“You sound pleased.”
“I am. I’m excited,” Noel admitted.
“Well, don’t get so excited that you drop your guard. You know what a vicious pervert you’re dealing with, don’t you?”
“I’ll be careful.”
“Remember, he only wants to take a look at you.”
“I know, I know.”
“Dress carefully. Wear something nice. Make a good impression.”
“You sound like my late wife did whenever I went for a job interview,” Noel said, laughing.
That seemed to sting Loomis. In a completely different tone of voice he said, “Remember, you won’t get any help from me where you’re going. I won’t be able to cover for you as I did the last time.”
Noel was still angry about being taken in by Little Larry. “That was some cover!”
“It got you out of trouble, didn’t it?”
“I wasn’t in any trouble. Just a downed-out queen on my back.”
“Well, it could have been worse.”
Noel was tiring of the lecture. “Don’t worry, Fish. It’ll work out all right.”
“Just be careful. Observe carefully. I don’t mean things like address and phone number; look at everything. I’m going to grill you about every detail of this dinner party,” he said. Then the phone went dead.
4
A middle-aged manservant let Noel and Rick into the foyer of the town house and ushered them over to two chromium-plated elevators. They were expected on the second floor, he said in a thick Scandinavian accent, then dissappeared into one of several doorways that dotted the long corridor until it opened out into a large space with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking a backyard garden lighted from the house.
Noel had the jitters—even with the five-milligram Valium he’d taken at Chaffee’s loft. His stomach felt as though insects were waging a territorial battle. Rick seemed quiet all the way uptown in the cab. Was he nervous, too? Or merely pondering his continued problems with Jimmy DiNadio? Hard to tell. Rick could just clam up suddenly and mope.
Told to observe, Noel observed that the elevator led to five floors plus a basement. When it opened on the second floor, people were already gathered. Tim Matthews, manager of Billy’s, brother bar to the Grip, was talking to someone Noel hadn’t met, gesturing wildly to make a point. He spotted them instantly.
“Look what Rick dragged in. Better get out of that elevator, kids, it’s programmed to shoot to the roof. You all know each other, don’t you?”
“Geoff Malchuck,” the tall, rangy, dark-haired man said, extending a hand to be shaken in the familiar peace salute.
“This,” Mathews said, “is the famous, the legendary, Noel Cummings.” A big, rawboned, round-faced, buck-toothed redhead, Tim Matthews was so unredeemably social as to merit the drag name “Marge” someone had laid on him years before.
“For once, word of mouth is right,” Malchuck said, holding on to Noel’s hand a little too long. Noel was used to this, and got out of it easily. “You ought to come by Clouds sometime. I’ll put your name on the comp list.” The offer was accompanied by the most obvious cruise. Ordinarily, Noel would say or do something to clear the air. But this was the enemy camp. He didn’t think he ought to go out of his way to make anyone dislike him too much, if it could at all be avoided.
“Everyone’s here now,” Tim said, leading Noel into the center of the huge room. It was two stories high, surrounded by balconies. Two were merely passageways, the others opened to rooms. Amid story-and-a-half-high trees in large planters were a dozen sections of brick leather seats and a long, curved, bronze coffee table. It reeked of money—crystal vases, Stellas and Ellworth Kellys on the walls. Long-stemmed birds of paradise everywhere. The same aesthetic as Window Wall, but brighter, finer, probably more expensive; naturally scaled down. Every detail said to Noel, “Mr. X lives here.”
Rick asked to use a telephone in the library: another skirmish was brewing with Jimmy, Noel guessed.
“Chaffee’s a bundle of laughs tonight,” Tim chuckled.
“Lover trouble,” Noel reported.
The living room was so large they had half crossed it before Noel was able to make out who was on the sofas.
“What do you think of it?” Geoff asked, as though he were the owner.
“A real dump,” Noel said. “Maintenance must be hell.”
He had come with the others to the coffee table and was accepting a glass of wine Tim offered when he saw the two people hidden from him until then. The glass almost slipped from his hands in surprise. One of them was a slightly balding, tall, thin man with a prominent nose and large calf eyes, introduced as Hal something or other. Noel didn’t catch it, he was too interested in the other person: the same beautiful European woman with her soft, luxurious accent and thick dark hair from that drugged night at Window Wall when he had left with Little Larry.
“Noel Cummings,” Tim said. “For those who don’t already know.”
Neither of them stood or indeed made any movement to greet him, but Noel felt himself suddenly the focal point of their eyes. He settled himself in one of the leather sofas, next to Malchuck, across from the woman… He didn’t smell her attar of roses tonight, but an almost imperceptible perfume of lilacs drifted across the coffee table from her.
Noel had returned to the disco club twice since that first time, to be seen and to see, he had told Loomis; in reality, both times he’d gone he’d hoped to see her again. Everywhere else he’d gone on the gay scene he’d expected to suddenly hear her voice thread through conversation and the omnipresent overlay of disco music, to see her lovely profile and dark eyes. It had never happened. Yet here she was, tonight of all times, and here, in Mr. X’s living room. It was the perfect distraction from his fears and insecurities. Better as a calmative than the Valium he’d taken. He couldn’t really believe anywhere she would be could be dangerous to him.
“What kind of name is Alana?” he asked her.
She shrugged and smiled a quick, tiny smile. “I don’t know.”
“Her parents wanted a boy. They already had the name chosen—Alain,” Tim said. “And when she came along, they had to make do.”
“You are always so mean to me,” she said, but sounded delighted with the explanation.
“I think it’s a lovely name,” Noel said. “Exotic.”
“Perfect,” she said. “I am exotic, too, no? I was born in the Orient. Hanoi. My father was with the consulate there.”
“Is that true?” Noel asked.
“Does it make a difference if it isn’t?” she said, and laughed again.
“You’re a model, aren’t you?” he tried another tack.
“A model,” Tim put in. “Honey, Alana is the hot model in the world.”
“They hang expensive clothing on me as though I were a coat hanger, then turn me this way and that for the camera,” she said. “I am like a mannequin in a store window. That’s all.”
Noel sensed she wasn’t being self-deprecating as much as trying to bring the reality of her job into focus. Before he could say anything, she asked:
“And what do you do, Noel?” She pronounced his name with two clear, long syllables, as no one else had ever pronounced it before. He liked the way it sounded.
“I’m a bartender.”
“Oh, how déclassé, ” and she laughed again, this time putting one hand to her mouth.
Noel found himself completely charmed.
Another couple came over to the sectionals: two men in their mid-thirties, dark-haired, dark-eyed, mustached, bearded, identical but for details of dress and features, obviously together.
“I’m bored playing Perle Mesta,” Tim said. “You all introduce yourselves. I’m going to find a husband. Anyone’s husband!”
“Cal Goldberg,” one of the men said. “Burt Johansen,” the other said, and both sat down opposite Noel, helping themselves to wine. Noel had heard both names before. Cal managed the Window Wall. Burt was his lover, a textile
designer with a large international market.
They took precedence over him with Alana, tossing names and gossip back and forth for a while before they settled back on the sofa, arms around each other, and began looking around the room.
Noel took the opportunity to ask Alana what she had against bartenders.
“There he is!” Cal said loudly, looking at someone behind Noel. “Burt was just asking where you might be.”
Alana also glanced behind Noel, with a look he was hard pressed to define. Doggedly, he went on talking to her. “We make good money. We’re out late at night, true, but…”
She wasn’t listening. She stood up and went behind the sofas, out of his sight, and then came around to the other side. With her now was the intense-eyed blond man she had been with at the Window Wall.
Cal and Burt moved over, and the couple sat facing Noel.
It was obvious she’d been waiting for the man, that they were together again. Both were expensively dressed in one-of-a-kind slacks and blouses in pale-colored soft fabrics—in contrast to the denims and cowboy shirts of the others. Noel tensed again immediately. He resented the intrusion, resented Alana sitting there, so evidently pleased to be there with him.
“I’m Eric,” the newcomer said to Noel, without a hint of friendliness in his voice. His eyes weren’t black as Noel had first thought, but a deep blue, almost purple, in this lighting. Strange eyes.
Noel said his name and both men sat back and sized each other up.
“I hear you’re doing real well at the Grip,” Cal Goldberg suddenly said. It took Noel a second to realize the question was directed at him. It was casually said. Too casual? Noel didn’t know whether he or the business was meant by the comment. Whether it was a pleasantry or a challenge.
“It’s a steady crowd,” he admitted.
“I heard it’s really gotten hot lately.”
“A little. Of course it’s nothing like the Wall.”
What were Eric and Alana doing at what Rick had called a company dinner? Everyone else here was obviously allied with the company. Were they? Where was Rick? Still on the phone? And Dorrance. “Marge” had said everyone was here. Did that mean Dorrance wasn’t going to show up?
“They pack ’em in all right,” Geoff was saying of the Window Wall. “What was your crowd last week? Two thousand?”
“Fifteen hundred,” Cal said. “We limit.”
Was Clouds not doing as well as the downtown club? Noel wondered. Or was this the usual internecine banter?
Every time he looked across the table, he saw Eric staring back. Once when Noel met his eyes, the other held his gaze for a long time before saying something to Alana too low for Noel to catch. It made him even more unsettled, but he had to control his annoyance, he had to. Not that he expected to be assassinated before dinner. Mr. X was too slick to do anything as stupid as that even with good cause. But because everyone in the room was a potential informer.
Rick suddenly appeared, in surprisingly good spirits. He’d probably had an argument with Jimmy. Rick was always in a better mood after a good fight.
Chaffee became the focal point of the room as he and then Cal and Burt, then Tim and Geoff and Hal, too, talked about the complexities of opening a club.
They shared experiences in hiring help, setting up schedules, dealing with construction crews, commiserating over plumbers and electricians, the inadequacies of DJs and lighting engineers.
Still no sign of Dorrance. If he didn’t show up, Noel’s nerves tonight would have been for nothing. Loomis would be philosophical. But the contact would still not be made. Noel knew how important it was that it be made—by him.
Eric seemed impatient, as though he, too, were waiting for Dorrance. Alana listened, refilled hers and Eric’s wineglasses, lighted joints of grass to pass around, and generally acted as hostess.
When she spoke, the low-toned, accented, rippling voice sent shivers through Noel. “Tell me, Rick. You are going to make this new club raunchy, like Le Pissoir?”
“Worse,” he said.
“Far worse,” a few of the others put in enthusiastically.
“If that is so, it will be very exciting,” she replied, her lovely dark eyes lighting up with mischief. “It will become very popular with the beau monde. If you want I will make certain they come. Claude. Dee Dee. Azia. Women will be allowed, yes?”
“You’re always welcome, Alana,” Rick said. “But except for special events, it will be only guys.”
“Why don’t you send a few of those numbers you’re always posing with?” Tim asked. “You know who I mean.”
“Oh, they will never come,” she declared. “They are all so uptight.”
“Some of them might,” Eric said. “Sometimes the prettier they are, the more they like to have their faces pushed in shit, no?”
There was no doubt the question was directed at Noel, a personal insult. He knew why, too, as a putdown in front of Alana. Nothing more. What had Miguel called Eric? One of the hottest sadists in the city? That might be so, but not at Noel’s expense. And not in front of Alana, either. Besides, all this might just be one of Mr. X’s tests for Noel. More than likely Eric was just a hanger-on of the group—tolerated for whatever reason. If Noel were to have any respect from the others in the future, he’d have to do something.
No one else said anything for a short, embarrassed time. Noel took up the challenge. “I understand you’re really into that scene?”
“You?”
“I don’t believe in one bag. Too limiting. Keeps the lid on personal growth and consciousness, no?”
He saw Alana’s hand go to Eric’s thigh, as if to restrain him. But Eric smiled as he answered. “I forgot you Californians are really into all that high consciousness crap.”
“It’s a lot easier to clean up than the other kind.”
“Not always. Your problem is you haven’t found anyone good enough to show the other side of sex, little buddy. If I thought you had half a mind, I might be persuaded to give you a lesson.”
The tension in the room was thick as smog.
Alana frowned, the others didn’t move, didn’t say a word Eric was plainly enjoying the exchange. And Noel—though he was beginning to feel he might have underestimated Eric’s status in the group—wasn’t complaining either. It was a relief from all that laid-back business he’d walked into, filled with possible snipping and digs he might not be aware of. A release, too, from the jitters. Besides, sadist or not, Eric was just another faggot. Noel wasn’t afraid of him. He couldn’t afford to be now.
“Somehow,” Noel said, deliberately slowly, “I seriously doubt that you could show me anything worth my time.”
“If a lady weren’t present, I’d give you a taste.”
“I wouldn’t think a small inconvenience like that would bother you,” Noel shot back.
“Eric,” Alana said in a small voice, “please. Stop.”
“Why? He loves it,” Eric said, eyeing Noel. “It’s probably the only way he can get off. Or can you get off anymore?”
“Not on you, I can’t.” Noel reached for his glass of wine.
Eric’s hand lashed out, grabbed Noel’s before he reached the glass, jerked it toward his mouth. Noel followed, pulled out of his seat and half across the table before he realized what was happening. The wine spilled, the glass rolled onto the carpet.
Without a word, Eric pulled Noel’s hand closer. Noel was balanced now and pulled back, a test of strength so wrenching that Noel lost. Eric put the thumb inside his mouth.
“Hey! Come on, you guys!” Tim said. Everyone sat up. Alana was crouching away from them.
Eric’s grip was like steel. He took the thumb out of his mouth long enough to say, “Sit down, ‘Marge’!” then hunkered down on the other end of the coffee table and inserted Noel’s thumb again, this time lightly biting its edges.
For an instant Noel was certain from the crazy glitter in Eric’s eyes that he would bite it off. Instead, Eric took the thumb
out again, looked at it, and with exaggerated relish began to suck on it as though it were a piece of candy. His eyes narrowed to slits, staring level across the table at Noel. Then Eric closed his eyes and released his grip. Noel slowly withdrew his thumb.
“Jesus!” Rick said next to him, but somehow miles away. “That was hot!”
Eric sat back on the sofa and laughed.
It was a few seconds more before Noel realized his hand was free. His heart thumped like a bongo drum. He stood up and fell back onto the sofa.
“Oooh eee,” “Marge” said, slapping his thigh. “That was sexy!”
All of them were suddenly laughing and chatting.
Alana gave Noel a napkin. He must have looked as baffled as he felt, because she began to wrap it around his thumb.
“I’m not hurt.”
That made Eric laugh again.
“Wipe it,” she commanded.
Noel did, still trying to figure out what had happened, why he felt so drained.
“I told you I’d give you a taste,” Eric said, standing up. “You’ll be back for more.”
He pulled Alana up to him.
“You can see how much I enjoyed it,” Eric said, holding the obvious erection through his pants. “How about you, little buddy?”
When Noel didn’t answer, Eric took Alana’s hand and held it there.
“I’m bored,” he said, wrapping his arms around her, forcing her closer. “Let’s go fuck.”
She didn’t protest. Noel knew it was all show, for him.
There was a tinkling from above.
“Dinner is served.”
Noel looked up. The servant was on the balcony, a sliding panel opened behind him to the dining room.
“Where’s Dorrance?” Geoff asked.
“He’ll be here in a minute,” Eric said. He and Alana were dancing a slow arching tango. Her head was thrown back, her liquid laughter entwining them.
“You coming up?” Rick asked Noel.
Something indefinable had happened; Noel wanted to puzzle it out longer. But he followed the others. At the top of the stairs, he heard Alana’s voice saying softly from the living room, “Thank you, darling.”
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