The Lure (17 page)

“New kid in town,” a patron named Cody who’d watched it all said to Noel.

“I’m always kind to the handicapped,” Noel replied, enjoying the sense of shared superiority. He must have looked that frightened the first time, too.

Not anymore. It was almost his place, he was so comfortable. From behind the bar, slightly elevated by the platform, he gazed over the crowd securely. Especially after two months, with the semester over. Especially with Chaffee away from the Grip so much, readying a new club in Chelsea. One more business to add to the Grip, Billy’s, Le Pissoir, Window Wall, Clouds, and—from what Noel had heard rumored—a dozen other bars and discos outside Manhattan. Mr. X’s conglomerate.

Noel sang out the words, performing for Cody and whoever else was nearby.

“Don’t give me that shit,” Cody muttered. “You’re the heartbreaker.”

“Get over it,” Noel told him.

“Call for you, Noel. It’s Chaffee.”

“Cover me for a minute,” Noel told Bob Seltzer, and went to the phone.

He and Rick had a short conversation about the following week’s schedule, an almost unnecessary talk, since both knew it might go haywire any minute, their staff was so out to lunch. Noel sometimes wondered if he hadn’t been promoted because of his steadiness, compared to the irresponsible behavior of so many other bartenders.

“I’ll have Bob and Jimmy DiNadio cover you tomorrow night,” Rick concluded. “Buddy will keep an eye on things.”

“I’m working tomorrow.”

“Not there. We have a company dinner to attend.”

“A company dinner?”

“Dorrance wants to meet you. A few other guys will be there. Cal Goldberg from Window Wall, Geoff Malchuck, Nerone, I don’t know who else. Come down to my loft and we’ll go up together.”

“Where?”

“Uptown. The East Side. Some fancy town house off Park Avenue in the Sixties.”

“Dorrance is the head of…of all the places?” Noel had to ask, barely able to get the words out for the brainstorm he was having. No one had ever mentioned Dorrance except as the man who got the receipts.

“To all intents and purposes,” Rick said. “I don’t know. I’ve only met him a few times myself.”

“X,” Noel breathed out.

“What?”

He caught himself. “Nothing, Rick. I was just talking to someone here.”

Chaffee was busy apparently; he bought the lie, and repeated they were to meet the following evening at eight o’clock, his place.

Finally! He was finally going to meet Mr. X. Loomis would utterly freak when he heard. Noel would let the Fisherman bullshit him as usual when they spoke that night on the loops, then when he was done, very casually, of course, say, “By the way, I’ll be calling in late tomorrow night. I’m having dinner with X.” The old cop would bust a gut when he heard.

“Well, man, you look happy,” Cody said, when Noel returned to his spot at the bar, snapping his fingers. “Just get laid?”

“Better than that,” Noel said. “I just got paid.”

“On a Wednesday?”

Loomis wasn’t all that surprised.

“Dorrance?” he asked again, as though he knew the name well.

“William Ernest Dorrance,” Noel said. “You know him?”

“He’s not listed as owning any of the places.”

“He’s the silent partner,” Noel reasoned.

Loomis didn’t answer directly. Instead he asked, “You’re having dinner with him tomorrow night?”

“Not just him. All the company managers will be there. From Le Pissoir and Window Wall and Clouds, too. All of them.” Noel was a little hurt by Loomis’s lack of enthusiasm. “Dorrance especially asked to see me. I’m only an assistant manager, remember? He didn’t have to.”

“So this powwow may all be just a ploy for him to get a look at you?” Loomis offered. “All right. As long as others will be there. Where is it?”

“Some town house in the upper Sixties, Rick said. I don’t have the address. Aren’t you even a little pleased that I’m finally making contact with him? That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it?”

“
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.

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.