Glamorous Disasters

by Eliot Schrefer

  It will be better, they agree, if they park the car somewhere out of sight from the club and walk the rest of the way.

  They arrive at Pangaea’s block at ten-thirty. The stretch of Lafayette Street that forms the club’s backdrop is wide and dark. Prestigious venues recline alongside the road like dozing royalty. Noah figured ten-thirty would be a good time to arrive—not so early as to identify them as newbies, but not so late that the crowds would grow massive enough to raise the level of the bouncers’ selectivity.

  There is no one in front of the club, however, besides the bouncer himself. Noah has misjudged; they are clearly too early. But now they have made their approach. There is no turning back.

  They have already agreed that Roberto will do the talking, since when Noah rehearsed saying, “Hi, we’re on the Velvet List,” in the car his voice cracked.

  “Hey, things hoppin’ yet?” Roberto asks the bouncer.

  The large white man in a collared shirt stands tall. “Are things what?”

  Roberto cracks his neck. “We’re early tonight, I know, but is there anyone inside?”

  “Are you on the list?”

  “On the list? Yeah. It’s Roberto. Noah.” Roberto gives the bouncer a weary look, as if to admonish him that every other club has memorized their names.

  The bouncer just gazes at them for a moment. Noah stares authoritatively into his eyes. “The list hasn’t arrived yet, it’s too early. But I’ll take your word for it, go ahead.”

  First strike: arriving at the club before the guest list.

  They approach the entrance. But there is not one door, but two. One is glass, rimmed in steel, with a flat piece of metal for a handle, like the door to a Wal-Mart. The other is textured, windowless, and made of bent tin. Which would be more likely? The first door is new and mundane, the second downtrodden and chic. Noah tries it.

  “You can go that way,” the bouncer says, “if you want to take out our trash. Use the other door.”

  Roberto looks at Noah sternly. Sweat dots his brow. He pushes on the glass door. It doesn’t give. Noah pulls instead and it swings open. He and Roberto hurry into the club.

  Another strike: attempting to enter through the service entrance.

  Pangaea, once a singular prehistoric mass of land, now signifies a trendy nightclub. Moreover, “Pangaea” has been boiled down to “Africa.” Crude wooden spears and shields line the wall, along with navigator maps, mounted animal heads, cave drawings, and any number of other props that might have come from a low-budget miniseries of Heart of Darkness. As if to remind patrons that this is not actually Africa, the owners have pinned elegant red swaths of silk to the ceiling that crisscross and float above the club like tangled sails. Oblong couches are carefully arranged beneath the fabric, and the floor is rimmed with votive candles. Drumbeats echo in the background.

  The décor puts Noah at unease. He’s galled at the underlying assumption that Africa is a modern representation of the past, that Africans form a link to the prehistoric world. And all of this in Manhattan! Look—you can escape to an exotic, savage, and beautiful place, and still drink Cosmopolitans!

  “This is awesome,” Roberto breathes.

  The air is chilly to compensate for the body heat of the crowds to come. Five men in business suits are the only patrons. They cluster at the bar, where three bartenders sit idly, two men in tight silk T-shirts and expensive pants, and a girl in a halter top. The businessmen chat with the halter top.

  “I’ll get us drinks,” Noah says, eager to give himself something to do.

  Roberto nods. “A vodka tonic.”

  Noah approaches the bar. The girl abandons her conversation with the businessmen and swoops over. She checks Noah out, pauses on the undone buttons of his shirt, the ripped sleeves, the shine of his hair. She nods. Apparently, on prehistoric continents Noah’s look would be acceptable; Noah has passed the hotness test. “What can I get for you?”

  “A vodka tonic and a Stella,” Noah says. After his night at Roberto’s rave, he has sworn off hard liquor.

  “I can give you the vodka tonic for free, but I’ll have to charge you for the beer.”

  Noah smiles. She’s giving him free drinks? Woo-hoo! “Make it two vodka tonics, then.”

  She prepares the drinks, and as she stoops to get ice Noah wonders what she has done to make her breasts disobey physics enough to stay inside the top. She slides the drinks over and winks. “There you go.”

  Noah tries to wink back, but since he hasn’t had recent occasion to wink it comes out as a hard blink. He tips her a couple of dollars and returns to Roberto, who has perched at a corner of the bar, staring about the room. Roberto takes his drink and sips. “Aren’t too many people here, huh?” he asks.

  Roberto is not making conversation, but is actually curious—Noah surmises he can’t see any of the candlelit club through his sunglasses.

  “No, not really…well, wait—what are those?”

  Three blond women have emerged from the back of the club. They float through the shadows, gamboling and giggling like fairies, wearing gossamer white dresses that manage to be both flimsy and tight-fitting. When they reach the bar they disperse, flitting among the men at the front. One girl, tall and with the nondescriptly perfect features of a woman in a catalogue, plants herself in front of Noah and Roberto. Her hand is instantly on Noah’s arm. He is dumbstruck—a model is flirting with him.

  “How are you boys tonight?”

  Roberto slides his sunglasses back against the broad planes of his face until they catch in his slick hair. “Doin’ fine. Is it going to be a hot scene tonight, or what?”

  The girl erupts into impressed laughter, as though Roberto has just spontaneously generated an Oscar Wilde aphorism. “I certainly hope so!” she says.

  “Awesome,” Roberto says, flashing a suave smile.

  The girl, still tittering, turns to Noah. Her hand has remained on his arm. Perhaps, Noah thinks, Roberto’s overpowering magnetism isn’t successful everywhere, and Noah will hold more appeal here. He straightens. “And what about the silent, mysterious one?” the girl asks. “Do you think it’s going to be a ‘hot scene’ tonight?”

  “I’d be fine with warm,” Noah says. He laughs deeply, trying to convince her that his statement has some profound meaning. She breaks into more peals of laughter. She seems more and more like an automaton, and suddenly Noah would happily leave Roberto to her.

  “You’re so serious-looking,” she says. Her arm has crept up to Noah’s elbow. “Isn’t he serious-looking?” she asks Roberto.

  “Yah,” Roberto says darkly.

  “Do you come here often?” the girl asks. It is as if she has memorized a dating manual.

  “No,” Noah says, gulping his drink. He inadvertently takes an ice cube into his mouth, and tries to swallow it surreptitiously. It won’t fit in his throat. He instead tries to talk around it. “This isn’t really my scene.”

  He aims to sound enigmatic, leaving it open that his “scene” might be Milan or Paris, not sitting in bed with a book. He coughs slightly. The ice cube rests somewhere at the base of his throat.

  “To tell you the truth,” the girl says—her eyes sparkle within her buttery tan face, and Noah is dumbstruck all over again by her physical perfection—“this isn’t really my scene either. Pangaea is so ’04.”

  Her arm has crept up again, hitched over Noah’s triceps. He isn’t naïve enough to suspect that there isn’t some ulterior motive to her flirting. Beautiful women don’t need to be aggressive. Noah wonders if she is hired by the club to serve as extra decoration, to add to its appeal. Or maybe she is an escort. He wonders how much she makes. They might be two highly paid hourly employees, she and he, both handed thousands of dollars just for being who they are and performing fairly mechanical duties. And even as Noah realizes he is being played, that the whole game is false and inorganic, he is transfixed by the woman’s beauty. He isn’t attracted to her, he tells himself. But the sheer fact that someone
so gorgeous is speaking with him renders him unable to do anything but use all his resources to keep her around; it is like being asked to dance by the prom queen…you simply don’t say no.

  “Would you like another drink?” she asks. Noah looks down at his tumbler and is startled to see it empty. He also distantly notices that Roberto is gone.

  “I’d love another drink.” Noah starts toward the bar. “What can I get you?”

  “Oh no, I’ll get it,” the woman demands. She takes Noah’s glass and goes to the bar. Noah glances around. Undaunted at being ignored by a supermodel, Roberto has pulled a recent entrant to the club into conversation, his new quarry a young diva in a miniskirt and snakeskin stilettos. Noah watches his woman dressed in white. She is bent over the bar, chatting with the bartender. She is impossibly lovely, like an older Tuscany. It isn’t just that girls like her didn’t talk to him in Virginia; he couldn’t find any in Virginia. New York is where the extraordinary flock. He is proud to be here, proud to be in this club. He shakes his head. Suddenly he senses the point of it, and even through all his ironic distance feels it deeply: being in a club like Pangaea puts him ahead, marks him as above the crowd. It isn’t unlike getting a perfect 2400 or going to Princeton. Coming to Pangaea is just another means to set yourself apart. Why wouldn’t this woman be excited to speak to him? He’s well-dressed, articulate (though he certainly hasn’t proven that to her yet!), and, above all else, he’s at Pangaea. He’s not just any ordinary guy.

  The fairy in white returns with Noah’s drink. She hasn’t brought one for herself. “You’re not drinking?” Noah asks.

  “No,” the girl says. “One drink and I’m under the table.” She winks and laughs as she says “under the table,” as if wishing she were under a table with Noah. It comes back to Noah, strong, that he’s being played, and his heart starts beating faster.

  “So,” the girl says, her bare leg against Noah’s. “What do you think of the vodka?”

  Noah looks at his drink for a second, as if waiting for it to provide him an answer. “The vodka?”

  The girl nods. Noah takes a sip. “It’s very good.”

  “It’s called Wolsyncha. It’s from Poland, distilled and bottled at a chateau.”

  “Oh really…wow.”

  “It’s a hard name, I know, but can you say it?”

  “I think so,” Noah says, his lips tight.

  “Let’s hear it. Wolsyncha. Vol-sync-ah.” Her lips perform a voluptuous red dance around the syllables.

  “Wolsyncha,” Noah returns reluctantly.

  “Very good!” the girl laughs, caressing Noah on the back with long, smooth strokes. “We’re offering free drinks all night. We want you to really experience how great it tastes.”

  Noah raises his glass with a hollow smile. “Wolsyncha!”

  The fairy removes her hand from Noah’s back and gives a reserved little clap. “Wolsyncha!”

  And she is gone.

  She was an hourly employee, just not of the kind Noah imagined. Probably a model by day, a vodka promoter by night. It makes sense, Noah thinks, a marketing version of trickle-down economics: get your drink an image with the elite and influential and they will do the rest of your work for you, spreading it to the masses. And what better place to ignite the fire than here at Pangaea? The rejection burns a little, but business is business. He knows that from his own job, from those calls he gets from students who just want to chat after the test is over, those calls he delays before returning. Business relationships are much like friendships, only they come with a set “consume by” date. Getting to know one another, flirting, these are parts of a transaction, and eventually the transaction will be over. He thinks of Tuscany, of her unexpected disappointment that he was coming to Pangaea. Why has he thought of her? The connection is slippery, escapes him.

  Noah sips his drink, surveys the club. It has filled somewhat and the conversations are louder; there are now probably a few dozen people here. He glances at his watch: eleven forty-five. After his experience with the vodka promoter he is feeling his role to be more and more anthropological; it is safer just to observe, he decides. He takes another ice cube into his mouth and savors its painful chill against his cheek. Roberto is still chatting with the same girl, who nods vapidly to each of his gesticulations. Noah tries to view Roberto through the girl’s eyes. He should look ridiculous in his blue plastic outfit, his sunglasses black ovals in the semidarkness. But he carries himself with such confidence that he seems a true individual, some unique creature roaming the earth. The girl probably sees his narrow white shoes, muscled frame, and eccentric look and figures he’s a music video producer, or maybe a high-profile DJ. As for herself, she has a rounded, tight figure, with both the hardness and extreme curves of a cello. Her eyes are a little buggy. Noah finds himself thinking that Roberto could probably do better.

  Where did that thought come from? But as he looks around he realizes that he has subconsciously and pitilessly appraised everyone in the club. That is what one does here; evaluating image is the evening’s entertainment. In some ways this mix of people is like that of any other nightclub. It’s not as though everyone is a celebrity; not everyone looks like a model. In other clubs, however, there are always a few people that clearly don’t belong—some girl in a beer T-shirt, or a guy with huge glasses and a ponytail—but at Pangaea misfits have been stopped at the door. Everyone who makes it in belongs.

  It is odd to Noah that he should belong, that he could pass for a Pangaea-goer. But no one shoots him strange looks—in fact, he notes a number of admiring glances. Being here has turned him coquettish. But it has turned all the guys that way. Both men and women have posed themselves strategically about the club, intently gauging the amount of attention they receive.

  Now that it is past midnight, a steady stream of people files through the front doors. The men are generally in their late twenties or thirties, their uniforms expensive dress shirts with the top two buttons undone. The girls seem to be in their twenties or often younger, wearing some version of a halter top. Each girl wears the halter but sports a different material and color, aspiring both to conformity and uniqueness. Groups of boys circle groups of girls; groups of girls circle groups of boys. It is like a school mixer, only everyone here knows what to say. There is no awkwardness, only varying levels of suavity and frankness.

  Noah returns to the bar and gets another free drink. Roberto returns and, after making sure that none of his conquests are looking, displays for Noah the new numbers he has keyed into his cell phone. Noah nods encouragingly and carries on his conversation with Roberto as he continues his scan of the club. Music has begun to pulse louder from the back, and a pair of waifs dances on a platform. Their outfits are a convergence of bikini, formal wear, and underwear. They press out their hard, tan little bellies, their matching navel rings glistening as they sweat in the candlelight. Noah finds it hard to look away.

  Noah and Roberto pass an hour or two at the bar, commenting on the “hot bitches.” Roberto is in a frenzy and falls into recurring loops of conversation, centering on which girl he will call first, and whether to push his luck by going for more numbers. Noah had worried that Roberto might feel out of place here. But he is at ease and admired, shows a real fluency with any social situation. Roberto goes to the bathroom, then returns, excitedly reports that the urinals are made of steel and joined; it is like pissing into a fountain.

  Then Dylan arrives.

  He is surrounded by a bevy of men Noah’s age, a swarm of Diesel jeans and rumpled European shirts that straddle the line between body-conscious and unkempt. Each of them aspires to look, not as though he just got out of bed, but like the platonic ideal of messiness—they aim for a verisimilitude of not caring, not for actual lack of interest. Dylan is in the lead, walking masterfully into the club, stepping around jutting couches and tables, dexterously passing between outflung limbs as if between tree boughs, swinging through the jungle like the Pangaean native he is. Groups of girls an
d boys cease their conversations to observe and comment. Dylan’s entourage adopts slight, knowing smiles, affirming that Dylan is their friend, and that yes, indeed, that makes them as good as Dylan.

  Noah turns toward the bar, stares into his ice cubes. He had predicted this might happen; his contingency plan should Dylan arrive had been to say hi and then leave. But he is enjoying himself. He doesn’t want to leave. He turns his head slightly so he can watch from the corner of his eye.

  Dylan is at the center of the club now. He halts and the crowd of men forms a protective circle, hovering around him like an aura. Dylan looks toward the waiting tables, all marked with “Reserved” signs, then toward Noah. Noah turns to scrutinize the wood of the bar, waits for his student to approach.

  Suddenly Dylan is standing next to him, signaling to the female bartender. Then, without turning or acknowledging Noah, he speaks: “Hey.”

  “What’s up?” Noah says.

  Dylan turns his head slowly toward him. His eyes are dark and large. “You came.”

  “Yeah, what did you think, I’d wuss out?”

  Dylan smiles, looks at the wood grain of the bar, then up at the bartender. “Yeah, actually, I did.”

  “No way,” Noah says. “I’m not about to miss this.”

  Dylan just stares back at him. Noah rattles on amiably: “I mean, it’s totally not my scene, but I’m having an awesome time. I’m not seeing this—that you’re getting a drink—by the way.” In truth, Noah isn’t shocked to see Dylan drinking. Alcohol is probably the least potent of the substances in his system. Dylan is so outside the world of normal teenagers that Noah feels unable to attach any moral system to him.

  Dylan rolls his eyes. “Okay, whatever, you’re not seeing me drink.” He raises his glass to his lips.