hard to believe that Rick wasn’t as sincerely pleased to have Noel join them as he professed.

  A half dozen other guests were sitting, talking, and smoking grass on the two low divans and the huge pillows that had been pulled up to a vast, rectangular, glass-topped coffee table that looked handcrafted. Among them were two couples Noel had seen in the bar, as well as Jimmy DiNadio in a rare shared evening with his lover, and a slender, heavily made up, and relatively attractive woman about twenty-five years old whom Noel immediately tagged a fag hag.

  “Glossary Number 67: Fag Hag,” he had written earlier that evening, “A female hanger-on of the gay scene. A heterosexual woman of any age, social status, and profession, who parties with, often lives with, sometimes (rarely) sleeps with, and usually becomes den mother and confidante to a loose group or family of gay men. She is usually unattractive, or pretty but overweight, generally afraid of men and sex, always lonely and usually riotously funny, believing her purpose in life is to make gay men happy.”

  This one’s name was Wendy, and she had a real Southern accent and eyes that were large, blue, and very hard. Noel took a place on the other side of the table from her, next to Jimmy DiNadio.

  “It’s a good thing I know Chaffee doesn’t fuck with the help,” Jimmy said, one hand on Noel’s shoulder as they faced each other. “Otherwise…mmm.” He uttered a warning sound and made a very Brooklyn Italian gesture with his open hand.

  “He didn’t even try,” Noel said.

  “Give me a break. He tried. I know him, huh? You getting off on this stuff?”

  Noel was in fact getting higher than he could recall ever being on the few tokes of marijuana he’d been smoking as though it were a cigarette. He offered the joint to Jimmy, who refused it.

  “Get loaded, man. Double your trouble, double your fun. Everyone at the Wall will be in a state. It’s why the energy is so high.”

  Introductions were made in the usual offhand manner, and Noel took a glass of white wine, listening to the beat of the dance music that thudded out of different corners of the room from tall speakers. Even the lighting was flickering, low. Soon everyone was talking a bit louder, gesturing more exaggeratedly.

  “Everyone off now?” Rick asked. “Jimmy? Wendy? How about you, Noel?”

  “I’m ripped,” Noel said.

  He wondered why Vega wasn’t here, and was about to ask why when Chaffee said, “Time for some nose candy!” lifting aloft a small translucent vial of white powder to a chorus of oohs and aahs. “Uncut,” Rick said, like a barker in a sideshow selling a patent medicine. “From the shady hillsides of ancient Peru! Grade A. From my favorite dealer, who is deeply in love with me.”

  Noel hesitated as the ritual of snorting cocaine began. But he couldn’t demur. Not when he recalled Loomis’s warning to do nothing to make himself different or unusual tonight. More grass was produced, and Wendy and two others began passing around assorted pills.

  “Let’s go!” Jimmy suddenly said. “I’m not going to wait on line all night in this condition.”

  Everyone agreed, but it was another twenty minutes before they got out of the loft and the huge storage elevator delivered them downstairs. Noel had to lean against the walls for support as the car suddenly stalled, then dropped a foot. Everyone but Jimmy and Rick gasped. Wendy struck Chaffee on the shoulder in annoyance. Noel lost his breath, and his vision swam before him.

  “Get over it,” Rick said, not unkindly. “It’s just a little trip. There’s going to be a great many more this witching night!”

  They fanned out, covering the entire empty tarred street.

  “We’re on comps!” Rick shouted. “My name g
ets you in if we’re separated.” He threw an arm over Noel’s shoulders and they walked a few feet behind the others. “Glad you came. No kidding.”

  “So am I,” Noel said.

  “How do you like Jimmy?”

  “He’s cute.”

  “That’s just the trouble. Too cute. If he didn’t have that ‘kiss me, please’ face, I’d’ve dropped him long ago. No shit!” He hugged Noel closer. “Tonight we’re going to find someone for you.”

  Noel managed what he was certain was a lopsided smile as a response.

  “If I had your looks, I’d be particular, too,” Rick went on. “No matter what other people said. But the Wall’s going to be carpeted with the absolute hottest of men tonight. You’ll have your pick.”

  The conversation was beginning to worry Noel. He hoped Rick would forget him and not do a matchmaking number he’d have to squirm out of later. Then he saw his opportunity.

  “What are other people saying?”

  “That you’re stuck up. That you think you’re too good for anyone. That you think you shit strawberry ice cream.”

  “Maybe I do,” Noel said lightly. But he felt awful. That was the second warning tonight.

  They had turned a corner. Suddenly there was traffic—taxicabs double-parked, dozens of sleek long limousines with drivers, crowds of noisy partygoers who filled the street in colorful, shifting groupings. This was the scene of the party. But Noel would have known it anyway.

  If it weren’t for the bottom story, the building would have looked like any of a score they had passed already: cast concrete, dull brick, unlighted windows, five stories high, nothing special. What was special, however, and what gave away the place’s name immediately was the bottom floor—composed of thousands of foot-square frosted glass blocks a foot deep, and illuminated from within somehow so that they glowed out onto the street and sidewalks. A wall of glass that curved around corners into deep-set entrances where people were already entering, jiggling tambourines, clacking sticks, shaking maracas. Overhead somewhere, scarcely audible, was music.

  Before Noel could think what it all reminded him of, he was swept up from behind by Rick, Jimmy, and the others and slid into the glass-walled corridors of the Window Wall. The floor graded up to a circular portal with glass doors etched with Art Deco silvering. The beat was stronger, the music closer.

  Rick gathered his guests at a silver ticket booth, like those in an old-fashioned cinema, greeted the employees by name, called out, “Eight with me.” Through that set of doors, the corridor curved left.

  “Coats everyone!” Jimmy commanded.

  They milled around in the corridor while he disappeared with their outerwear. Noel felt oddly relaxed but slightly dazed.

  “Nostrils!” Rick said, brandishing a tiny spoon of cocaine. “Now the other one. Fine.”

  On top of the grass—a mellow high like strong wine to Noel—the cocaine added a sudden alertness, a slight distancing effect. Not at all unpleasant, he decided, though rather subtle for such an expensive drug.

  He was being instructed to put the coat check in his wallet or some equally safe place.

  Grabbed by Jimmy on one side, Rick on the other, Noel felt himself propelled around another bend of glass-walled corridor into a huge, arched, mirrored entranceway. The music and lights struck him like an electric force.

  “Ooooh eeee! Let’s party!” someone shouted.

  Noel was half lifted off the floor, floated across carpeting past mirrors, hanging globes, mobiles, paintings hung on wires, statues on pedestals, all bathed in a constantly changing wash of lighting, and thrust into the middle of the swirling, chaotic dance.

  11

  In the twenties and thirties, the Window Wall had been one of Lower Broadway’s largest and most popular department stores. You entered through a half dozen incurving foyers into one of several small, circular lobbies that sloped to a mezzanine surrounding the huge four-story main floor. Escalators curved gently down into the central space from another, partially open level, two stories above.

  When it was renovated, the inside of the building was totally gutted except for the dozen circular pillars that tapered gracefully to the distant ceiling, now wrapped in Mylar for maximum reflection and refraction. Also retained from the original construction were all the curved-block-glass walls that had once surrounded offices, cosmetics counters, and rest rooms. Some of these were only waist-high, others a story tall, forming semicircular bars, or enclosing more than a score of living-room-sized lounge areas on the mezzanine level. The largest and most striking block-glass wall dominated the ground-floor dance area, jutting out ten feet above it like a medieval balcony, set with sliding windows usually kept open by the disc jockey and lighting engineer who worked their electronic magic from this booth.

  Up the long escalators was Mirror City, featuring French cuisine and staffed by a dozen chefs who had once worked in uptown restaurants with names found in society columns and the fancier guidebooks. Part of the restaurant was enclosed by the serpentine walls of glass blocks, part of it open, overhanging the dance floor, screened by opaque floor-to-ceiling baffles to subdue the music and partying below. Across the open area, opposite Mirror City, were more lounges, most of them dimly lighted for slide shows and feature movies. In one lounge, cabaret acts performed; another held a piano bar.

  The floor above was closed, except to employees, and consisted of offices and storage space, as did part of the floor beneath the dance area. Here were the huge bathroom lounges, decorated like the rest of Window Wall in Art Deco style, and equipped with showers, saunas, steam baths, and changing cubicles. Surrounding these were a half dozen smaller rooms, almost caves, where pornographic movies flickered on a wall and figures engaged in slow, almost silent sex on the sofas and pillows strewn across carpeted floors.

  This deep-pile carpeting was repeated in slightly varying shades everywhere in Window Wall, except the huge central dance area—a slightly raised hardwood floor. The carpeting was complemented by furniture in rich, soft fabrics: chairs, sofas, steel-and-glass coffee tables that might have come from a Park Avenue duplex. Hundreds of palm trees in ceramic tubs dotted the lounge areas, sometimes half circling small gardens with marble fountains and stands of exotic flowers. More flowers—huge, sensual, perfumy calla lilies—were set in tall vases, scattered randomly about the place. As were various contemporary sculptures, prints, graphics, watercolors. Two huge curved murals in the restaurant were signed by artists so prominent even Noel had heard of them. Mirrors were everywhere, in all sizes, reflecting the subtle, ever-changing colored lighting. The omnipresent glass-block walls were like disconnected sections of a labyrinth.

  The discotheque must have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to renovate and furnish, thousands per week just to keep in plants and fresh flowers.

  But even more astounding was the crowd Window Wall offered. Hundreds of men with sweat-glistening, shirtless torsos held each other tightly on the dance floor, grinding into each other’s bodies, whirling, stomping, shouting with animal pleasure. Gorgeous, long-legged women in scanty disco outfits—halter tops and sheer slacks—their arms around each other’s shoulders, or waists, stood together in doorways smoking marijuana, kissing deeply as their limbs slowly intertwined. White, black, and Latino straight couples, as at home as anyone else, grasped each other in a sensual connection by placing a finger in each other’s mouths, or hooked in a belt loop.

  The lights changed constantly, more slowly in the lounges, but intense, jabbing, frenetic around the dance area. Shadows. Half-glimpsed profiles. Silhouettes. Hands reaching out to stroke your cheek. Bodies sliding past so close you felt not only their touch but their heat. A caress at the crotch. A bump from behind which turned into a slow grind, then was gone. A swift, airy brush of lips on the nape from someone who faded into the crowd when you turned to look. A reptilian tongue flicking out of the mouth of a heavily cosmeticized woman close to your ear. The sudden grasp of your shoulder, and the instant apolo
gy as the muscular giant who’d done it realized you weren’t the person. His cornstalk hair matted with sweat, perspiration glittering on his pectorals, now pink, now crimson, now lavender as the lights shifted.

  And the beat, the constant, steady, relentless dance beat you could just lay back into and trip out with, slowly, slowly, effortlessly, until you weren’t even there anymore but off, off, tripping…

  “It’s the lights,” her voice said softly.

  Noel realized he’d been smelling roses.

  “The lights hypnotize. And the music, of course.”

  Her voice came from somewhere close by. He heard her hair swoosh and slowly opened his eyes.

  The shock of rose attar. A tumble of hair so black and glossy and thick you wanted to touch it to test its density. The caress of her voice once more.

  “The music, yes. And you, too, my darling, tonight.” The voice stopped, rising to a breathtaking caress, her accent soft as the Seine threading through the Rive Gauche.

  When he opened his eyes again, she was gone.

  Noel staggered to his feet, took a minute to get his balance, felt immediately better, looked around the lounge area to see who she was and where she’d gone. Unable to find her, he went over to the nearest bar.

  “Honnn-nneee! You look wasted!”

  It was that girl from Rick and Jimmy’s, whatever her name was, standing right near him, shaking and shimmying as though she had a tiny motor hidden away in her pelvis and couldn’t find the switch to turn it off. Behind her were Rick and Jimmy.

  “Glad you came?” Rick asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Noel said. He shook his head, trying to clear it. But he really felt a great deal better than he was letting on. He’d gotten over the peak of his drugs this evening and was slowly descending again, able to handle it.

  “Well, I’m sure,” Jimmy said. “You were on that dance floor for almost an hour without a break. We had to pull you off before you killed us from exhaustion.”