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  “Save the specks?” JD gasps.

  “Yes, save the specks,” Peyton says. “Damien wants techno, and those little fellas can definitely be construed as techno.”

  “We all want techno, but we want techno without specks,” JD moans.

  The camcorder guy zooms in on the specks, and it’s very quiet until he says, yawning, “Far out.”

  “People people people.” I lift my hands up. “Is it possible to open this club without humiliating ourselves in the process?” I start to walk away. “Because I’m beginning to think it’s not possible. Comprende?”

  “Victor, oh my god, please,” Bongo says as I walk away.

  “Victor, wait up.” Kenny Kenny follows, holding out a bag of croutons.

  “It’s just that this is all so … so … ’89?” I blurt out.

  “A fine year, Victor,” Peyton says, trying to keep up with me. “A triumphant year!”

  I stop, pause, then turn slowly to face him. Peyton stands there looking hopefully up at me, quivering.

  “Uh, Peyton, you’re really whacked out, aren’t you?” I ask quietly. Shamefully, Peyton nods as if coaxed. He looks away.

  “You’ve had a pretty tough life, right?” I ask gently.

  “Victor, please.” JD steps in. “Peyton was joking about the specks. We’re not saving the specks. I’m with you. They’re just not worth it. They die.”

  While lighting a gargantuan joint, camcorder guy shoots out the huge expanse of French windows, the lens staring at a view of a leafless Union Square Park, at a truck with a massive Snapple logo driving by, limousines parked at a curb. We are moving down another set of stairs, heading toward the bottom.

  “Will someone please just give me one spontaneous act of goodness? Remove the specks. Bongo, go back to the kitchen. Kenny Kenny, you get a consolation prize. Peyton, make sure Kenny Kenny gets a couple of colanders and a nice flat spatula.” I wave them off, glaring. We leave Kenny Kenny behind, on the verge of tears, rubbing a shaky hand over the tattoo of Casper the Friendly Ghost on his bicep. “Ciao.”

  “Come on, Victor. The average life span of a club is what—four weeks? By the time we close, no one’s gonna notice them.”

  “If that’s your attitude, JD, there’s the door.”

  “Oh Victor, let’s be realistic—or at least fake it. This isn’t 1987 anymore.”

  “I’m not in a realistic mood, JD, so spare me.”

  Passing a pool table, I grab the 8 ball and slam-roll it into the corner pocket. The group is moving farther down into the club. We’re now at the first floor and it’s getting darker and Peyton introduces me to a huge black guy with wraparound sunglasses standing by the front entrance eating take-out sushi.

  “Victor, this is Abdullah, but we shall call him Rocko, and he’s handling all the security and he was in that TLC video directed by Matthew Ralston. That toro looks good.”

  “My middle name is Grand Master B.”

  “His middle name is Grand Master B,” JD says.

  “We shook hands last week in South Beach,” Abdullah tells me.

  “That’s nice, Abdullah, but I wasn’t in South Beach last week even though I’m semi-famous there.” I glance over at the Details girl. “You can write that down.”

  “Yeah man, you were in the lobby of the Flying Dolphin, getting your photo taken,” Rocko tells me. “You were surrounded by clams.”

  But I’m not looking at Rocko. Instead my eyes have focused on the three metal detectors that line the foyer, a giant white chandelier hanging above them, dimly twinkling.

  “You did, um, know about these, right?” JD asks. A meek pause. “Damien … wants them.”

  “Damien wants what?”

  “Um.” Peyton gestures with his arms as if the metal detectors were prizes. “These.”

  “Well, why don’t we just throw in a baggage check-in, a couple of stewardesses and a DC-10? I mean, what in the hell are these?”

  “This is security, man,” Abdullah says.

  “Security? Why don’t you just spend the night frisking the celebrities as well?” I ask. “What? You think this is a party for felons?”

  “Mickey Rourke and Johnny Depp both RSVP’d yes for dinner,” Peyton whispers in my ear.

  “If you’d like us to frisk the guests—” Rocko starts.

  “What? I’m gonna have Donna Karan frisked? I’m gonna have Marky Mark frisked? I’m gonna have fucking Diane Von Furstenberg frisked?” I shout. “I don’t think so.”

  “No, baby,” Peyton says. “You’re going to have the metal detectors so Diane Von Furstenberg and Marky Mark aren’t frisked.”

  “Chuck Pfeiffer has a metal plate in his goddamned head! Princess Cuddles has a steel rod in her leg!” I shout.

  JD tells the girl reporter, “Skiing accident in Gstaad, and don’t ask me how to spell that.”

  “What’s gonna happen when Princess Cuddles walks in through one of these things and alarms go off and buzzers and lights and—Jesus, she’ll have a fucking heart attack. Does anybody really want to see Princess Cuddles have a coronary?”

  “On the guest list we’ll mark down that Chuck Pfeiffer has a metal plate in his head and that Princess Cuddles has a steel rod in her leg,” Peyton says, mindlessly writing it down on a notepad.

  “Listen, Abdullah. I just want to make sure that no one is gonna get in who we don’t want in. I don’t want anyone passing out invites to other clubs. I don’t want some little waif mo handing Barry Diller an invite to Spermbar during dinner—got it? I don’t want anyone passing out invites to other clubs.”

  “What other clubs?” Peyton and JD wail. “There aren’t any other clubs!”

  “Oh spare me,” I wail back, moving across the first floor. “Jesus—you think Christian Laettner is gonna fit under one of those things?” It gets darker as we move into the back of the first floor, toward the staircase that leads to one of the dance floors located in the basement.

  From the top floor, Beau calls down, “Alison Poole on line fourteen. She wants to speak to you now, Victor.”

  Everyone looks away as the Details girl writes something down on her little notepad. Camcorder guy whispers something and she nods, still writing. Somewhere old C + C Music Factory is playing.

  “Tell her I’m out. Tell her I’m on line seven.”

  “She says it’s very important,” Beau drones on in monotone.

  I pause to look at the rest of the group, everyone looking anywhere but at me. Peyton whispers something to JD, who nods curtly. “Hey, watch that!” I snap. I follow Camcorder’s lens to a row of sconces he’s filming and wait for Beau, who finally leans over the top-floor railing and says, “A miracle: she relented. She’ll see you at six.”

  “Okay, folks.” I suddenly turn around to face the group. “I’m calling a sidebar. Bongo, you are excused. Do not discuss your testimony with anyone. Go. JD, come over here. I need to whisper something to you. The rest of you may stand by that bar and look for specks. Camcorder man—turn that away from us. We’re taking five.”

  I pull JD over to me and immediately he starts babbling.

  “Victor, if this is about Mica not being around and us being unable to get ahold of her, please for the love of god don’t bring it up now, because we can find another DJ—”

  “Shut up. It’s not about Mica.” I pause. “But wait, where is Mica?”

  “Oh god, I don’t know. She DJ’d at Jackie 60 on Tuesday, then did Edward Furlong’s birthday party, and now poof.”

  “What does that mean? What does poof mean?”

  “She’s disappeared. No one can find her.”

  “Well, shit, JD. What are we—no, no—you are gonna fix this,” I tell him. “I have something else I want to talk about.”

  “If Kenny Kenny’s going to sue us?”

  “No.”

  “The seating chart for dinner?”

  “No.”

  “The awfully cute magician downstairs?”

  “Jesus, no.” I l
ower my voice. “This is a more, um, personal problem. I need your advice.”

  “Oh, don’t drag me into anything sick, Victor,” JD pleads. “I just can’t take being dragged into anything too sick.”

  “Listen …” I glance over at the Details girl et al., slouching against the bar. “Have you heard anything about a … photograph?”

  “A photograph of who?” he exclaims.

  “Shhh, shut up. Jesus.” I look around. “Okay, even though you think Erasure is a good band, I think I can still trust you.”

  “They are, Victor, and—”

  “Someone’s got a, let’s just say, incriminating photo of me and a certain young”—I cough—“young lady, and I need you to find out if it’s, um, going to be printed sometime in the near future and maybe even tomorrow in one of the city’s least respectable but still most widely read dailies or if by some miracle it will not and that’s about it.”

  “I suppose you could be more vague, Victor, but I’m used to it,” JD says. “Just give me twenty seconds to decode this and I’ll get back to you.”

  “I don’t have twenty seconds.”

  “The young lady I’m supposing—no, I’m hoping—is Chloe Byrnes, your girlfriend?”

  “On second thought, take thirty seconds.”

  “Is this a That’s Me in the Corner / That’s Me in the Spotlight moment?”

  “Okay, okay, let me clarify: a compromising photo of a certain happening guy with a girl who … and it’s not like that bad or anything. Let’s just say this girl attacked him at a premiere last week in Central Park and someone unbeknownst to them got a, um, photo of this and it would look … strange since I am the subject of this photograph … I have a feeling that if I make the inquiry it will be—ahem—misunderstood .… Need I go on?”

  Suddenly Beau screams down: “Chloe will see you at nine-thirty at Doppelganger’s!”

  “What happened to Flowers? I mean eleven-thirty at Metro CC?” I yell back up. “What happened to ten o’clock at Café Tabac?”

  A longish pause. “She now says nine-thirty at Bowery Bar. That’s the end of it, Victor.” Then silence.

  “What horrible thing do you want me to do?” JD pauses. “Victor, would this photo—if published—screw up this guy’s relationship with a certain young model named Chloe Byrnes and a certain volatile club owner of … oh, let’s just say, hypothetically, this club, whose name is Damien Nutchs Ross?”

  “But that isn’t the problem.” I pull JD closer and, surprised, he winks and bats his eyes and I have to tell him, “Don’t get any ideas.” I sigh, breathe in. “The problem is that a photo exists. A certain cretinous gossip columnist is going to run this photo, and if we think Princess Cuddles having a heart attack is bad … that’s nothing.” I keep looking over my shoulder, finally telling everyone, “We have to go downstairs to check the magician. Excuse us.”

  “But what about Matthew Broderick?” Peyton asks. “What about the salads?”

  “He can have two!” I shout as I whisk JD down the long steep ramp of stairs heading into the basement, the light getting dimmer, both of us moving carefully.

  JD keeps babbling. “You know I’m here for you, Victor. You know I put the stud back in star-studded. You know I’ve helped pack this party to the rafters with desirable celebs. You know I’ll do anything, but I can’t help you on this because of—”

  “JD. Tomorrow in no particular order I’ve got a photo shoot, a runway show, an MTV interview with ‘House of Style,’ lunch with my father, band practice. I even have to pick up my fucking tux. I’m booked. Plus this dump is opening. I—have—no—time.”

  “Victor, as usual I’ll see what I can do.” JD maneuvers down the stairs hesitantly. “Now about the magician—”

  “Fuck it. Why don’t we just hire some clowns on stilts and bus in an elephant or two?”

  “He does card tricks. He just did Brad Pitt’s birthday at Jones in L.A.”

  “He did?” I ask, suspicious. “Who was there?”

  “Ed Limato. Mike Ovitz. Julia Ormond. Madonna. Models. A lot of lawyers and ‘fun’ people.”

  It gets even colder as we near the bottom of the staircase.

  “I mean,” JD continues, “I think comparatively it’s pretty in.”

  “But in is out,” I explain, squinting to see where we’re heading. It’s so cold our breath steams, and when I touch the banister it feels like ice.

  “What are you saying, Victor?”

  “Out is in. Got it?”

  “In is … not in anymore?” JD asks. “Is that it?”

  I glance at him as we descend the next flight of stairs. “No, in is out. Out is in. Simple, non?”

  JD blinks twice, shivering, both of us moving farther down into the darkness.

  “See, out is in, JD.”

  “Victor, I’m really nervous as it is,” he says. “Don’t start with me today.”

  “You don’t even have to think about it. Out is in. In is out.”

  “Wait, okay. In is out? Do I have that down so far?”

  At the bottom, it is so cold that I’ve noticed candles don’t even stay lit, they keep going out as we pass, and the TV monitors show only static. At the foot of the stairs by the bar, a magician who looks like a young German version of Antonio Banderas with a buzz cut idly shuffles a deck of cards, slump-shouldered, smoking a small joint, drinking a Diet Coke, wearing ripped jeans and a pocket T, the back-to-basics look, exaggeratedly sloppy, the rows of empty champagne glasses behind him reflecting what little light exists down here.

  “Right. Out is in.”

  “But then what exactly is in?” JD asks, his breath steaming.

  “Out is, JD.”

  “So … in is not in?”

  “That’s the whole p-p-point.” It’s so cold my biceps are covered with goose bumps.

  “But then what’s out? It’s always in? What about specifics?”

  “If you need this defined for you, maybe you’re in the wrong world,” I murmur.

  The magician gives us the peace sign in a vague way.

  “You did Brad Pitt’s party?” I ask.

  The magician makes a deck of cards, the stool he’s sitting on, one of my slippers and a large bottle of Absolut Currant disappear, then says “Abracadabra.”

  “You did Brad Pitt’s party?” I sigh.

  JD nudges me and points up. I notice the massive red swastika painted onto the domed ceiling above us.

  “I suppose we should probably get rid of that.”

  32

  Zigzagging toward Chemical Bank by the new Gap it’s a Wednesday but outside feels Mondayish and the city looks vaguely unreal, there’s a sky like from October 1973 or something hanging over it and right now at 5:30 this is Manhattan as Loud Place: jackhammers, horns, sirens, breaking glass, recycling trucks, whistles, booming bass from the new Ice Cube, unwanted sound trailing behind me as I wheel my Vespa into the bank, joining the line at the automated teller, most of it made up of Orientals glaring at me as they move aside, a couple of them leaning forward, whispering to each other.

  “What’s the story with the moped?” some jerk asks.

  “Hey, what’s the story with those pants? Listen, the bike doesn’t have a card, it’s not taking out any cash, so chill out. Jesus.”

  Only one out of ten cash machines seems to have any cash in it, so while waiting I have to look up at my reflection in the panel of steel mirrors lining the columns above the automated tellers: high cheekbones, ivory skin, jet-black hair, semi-Asian eyes, a perfect nose, huge lips, defined jawline, ripped knees in jeans, T-shirt under a long-collar shirt, red vest, velvet jacket, and I’m slouching, Rollerblades slung over my shoulder, suddenly remembering I forgot where I’m supposed to meet Chloe tonight, and that’s when the beeper goes off. It’s Beau. I snap open the Panasonic EBH 70 and call him back at the club.

  “I hope Bongo’s not having a fit.”

  “It’s the RSVPs, Victor. Damien’s having a fit. He just called, fu
rious—”

  “Did you tell him where I was?”

  “How could I do that when I don’t even know where you are?” Pause. “Where are you? Damien was in a helicopter. Actually stepping out of a helicopter.”

  “I don’t even know where I am, Beau. How’s that for an answer?” The line moves up slowly. “Is he in the city?”

  “No. I said he was in a helicopter. I said that he—was—in—a—heli-cop-ter.”

  “But where was the heli-cop-ter?”

  “Damien thinks things are getting totally fucked up. We have about forty for dinner who have not RSVP’d, so our seating list might be interpreted as meaningless.”

  “Beau, that depends on how you define meaningless.”

  A long pause. “Don’t tell me it means a bunch of different things, Victor. For example, here’s how the O situation is shaping up: Tatum O’Neal, Chris O’Donnell, Sinead O’Connor and Conan O’Brien all yes but nothing from Todd Oldham, who I hear is being stalked and really freaking out, or Carré Otis or Oribe—”

  “Relax,” I whisper. “That’s because they’re all doing the shows. I’ll talk to Todd tomorrow—I’ll see him at the show—but I mean what is going on, Beau? Conan O’Brien is coming but Todd Oldham and Carré Otis might not? That just isn’t an acceptable scenario, baby, but I’m in an automated teller right now with my Vespa and I can’t really speak—hey, what are you looking at?—but I don’t want Chris O’Donnell anywhere at my table for dinner. Chloe thinks he’s too fucking cute and I just don’t need that kind of awful shit tomorrow night.”

  “Uh-huh. Right, no Chris O’Donnell, okay, got that. Now, Victor, first thing tomorrow we’ve got to go over the big ones, the Ms and the Ss—”

  “We can pull it together. Don’t weep, Beau. You sound sad. It is now my turn to get some cash. I must go and—”

  “Wait! Rande Gerber’s in town—”

  “Put him under G but not for the dinner unless he’s coming with Cindy Crawford then he is invited to the dinner and you then know which consonant, baby.”

  “Victor, you try dealing with Cindy’s publicist. You try getting an honest answer out of Antonio Sabato, Jr.’s publicist—”