The Lure (13 page)

“I don’t mean to judge him,” Noel said, allowing his long list of grievances to pour forth, “but I can’t help it. He doesn’t have to…you know, do it with so many guys.”

“It’s confusing to you?” Loomis asked. “Because he’s married?”

Sometimes Noel felt as though he were talking to a psychiatrist. “It’s upsetting. But I’m not sure why.”

“Don’t worry about it. Keep out of his way. You don’t need him anymore. You’re all set up there. Now just sit tight.”

“All set up,” Noel repeated.

“Call tomorrow,” Loomis said. “You know what, go around a little. You aren’t working. Go into one of the other bars. Have a drink. Get friendly.”

Noel saw the point. “All right.”

All set up,
Noel thought, placing the telephone into the receiver. With comprehensive hospital insurance, but no life insurance. And no hint of who Mr. X was.

Hell! It could be Buddy Vega.

Business on Wednesday evening was relatively slow, and Noel was beginning to feel like a character in a Eugene O’Neill play listening to human woes and offering half-cocked advice over the bar, when Buddy Vega came in with Miguel.

“You still mad at me?” Buddy asked, when Miguel stepped over to the pool table in the other room. “Miguel’s roommate had some people over. We had nowhere else to go.”

Noel said he didn’t much care.

“Good!” Vega said. “It’s none of your business, anyway.”

He let that sink in before saying, “You going to the Window Wall tomorrow night? There’s a big party there, you know.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You better go. I have it on good word that your man X will be at that party.”

“So will everyone else in the city, from all the talk I’m hearing,” Noel shot back. “What’s the chance of meeting him in a crowd that large?”

“I also have it on good word that X has heard about you.”

That stopped Noel for a second. Despite the shiver it sent up his back, he answered, “Through who? You?”

“Just go, will you? Use the loop. He’ll tell you the same thing.”

“I will use the loop,” Noel said, making it clear he wasn’t taking orders from Vega, no matter how relevant they might be.

Buddy saw he meant it. He scowled and went to join Miguel at the pool table. They remained there for another half hour, then left the Grip, arms around each other’s shoulders. Still angry, Noel watched them go.

On his break he slipped out and walked two blocks to a public phone where he called the loop. After a short while he got Loomis. The Fisherman said he thought it was a good idea for Noel to go to the discotheque, even though the odds were against him making contact with Mr. X. Somehow that annoyed Noel even more.

He had barely returned to the bar when two Latin men got into an argument. Before Max could get to them, the smaller one was shoved by his boyfriend out onto the street and socked in the nose. In a second the two of them were slugging it out.

Everyone left the bar or went to the windows. The two Latinos were bruised and bleeding before Max and two other men were able to separate them. Even with their arms pinned, they swore at each other and kicked out, both trying to score a final blow.

“Maricón!”
the smaller one shouted suddenly, spitting the word out with a mouthful of phlegm.

The other one broke out of the hold he was in and attacked his friend, diving headfirst into his stomach. It was another few minutes before they were dragged apart by friends, one to a car, the other inside the bar to wash up.

“Maricón!”
the smaller one shouted outside the Grip as he rode by in someone’s Ford, sticking his finger up in the air in a fuck-you gesture.

The lover was in the bar at the time. He leaned against the wall and began to sob quietly, his shoulders heaving, his head hidden. Suddenly he turned around, his face livid and contorted with hatred. “I’m going to eat that fucker’s heart!” he shouted, staring around the bar with wild eyes, then ran out.

Everyone in the Grip was animated by the incident for the next half hour. Noel was especially agitated. The men’s fight had brought out all the hostility he’d been hiding against Buddy Vega. He realized with horror exactly how much harm they could do each other.

All he would have to do was call Vega a
maricón
…

It was about ten o’clock the following night and Noel was revising the glossary of new words he’d picked up working at the Grip, so engrossed in it that when his phone rang twice he was halfway to picking it up before he stopped himself in midgesture. Sure enough, there was no third ring. He waited. It rang twice more, then stopped suddenly. Wasn’t that the Fisherman’s signal? He waited again, but the phone was silent, so he went back to work.

He had more than seven pages, almost a hundred entries of words, their pronunciations, definitions, and usages. All dependent on the fact that they might be changed at any time—the argot being a living language. But all hundred words were real. Most of them totally unknown to anyone but the denizens of the gay world who used them. Even if he did nothing more on this project, Noel believed this glossary would be an important achievement. How you called something signified how you perceived it, how you related to it.

Calling someone you slept with a “trick” or a “number” or a “lover” or a “friend”—all common, though different gradations, meant something. The same held for whether you called a close acquaintance a “brother” or a “sister”—generally a closer term. It fascinated Noel.

The phone again. Signal complete. “Lure in,” Noel said. He hated the code name business and the spywork bullshit it came from.

“That you?” It was Loomis.

“You called, didn’t you?” Noel asked. His blood was pulsing like mad in the thumb holding the receiver. “Or was that a test?”

“No test. You going to that party tonight?”

“You said I should.”

“Right. But be a little careful, Lure.”

Now his blood was really racing. “Careful? How?”

“Just try not to behave in too unusual a manner. Fit in a little more.”

“What’s up?”

“Nothing much. Maybe nothing at all. Just a few things I’ve heard. You’ve aroused some suspicions.”

Shit! Noel thought. That’s all I need. “Like what?”

“Nothing much. But just in case, I’m going to have someone cover you.”

The Fisherman had never done
that
before. Now he was really jumpy. “Will I know who it is?” he asked, trying to keep calm.

“No. Naturally not.”

“Who’s suspicious?”

“I’m not sure. But it’s someone connected with the Grip. Not one of the other employees. Maybe the silent partner. Our friend owns the place, even though his name isn’t on any of the papers.”

“X you mean.”

“Mister X,” Loomis corrected. “Yeah. I don’t know who it is. You notice anyone coming in to talk to Chaffee a little off-color?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Well, just be careful tonight, that’s all. It’s probably nothing.”

Vega did it, Noel thought, as soon as he hung up the phone. Goddamn you, Buddy, are you working for Whisper or for X? Who else could it be, if not Vega?

It certainly wasn’t Rick Chaffee, Noel concluded at midnight when he saw the manager of the bar. Noel had been invited for a pre–Window Wall get-together at Rick’s downtown loft, only a short walk from the disco club. The manager of the bar greeted him like a long-lost brother, and it was hard to believe that Rick wasn’t as sincerely pleased to have Noel join them as he professed.

A half dozen other guests were sitting, talking, and smoking grass on the two low divans and the huge pillows that had been pulled up to a vast, rectangular, glass-topped coffee table that looked handcrafted. Among them were two couples Noel had seen in the bar, as well as Jimmy DiNadio in a rare shared evening with his lover, and a slender, heavily made up, and relatively attractive woman about twenty-five years old whom Noel immediately tagged a fag hag.

“Glossary Number 67: Fag Hag,” he had written earlier that evening, “A female hanger-on of the gay scene. A heterosexual woman of any age, social status, and profession, who parties with, often lives with, sometimes (rarely) sleeps with, and usually becomes den mother and confidante to a loose group or family of gay men. She is usually unattractive, or pretty but overweight, generally afraid of men and sex, always lonely and usually riotously funny, believing her purpose in life is to make gay men happy.”

This one’s name was Wendy, and she had a real Southern accent and eyes that were large, blue, and very hard. Noel took a place on the other side of the table from her, next to Jimmy DiNadio.

“It’s a good thing I know Chaffee doesn’t fuck with the help,” Jimmy said, one hand on Noel’s shoulder as they faced each other. “Otherwise…mmm.” He uttered a warning sound and made a very Brooklyn Italian gesture with his open hand.

“He didn’t even try,” Noel said.

“Give me a break. He tried. I know him, huh? You getting off on this stuff?”

Noel was in fact getting higher than he could recall ever being on the few tokes of marijuana he’d been smoking as though it were a cigarette. He offered the joint to Jimmy, who refused it.

“Get loaded, man. Double your trouble, double your fun. Everyone at the Wall will be in a state. It’s why the energy is so high.”

Introductions were made in the usual offhand manner, and Noel took a glass of white wine, listening to the beat of the dance music that thudded out of different corners of the room from tall speakers. Even the lighting was flickering, low. Soon everyone was talking a bit louder, gesturing more exaggeratedly.

“Everyone off now?” Rick asked. “Jimmy? Wendy? How about you, Noel?”

“I’m ripped,” Noel said.

He wondered why Vega wasn’t here, and was about to ask why when Chaffee said, “Time for some nose candy!” lifting aloft a small translucent vial of white powder to a chorus of oohs and aahs. “Uncut,” Rick said, like a barker in a sideshow selling a patent medicine. “From the shady hillsides of ancient Peru! Grade A. From my favorite dealer, who is deeply in love with me.”

Noel hesitated as the ritual of snorting cocaine began. But he couldn’t demur. Not when he recalled Loomis’s warning to do nothing to make himself different or unusual tonight. More grass was produced, and Wendy and two others began passing around assorted pills.

“Let’s go!” Jimmy suddenly said. “I’m not going to wait on line all night in this condition.”

Everyone agreed, but it was another twenty minutes before they got out of the loft and the huge storage elevator delivered them downstairs. Noel had to lean against the walls for support as the car suddenly stalled, then dropped a foot. Everyone but Jimmy and Rick gasped. Wendy struck Chaffee on the shoulder in annoyance. Noel lost his breath, and his vision swam before him.

“Get over it,” Rick said, not unkindly. “It’s just a little trip. There’s going to be a great many more this witching night!”

They fanned out, covering the entire empty tarred street.

“We’re on comps!” Rick shouted. “My name gets you in if we’re separated.” He threw an arm over Noel’s shoulders and they walked a few feet behind the others. “Glad you came. No kidding.”

“So am I,” Noel said.

“How do you like Jimmy?”

“He’s cute.”

“That’s just the trouble. Too cute. If he didn’t have that ‘kiss me, please’ face, I’d’ve dropped him long ago. No shit!” He hugged Noel closer. “Tonight we’re going to find someone for you.”

Noel managed what he was certain was a lopsided smile as a response.

“If I had your looks, I’d be particular, too,” Rick went on. “No matter what other people said. But the Wall’s going to be carpeted with the absolute hottest of men tonight. You’ll have your pick.”

The conversation was beginning to worry Noel. He hoped Rick would forget him and not do a matchmaking number he’d have to squirm out of later. Then he saw his opportunity.

“What
are
other people saying?”

“That you’re stuck up. That you think you’re too good for anyone. That you think you shit strawberry ice cream.”

“Maybe I do,” Noel said lightly. But he felt awful. That was the second warning tonight.

They had turned a corner. Suddenly there was traffic—taxicabs double-parked, dozens of sleek long limousines with drivers, crowds of noisy partygoers who filled the street in colorful, shifting groupings. This was the scene of the party. But Noel would have known it anyway.

If it weren’t for the bottom story, the building would have looked like any of a score they had passed already: cast concrete, dull brick, unlighted windows, five stories high, nothing special. What was special, however, and what gave away the place’s name immediately was the bottom floor—composed of thousands of foot-square frosted glass blocks a foot deep, and illuminated from within somehow so that they glowed out onto the street and sidewalks. A wall of glass that curved around corners into deep-set entrances where people were already entering, jiggling tambourines, clacking sticks, shaking maracas. Overhead somewhere, scarcely audible, was music.