There was a long pause. When Loomis spoke again, it was in a tone of voice that Noel had come to recognize: annoyed-and-determined-not-to-show-it.
“Why don’t we start from the beginning again?”
“Fine with me. Is Randy Nerone working for Whisper?”
“If I tell you he isn’t, will you believe me?”
“Probably not,” Noel admitted.
“Then why should I bother?”
It was Noel’s turn to be silent. Because I’m sleeping with him, he wanted to say, but couldn’t bring himself to do it. Because Randy is the only one I’m sleeping with. He’s my only cover, my only credential that I’m just a normal, man-loving homosexual. I’m doing it despite myself, overcoming long-ingrained habits and ideas about sex and about my own sexuality. I’m as disturbed by it when it’s easy with Randy as when it’s difficult. It scares me as much as Mr. X and his henchmen do. It’s my only security. So it damn well had better be security. That’s why I have to know if Randy Nerone is working for Whisper.
“Are you still there, Lure?”
“I’m here.”
“Let’s not argue,” Loomis said. “You’re tense. I’m tense.”
“I’m not tense. I’m just not happy with all your demands.”
“What demands? That you go to a party that some people would kill to get to? What’s so difficult about that?”
“I said I was going to the party at Bar Sinister.” That was the name of the new Dorrance club Chafee was opening.
“Fine. What’s the problem? Stick close to Dorrance and be ready to report tomorrow night in full detail.”
“If I’m sticking so close to Dorrance, who’s going to be watching Redfern? I’m sure he’s the hatchet man or something like that.”
“He scare you?”
Noel didn’t like that question.
“Because if he does,” Loomis said, “don’t worry about him. He’s just a big-mouth, rich-kid fag. All talk.”
“I’m not so sure of that.”
“Because of that model he’s hanging around with?”
“I’m sure he’s putting it to her,” Noel said. “And…other things.”
“So he’s bisexual. It’s very chic to be bisexual this year. I read all about it in Time magazine. Good night, Lure. And, Lure?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t ask so many fucking questions you don’t want answered.”
12
The party Loomis talked about was to be held at Redfern’s town house before Bar Sinister officially opened its doors to its select membership.
In addition to Noel and the other members of Mr. X’s growing conglomerate—Matthews, Malchuck, Goldberg, et al.—another hundred or so guests had been invited, friends, co-workers, and hangers-on of Redfern, Alana, and their friends.
When Noel and Randy Nerone arrived it was after midnight and the party was in full swing. The two main floors of the town house, the outside terrace, and the pool floor were spread with men and women in bizarre and garish costumes working up toward the time when Bar Sinister—an after-hours club—would open its doors for late-night perversions and promised grotesqueries which would not end until long after dawn. Since Noel had entered this scene, he lived more and more at night, usually not getting home until after 4:00 a.m. He slept during the day, waking only at one or two in the afternoon. Just a few months before, half his day would have been over by then. Now, he lived in a night world.
“Should we go straight up to the pool for old times’ sake?” Randy asked as he and Noel got into the elevator.
“You go, if you want.” He had to find Dorrance.
The party was audible long before the elevator doors opened up onto the second floor. In the library a hastily constructed DJ’s booth with double turntables had been set up. Every speaker in the house was emitting the incessant beat of funky rock music.
“There they are,” Matthews greeted Noel and Randy’s entrance to the main floor, “the two beauties! Never since Castor and Pollux has there been…or was it Damon and Pythias? Oh, who gives a flying fuck? Who’s got that Dust?”
They managed to elude Matthews, who was swaying wildly toward them, and Noel headed Randy up the side stairs to the lounge overlooking the crowded living room.
Downstairs, the sectional had been redivided, set more or less in a shallow rectangle on one side of the big room. The rest was given over to dancing and general milling about.
“I’m not entirely sure I’m ready for tonight,” Noel said, looking over the many heads downstairs for Dorrance’s close-cropped gray one.
“Here, have a hit of this,” Randy said, offering Noel a slim, tightly rolled joint. As usual he was in a good mood, his body vibrating against the railing as he looked over the assemblage with a sort of proud proprietorship. Noel wished he could feel as comfortable.
Often as he came here, he always felt under surveillance, his every action monitored.
Having missed Dorrance downstairs, Noel looked around the balcony floor. Could he not have come to this shindig? Unlikely.
Alana appeared from her sitting room, arm in arm with a tall, willowy black woman who inclined her stunning head low to whisper in Alana’s lovely ear. The woman wore a space-fantasy costume, silver lamé halter top slashed in front to her navel, girdled with a thickly wrapped belt that looked like a leather bullwhip, and turning into skintight lamé slacks right down to her ebony patent-leather boots. Her hair had been pulled back from her face and gathered by some kind of silver pin. In comparison, Alana looked like a little girl, her skintight black leather slacks disappearing into similar boots, her loose-fitting, sheer blouson softly feminine next to the hard glitter of her companion. As they approached the balcony, Noel could see Alana’s blouse was cut almost as low as the black woman’s—the skin between her breasts looked as soft and white as satin.
Alana seemed genuinely delighted to see Noel and Randy.
“Now you must meet someone very special to me,” she said to her friend as they came up to the men. Noel wondered if Alana were gay too, or bisexual.
“This is my great amie, Veena. And this is Noel and Randy.” She pronounced the second name Rondee. “Veena Scarborough is the wonderful disco chanteuse,” she explained to Noel.
Veena detached herself from Alana, put her hands on her hips, pursed her mouth, arched one curving eyebrow, and stared intensely through her silver-sheen makeup, in the pose she had made famous on the cover of her first platinum album.
“Oooh! I just love white meat,” she purred. Randy laughed. Noel felt like a fly that had just inadvertently landed on a Venus flytrap.
“And you two mean to tell me you’re together, too!” Veena added, sidling up to them and instantly encircling them with what appeared to be several arms and legs. “Why, honeys, I would pay, and I do mean cold fucking cash, to see you two get each other off. I swear I would.”
Unlike Noel, who was paralyzed by the attentions of the Amazon, Randy returned her caresses in joking kind.
“Catch us later at Bar Sinister,” he said, and casually popped one large mahogany breast out of its silver lamé casing.
“Let go!” she protested, slapping his hand away. “You don’t want none of that. And anyway that ain’t no ordinary tit, you know.”
She pulled away, but left her breast bared.
“Let’s blow some coke, honeys,” Veena said, and commenced to search through a silver lamé reticule that hung from her thong belt. Finally she found a little turquoise pillbox, and opened it to reveal a tiny mountain of glittering powder.
Noel looked at Alana, who was smiling like a fond mother over the antics of a favorite child.
The cocaine was passed from Randy to Noel, who in turn offered it to Alana. While she sniffed at it delicately from a tiny Art Nouveau spoonlet, Noel stared at her a long time, until she looked up at him. But a second later, her eyes took on a sudden high glaze from the drug, and she laughed.
“They won’t let me in no back-room clu
bs no more, honeys,” Veena was complaining to Randy. “And I can’t blame them. Why I got me a throat like a boa. It just destroys those poor boys,” and she laughed. Waving the pillbox in the air, she pulled Randy over and began a slow grind to the music.
“Nice party,” Noel said, through the fine, misty haze of the cocaine.
“You don’t care for my friend?” Alana asked.
He shrugged.
“Well?” she insisted.
“If you really want to know, I think she’s weird.”
Alana smiled. “Eric is right. You are a prude. I love Veena. She’s wonderfully funny. Like a cartoon. She takes nothing seriously. Nothing at all.”
“She doesn’t have to. She’s had a half dozen hit albums. She’s filthy with money.”
“And you don’t care for that?”
“Not really.”
“Then you must abhor me. I’m filthy with money, too. How much do you think I earn standing around looking like a mannequin?”
“I never thought about it.”
“Sometimes, I earn four, five hundred dollars in an hour. You should model, too, you know. If you want to be rich so badly.”
“I never said I wanted to be.”
“Oh, you didn’t say it. But you would like it. You are jealous of us, because we do so well.” She stepped back, looking at him, and teasingly put up one finger as though she were an artist looking at a newly painted picture. “I think you are the perfect size. A perfect size forty. Yes?”
“So?”
“You would do well. They make clothing to perfect sizes. Usually that size.”
“And be looked at by everyone?”
“You are looked at by everyone already, no?”
“It’s not the same thing.”
“You are very glum. You are in a bad mood. You hate my party, don’t you?” she suddenly said. Before he could answer, she had turned from him. “You depress me. Good-bye.”
“Wait!” Noel followed her, but she had floated down the stairs and was just another dark head in the mass of people. “Damn it!” he said. It seemed that nothing he ever did around her was right.
He turned around again, saw Randy and Veena sitting in a corner: she was telling his future by looking at his palms, he was laughing at almost everything she said. They were enjoying themselves.
Looking out over the railing again, Noel spotted Dorrance at last, his silver hair shining like a beacon from his spot in a corner near the doors leading to the screening room. With him were two younger men, both dressed in heavy black leather outfits, engineer’s boots, leather pants, body-fitting leather vests over bare chests. One was dark-haired with a full beard. The other, slightly heavier, was fairer, with a big brush mustache, and a long thin scar running like a crescent from his left eyebrow to his lips. Unlike some of the other guests whom Noel had seen before, these two looked like rough characters. X’s henchmen?
“You like that?”
The voice alone made Noel stiffen: Eric.
“You know what I like,” Noel said, and nodded past Eric’s face to where Randy and Veena were sitting.
“The nigger?”
“Fuck yourself,” Noel said nonchalantly and turned to check out Dorrance and his pals again.
“The dark one is Bill Solomon. The other is Estes Dewhurst,” Eric said, leaning close to Noel and following his glance. “They specialize in three-ways. Their pet is something called number eighty-seven. Both of them screw you at the same time.”
“They look like SS torturers,” Noel said.
“Stockbrokers.”
“What?”
“Solomon, Dewhurst, Chatto and Dine. One of the biggest new houses on Wall Street. Only five years old, but with one of the snazziest portfolios you ever laid eyes on. Jimmy Chatto’s here somewhere, and so is Janet Dine.”
“Thanks for the tip. I don’t have anything to invest.”
Noel felt that Eric was looking at him very closely. Probably deciding whether Noel believed him or not. Stockbrokers. They could, of course, be stockbrokers. One rule he’d learned early was that, on the scene, people weren’t exactly—or sometimes even anything at all—like what they appeared to be.
“You must know a lot of important people,” Noel said. “Rock stars. Movie stars. Politicians.”
“I do. Bankers. Multinational executives.”
“I’m impressed.”
“You’ll find them all here tonight, and later on at the new club.”
Noel wanted to get away from Eric, to get together with Dorrance. He stood up and tried to get Randy’s attention. “And what am I supposed to do? Feel gay pride or something?”
Redfern stood up, too, and blocked Noel’s view. “You know, I really don’t get you. I just don’t.”
“There’s nothing to get,” Noel said. “Don’t worry about it.” He started to move around Eric, but Eric grabbed his arm hard.
“Is that today’s lesson, Professor Cummings?”
Noel felt for a second as though the balcony had given way beneath him. He fought to regain footing. Despite the look of obvious triumph on Eric’s face, he managed to say, “Excuse me, will you? I see my friend is calling me.”
Eric let go of his arm, and Noel walked over to where Randy had indeed seen his signal and stood up, feeling, as he crossed the ten feet to Randy, as though a pistol were pointed at his back.
Randy was still talking to someone who’d joined him and Veena. His right arm came out and reached casually around Noel’s waist, pulling him in close to his own body. And, for perhaps the first time in his life, Noel felt he had never needed another person’s contact, another person’s caress so much, no matter how automatic it may have been on Randy’s part. For a second he’d been falling. Now he felt grounded, safe. So safe he was able to look around. Eric had disappeared.
“You been smoking Dust over there?” Randy asked after a few minutes,
“No. Why? Do I look bad?”
“A little. Did he give you a hard time about me?”
“Eric? Why should he?”
Randy hesitated. “You didn’t know?”
Noel searched the man’s large dark eyes for an answer.
“Before you and I met, Eric and I were…well, it never really worked out and I thought he might trash me to you.”
The information startled Noel. It seemed all wrong, but he couldn’t say why. Yet he didn’t disbelieve Randy.
“He didn’t say a word about you. You mean you and Dorrance…?” Noel had to straighten this out. “You had argued and all that evening.”
Randy laughed and his arm hugged Noel closer. “Come on. Don’t play head games with me. Dorrance is an old man. You didn’t really believe that?”
“I guess not,” Noel said, knowing for certain now.
“It was Eric. But I couldn’t get off on him. Too rough for me.”
Noel stared at Randy: inside him levers began to click click click click like one of those slot machines in a Las Vegas casino. But they all stopped short, and no answer carne up.
“You have that look in your eyes again,” Randy said.
“What look?”
“I don’t know what it means. Sometimes it means you’re about a hundred miles away. Sometimes I think it means you don’t really like me.”
“You know I like you. You’re my friend, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes I really don’t, Noel.”
“You did a few hours ago,” Noel said, reminding Randy of their lovemaking before the party. He needed this man at this moment, not only for the safety he felt with him, but because Randy was going to tell Noel something very important. Noel was sure of it.
“Yeah! That was crazy!” Randy said. “Let’s go downstairs and boogie.”
“Didn’t I see Dorrance here a minute ago?” Noel asked. “I wanted to say hello to him.”
“I think he went upstairs with some other people. The roof is open tonight,” Randy said. “Don’t you want to dance?”
“Later. Do you mind?”
“Do you want me to stay down here?”
“What do you think, that I don’t want to be seen with you?” Noel asked. “Come on.”
Noel was glad of Randy’s company a few minutes later when the elevator doors opened on the top floor. There were about a dozen people on the roof garden: a man and two women off to one side, and the others opposite, grouped around Dorrance, who was talking with unusual intensity, Noel thought.
Not knowing the others, Noel and Randy advanced toward Dorrance.
“It’s got to be done soon,” he heard one man urge. It was one of the two leather-clad stockbroker/lovers Eric had pointed out to him earlier.
Others agreed with him. None of them noticed Noel or Randy, they were so intent on what they were saying.
“It will be done soon,” Dorrance assured them. “But Eric absolutely believes that we have to wait until the time is right.”
“It’s right now,” one man said.
“We’ve waited long enough,” the other leather number said, disgusted.
“You’ll just have to wait a little longer,” Dorrance said. He was facing away from the others, and was the first to spot Noel and Randy, who had stopped a few feet away from the group.
“It’s long overdue already,” one more voice put in.
Dorrance gave him a stern glance, then said in another tone of voice, “Some friends are joining us. Noel. Randy. You all know each other?”
The others turned as though on cue. “Hey, hot guy,” the blond, leather-dressed man said to Randy.
“We’ll talk later,” Dorrance said, low, to one of the other men.
In seconds, the group dispersed and reformed around Noel and Randy. Introductions were made, hands shaken all around. Noel watched helplessly as Dorrance excused himself and went over to the others on the roof, talked to them briefly, then disappeared down a stairway next to the pool door.
13
A half hour later Noel was no closer to Dorrance. Loomis would have a fit if he found out. He had to get to him, if only for a moment. If the party were seeded with Whisper operatives, they’d report that he and Mr. X were seen together.
The Lure Page 17
