Live Wire

4

It did not take much to track down Lex Ryder.

Esperanza Diaz, Myron’s business partner at MB Reps, called him at eleven P.M. and said, “Lex just used his credit card at Three Downing.”

Myron was staying, as he often did, at Win’s co-op in the legendary Dakota building, overlooking Central Park West on the corner of Seventy-second Street. Win had a spare bedroom or three. The Dakota dates back to 1884 and it looks it. The fortresslike structure was beautiful and dark and somehow wonderfully depressing. It’s a hodgepodge of gables, balconies, finials, pediments, balustrades, half domes, cast iron, archways, ornate railing, stepped dormers-a bizarre blend that was somehow seamless, hauntingly perfect rather than overwhelming.

“What’s that?” Myron asked.

“You don’t know Three Downing?” Esperanza asked.

“Should I?”

“It’s probably the hippest bar in the city right now. Diddy, supermodels, the fashionista, that crowd. It’s in Chelsea.”

“Oh.”

“It’s a little disappointing,” Esperanza said.

“What?”

“That a playah of your magnitude doesn’t know all the trendy spots.”

“When Diddy and I go clubbing, we take the white Hummer stretch and use underground entrances. The names blur.”

“Or being engaged is cramping your style,” Esperanza said. “So do you want to head over there and pick him up?”

“I’m in my pajamas.”

“Yep, a playah. Do the pajamas have feetsies?”

Myron checked his watch again. He could be downtown before midnight. “I’m on my way.”

“Is Win there?” Esperanza asked.

“No, he’s still out.”

“So you’re going down alone?”

“You’re worried about a tasty morsel like me in a nightclub on my own?”

“I’m worried you won’t get in. I’ll meet you there. Half hour. Seventeenth Street entrance. Dress to impress.”

Esperanza hung up. This surprised Myron. Since becoming a mother, Esperanza, former all-night, bisexual party girl, never went out late anymore. She had always taken her job seriously-she now owned 49 percent of MB Reps and with Myron’s strange travels of late had really carried the load. But after a decade-plus of leading a night lifestyle so hedonistic it would have made Caligula envious, Esperanza had stopped cold, gotten married to the uber-straight Tom, and had a son named Hector. She went from Lindsay Lohan to Carol Brady in four-point-five seconds.

Myron looked in his closet and wondered what to wear to a trendy nightspot. Esperanza had said dress to impress, so he went with his tried and true-jeans-blue-blazer-expensive-loafer look-Mr. Casual Chic-mostly because that was all he owned that fit the bill. There was really little in his closet between jeansblazer and all-out suit, unless you wanted to look like the sales guy at an electronics store.

He grabbed a cab on Central Park West. The cliché of Manhattan taxi drivers is that they are all foreign and barely speak English. The cliché may be true, but it had been at least five years since Myron had actually spoken to one. Despite recent laws, every single cabdriver in New York City wore a mobile-phone Bluetooth in his ear, twenty-four/seven, quietly talking in his native tongue to whoever was on the other end. Manners aside, Myron always wondered whom they had in their lives that wanted to talk to them all day. In this sense, one could argue that these were very lucky men.

Myron figured that he’d see a long line, a velvet rope, something, but as they approached the Seventeenth Street address, there was no sign of any nightclub. Finally he realized that the “Three” stood for the third floor and that “Downing” was the name of the quasi-high-rise in front of him. Someone went to the MB Reps School of Literal Business Naming.

The elevator arrived on the third floor. As soon as the doors slid open, Myron could feel the music’s deep bass in his chest. The long queue of desperate wanna-enters started immediately. Purportedly, people went to clubs like this to have a good time, but the truth was, most stood on a line and ended up with a sharp reminder that they still weren’t cool enough to sit at the popular kids’ lunch table. VIPs walked right past them with nary a glance and somehow that made them want to go in more. There was a velvet rope, of course, signaling their lower status, and it was guarded by three steroid-stuffed bouncers with shaved heads and practiced scowls.

Myron approached with his best Win-like swagger. “Hey, fellas.”

The bouncers ignored him. The biggest of the three wore a black suit with no shirt. None. Suit jacket, no shirt. His chest was nicely waxed, displaying impressive metrosexual cleavage. He was currently dealing with a group of four maybe-twenty-one-year-old girls. They all wore ridiculously high heels-heels were definitely in this year-so that they teetered more than strutted. Their dresses were skimpy enough for a citation, but really, that was nothing new.

The bouncer was examining them cattle-call style. The girls posed and smiled. Myron half expected them to open their mouths so he could examine their teeth.

“You three are okay,” Cleavage told them. “But your friend here is too chunky.”

The chunky girl, who was maybe a size eight, started to cry. Her three waiflike friends gathered in a circle and debated if they should go in without her. The chunky girl ran off in sobs. The friends shrugged and entered. The three bouncers smirked.

Myron said, “Classy.”

The smirks turned his way. Cleavage met Myron’s eyes, offering up a challenge. Myron met his gaze and did not look away. Cleavage looked Myron up and down and clearly found him wanting.

“Nice outfit,” Cleavage said. “You on your way to fight a parking ticket in traffic court?”

His two compadres, both sporting tourniquet-tight Ed Hardy T-shirts, liked that one.

“Right,” Myron said, pointing at the cleavage. “I should have left my shirt at home.”

The bouncer on Cleavage’s left made a surprised O with his mouth.

Cleavage stuck out his thumb, umpire-style. “End of the line, pal. Or better yet, just head out.”

“I’m here to see Lex Ryder.”

“Who says he’s here?”

“I say.”

“And you are?”

“Myron Bolitar.”

Silence. One of them blinked. Myron almost shouted, “Ta-da,” but refrained.

“I’m his agent.”

“Your name isn’t on the list,” Cleavage said.

“And we don’t know who you are,” Surprised O added.

“So”-the third bouncer waved with five beefy fingers-“buh-bye.”

“Irony,” Myron said.

“What?”

“Don’t you guys see the irony?” Myron asked. “You are gatekeepers at a place you yourselves would never be allowed in-and yet, rather than seeing that and thus adding a human touch, you act like even bigger overcompensating ass-clowns.”

More blinking. Then all three stepped toward him, a giant wall of pecs. Myron felt his blood thrum. His fingers tightened into fists. He relaxed them, kept his breathing even. They moved closer. Myron did not step back. Cleavage, the leader, leaned toward him.

“You better go now, bub.”

“Why? Am I too chunky? By the way, seriously, do these jeans make my ass look big? You can tell me.”

The long line of wanna-enters quieted at the sight of this challenge. The bouncers glanced at one another. Myron scolded himself. Talk about counterproductive. He had come here to fetch Lex, not get into it with raging ’roid heads.

Cleavage smiled and said, “Well, well, looks like we have a comedian here.”

“Yeah,” Surprised-O Bouncer said, “a comedian. Ha-ha.”

“Yeah,” his partner said. “You’re a real comedian, aren’t you, funny man?”

“Well,” Myron said, “at the risk of appearing immodest, I’m also a gifted vocalist. I usually open with ‘The Tears of a Clown,’ move into a stripped-down version of ‘Lady’-more Kenny Rogers than Lionel Richie. Not a dry eye in the house.”

Cleavage leaned in close to Myron’s ear, his buddies nearby. “You do realize, of course, that we’re going to have to kick your ass.”

“And you do realize, of course,” Myron said, “that steroids make your testicles shrink.”

Then from behind him, Esperanza said, “He’s with me, Kyle.”

Myron turned, saw Esperanza, and managed not to say, “Wow,” out loud, though it wasn’t easy. He had known Esperanza for two decades now, had worked side by side with her, and sometimes, when you see someone every day and become best friends, you just forget what a total knee-knocking sizzler she is. When they met, Esperanza had been a scantily clad professional wrestler known as Little Pocahontas. Lovely, lithe, and teeth-meltingly hot, she left being the glamour girl of FLOW (Fabulous Ladies of Wrestling) to become his personal assistant while getting her law degree at night. She had moved up the ranks, so to speak, and was now Myron’s partner at MB Reps.

Kleavage Kyle’s face broke into a smile. “Poca? Girl, is that really you? You look good enough to lick like an ice cream cone.”

Myron nodded. “Smooth line, Kyle.”

Esperanza offered her cheek for a buss. “Nice to see you too,” she said.

“Been too long, Poca.”

Esperanza’s dark beauty brought on images of moonlit skies, night walks on the beach, olive trees in a gentle breeze. She wore hoop earrings. Her long black hair always had the perfect muss to it. Her sheer white blouse had been fitted by a benevolent deity; it may have been open a button too low but it was all working.

The three goons stepped back now. One released the velvet rope. Esperanza rewarded him with a dazzling smile. As Myron followed, Kleavage Kyle positioned himself to bump into Myron. Myron braced himself and made sure that Kyle got the worst of it. Esperanza muttered, “Men.”

Kleavage Kyle whispered to Myron: “We ain’t through, bub.”

“We’ll do lunch,” Myron said. “Maybe catch a matinee of South Pacific.”

As they headed inside, Esperanza shot Myron a look and shook her head.

“What?”

“I said dress to impress. You look like you’re heading to a parent-teacher conference for a fifth grader.”

Myron pointed at his feet. “In Ferragamo loafers?”

“And what were you starting up with those Neanderthals for?”

“He called a girl chunky.”

“And you came to her rescue?”

“Well, no. But he said it right to her face. ‘Your friends can come in but you can’t because you’re chunky.’ Who does that?”

The main room in the club was dark with neon accents. There were large-screen TVs in one section because if you’re out at a nightclub, what you really want to do, Myron guessed, was watch TV. The sound system, approximately the size and dimension of a Who stadium concert’s, assaulted the senses. The DJ played “house music,” a practice whereby the “talented” DJ takes what might ordinarily be a decent song and absolutely destroys it by adding some kind of synthesized bass or electronic beat. There was a laser show, something Myron thought went out of style after a Blue Öyster Cult tour in 1979, and a bevy of young thin-sticks oohed and ahhed over a special effect on the dance floor whereby said floor belched steam, as though you couldn’t see that on the street near any Con Ed truck.

Myron tried to shout over the music, but it was pointless. Esperanza led him to a quiet area with, of all things, Web-access terminals. All stations were taken. Again Myron shook his head. You come to a nightclub to surf the Net? He turned back to the dance floor. The women were, in this smoky light, largely on the attractive side, albeit young, and dressed more like they were playing adults than actually being ones. The majority of the women had their cell phones out, skinny fingers tapping off texts; they danced with a languorousness that bordered on comatose.

Esperanza had a small smile on her face.

“What?” Myron said.

She gestured to the right side of the dance floor. “Check out the ass on that chick in the red.”

Myron looked at the crimson-clad dancing buttocks and remembered an Alejandro Escovedo lyric: “I like her better when she walks away.” It had been a long time since Myron had heard Esperanza talk like this.

“Nice,” Myron said.

“Nice?”

“Awesome?”

Esperanza nodded, still smiling. “There are things I could do with an ass like that.”

Looking at the rather erotic dancer and then at Esperanza, an image popped into Myron’s head. He immediately forced it out. There were places your mind best not go when you’re trying to concentrate on other matters. “I’m sure your husband would love that.”

“I’m married, not dead. I can look.”

Myron watched her face, watched the excitement there, the strange feeling that she was back in her element. When her son, Hector, was born two years ago, Esperanza had immediately gone into Mommy-mode. Her desk was suddenly filled with a corny potpourri of classic images: Hector with the Easter Bunny, Hector with Santa Claus, Hector with Disney characters and on kiddie rides at Hershey Park. Her best business clothes were often stained with baby spit-up and rather than hide it, she loved to tell how said spit-up made its way onto her person. She made friends with Mommy types who would have made her gag in the past, and discussed Maclaren strollers and Montessori preschools and bowel movements and what ages their various offspring first crawled/ walked/talked. Her entire world, like many mothers before her-and yes, this was something of a sexist statement-had shrunk down into a small mass of baby flesh.

“So where would Lex be?” Myron asked.

“Probably one of the VIP rooms.”

“How do we get in?”

“I undo one more button,” Esperanza said. “Seriously, let me work it alone for a minute. Check out the bathroom. I bet you twenty bucks you can’t take a pee in the urinal.”

“What?”

“Just bet me and go,” she said, pointing to the right.

Myron shrugged and headed into the restroom. It was black and dark and marble. He stepped over to the urinal and saw immediately what Esperanza meant. The urinals sat on a giant wall of one-way glass like something in a police interrogation room. In short, you saw everything on the dance floor. The languorous women were literally feet away from him, some using the mirror side of the glass to check themselves out, not realizing (or maybe definitely realizing) that they were staring at a man trying to relieve himself.

He headed out. Esperanza had her hand extended, palm up. Myron crossed it with a twenty-dollar bill.

“Still got the shy bladder, I see.”

“Is the women’s room the same?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“So what next?”

Esperanza gestured with her chin at a man with slicked-back hair oiling his way toward them. When he filled out his job application, Myron had little doubt that it read, Last Name: Trash. First Name: Euro. Myron checked the man’s wake for slime tracks.

Euro smiled with ferret teeth. “Poca, mi amor.”

“Anton,” she said, letting him kiss her hand with a tad too much enthusiasm. Myron feared that he might use those ferret teeth to gnaw the skin to bone.

“You are still such a magnificent creature, Poca.”

He spoke with a funny maybe-Hungarian, maybe-Arabic accent, like something he made up for a comedy sketch. Anton was unshaven, the stubble on his face glistening in a not-pleasant way. He wore sunglasses even though it was cave-dark in here.

“This is Anton,” Esperanza said. “He says Lex is in bottle service.”

“Oh,” Myron said, having no idea what bottle service was.

“This way,” Anton said.

They traveled into a sea of bodies. Esperanza was in front of him. Myron got a kick out of watching every neck turn for a second glance. As they continued to wind through the crowd, a few women met Myron’s gaze and held it, though not as many as one, two, five years ago. He felt like an aging pitcher who needed this particular radar gun to tell him that his fastball was losing velocity. Or maybe there was something else at work here. Maybe women just sensed that Myron was engaged now, had been taken off the market by the lovely Terese Collins and thus was no longer to be treated as mere eye candy.

Yeah, Myron thought. Yeah, that had to be it.

Anton used his key to open a door into another room-and seemingly another era. Where the actual club was techno and sleek with hard angles and smooth surfaces, this VIP lounge was done up in Early American Bordello. Plush sofas of burgundy, crystal chandeliers, leather moldings on the ceiling, lit candles on the wall. The room also had another one-way glass wall, so the VIPs could watch the girls dance and maybe choose a few to join them. Several robustly implanted soft-porn model types wore period corsets and merry widows and walked around with champagne bottles, ergo, Myron figured, the term “bottle service.”

“Are you looking at all the bottles?” Esperanza asked.

“Um, close.”

Esperanza nodded, smiled at a particularly well-endowed hostess in a black corset. “Hmm… Could do with a little bottle service myself, if you know what I’m saying.”

Myron thought about it. Then: “Actually, I don’t. You’re both women, right? So I’m not sure I get the bottle reference.”

“God, you’re literal.”

“You asked if I was looking at all the bottles. Why?”

“Because they’re serving Cristal champagne,” Esperanza said.

“So?”

“How many bottles do you see?”

Myron glanced around. “I don’t know, nine, maybe ten.”

“They go for eight grand a pop here, plus tip.”

Myron put his hand to his chest, feigning heart palpitations. He spotted Lex Ryder sprawled on a couch with a colorful assortment of lovelies. The other men in the room all shouted aging musician/ roadie-long hair weaves, bandanas, facial hair, wiry arms, soft guts. Myron made his way through them.

“Hello, Lex.”

Lex’s head lolled to the side. He looked up and shouted with too much gusto, “Myron!”

Lex tried to get up, couldn’t, so Myron offered him a hand. Lex used it, managed to get to his feet, and hugged Myron with the slobbering enthusiasm men save for too much drink. “Oh man, it’s so good to see you.”

HorsePower had started off as a house band in Lex and Gabriel’s hometown of Melbourne, Australia. The name had come from Lex’s last name Ryder (Horse-Ryder) and Gabriel’s last name Wire (Power-Wire), but from the moment they started together, it was all about Gabriel. Gabriel Wire had a wonderful voice, sure, and he was ridiculously handsome with nearly supernatural charisma-but he also had that elusive, intangible, the “you know it when you see it” quality that raises the greats to the status of legendary.

Must be hard, Myron often thought, for Lex-or anyone-to live in that shadow. Sure, Lex was famous and rich and technically speaking, all songs were Wire-Ryder productions, though Myron, being the one who handled his finances, knew Lex’s cut was 25 percent to Gabriel’s 75. And sure, women still hit on him, men still wanted to be his friend, but Lex was also the ultimate late-night punch line, the butt of all jokes involving second-to-the-point-of-irrelevancy bananas.

HorsePower was still huge, maybe bigger than ever, even though Gabriel Wire had gone completely underground after a tragic scandal more than fifteen years ago. With the exception of a few paparazzi shots and a lot of rumors, there had been pretty much no sign of Gabriel Wire in all that time-no touring, no interviews, no press, no public appearances. All that secrecy just made the public hunger for Wire all the more.

“I think it’s time to go home, Lex.”

“Nah, Myron,” he said, voice thick with what Myron hoped was just drink. “Come on now. We’re having fun. Aren’t we having fun, gang?”

Various vocalizations of agreement. Myron looked around. He may have met one or two of the guys before, but the only one he knew for certain was Buzz, Lex’s longtime bodyguard/personal assistant. Buzz met Myron’s eye and shrugged as if to say, what can you do?

Lex threw his arm around Myron, draping it over his neck like a camera strap. “Sit, old friend. Let’s have a drink, relax, unwind.”

“Suzze is worried about you.”

“Is she now?” Lex arched an eyebrow. “And so she sent her old errand boy to come fetch me?”

“Technically speaking, I’m your errand boy too, Lex.”

“Ah, agents. That most mercenary of occupations.”

Lex wore black pants and a black leather vest, and it looked like he’d just gone clothes shopping at Rockers R Us. His hair was gray now, cut very short. Collapsing back on the couch, he said, “Sit, Myron.”

“Why don’t we take a walk, Lex?”

“You’re my errand boy too, right? I said, sit.”

He had a point. Myron found a spot and sank deep and slow into the cushions. Lex turned a knob to his right and the music lowered. Someone handed Myron a glass of champagne, spilling a bit as they did. Most of the tight-corset ladies-and let’s face it, in any era, that’s a look that works-were gone now, without much notice, as though they’d faded into the walls. Esperanza was chatting up the one she’d been checking out when they entered the room. The other men in the room watched the two women flirt with the fascination of cavemen first seeing fire.

Buzz was smoking a cigarette that smelled, uh, funny. He looked to pass it off to Myron. Myron shook his head and turned toward Lex. Lex lounged back as though someone had given him a muscle relaxant.

“Suzze showed you the post?” Lex asked.

“Yes.”

“So what’s your take, Myron?”

“A random lunatic playing head games.”

Lex took a deep sip of champagne. “You really think so?”

“I do,” Myron said, “but either way it’s the twenty-first century.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning it’s not that big a deal. You can get a DNA test, if you’re so concerned about it-establish paternity for certain.”

Lex nodded slowly, took another deep sip. Myron tried to stay out of agent mode, but the bottle held 750 ml, which is approximately 25 ounces, divided by $8,000 dollars, equaled $320 per ounce.

“I hear you’re engaged,” Lex said.

“Yup.”

“Let’s drink to that.”

“Or sip. Sipping is cheaper.”

“Relax, Myron. I’m filthy rich.”

True enough. They drank.

“So what’s bothering you, Lex?”

Lex ignored the question. “So how come I haven’t met your new bride-to-be?”

“It’s a long story.”

“Where is she now?”

Myron kept it vague. “Overseas.”

“May I give you some advice on marriage?”

“How about, ‘Don’t believe stupid Internet rumors about paternity’?”

Lex grinned. “Good one.”

Myron said, “Meh.”

“But here’s the advice: Be open with each other. Totally open.”

Myron waited. When Lex didn’t follow up, Myron said, “That’s it?”

“You expected something deeper?”

Myron shrugged. “Kinda.”

“There’s this song I love,” Lex said. “The lyric says, ‘Your heart is like a parachute.’ Do you know why?”

“I think the line is about a mind being like a parachute-it only functions when it’s open.”

“No, I know that line. This one is a better, ‘Your heart is like a parachute-it only opens when you fall.’ ” He smiled. “Good, right?”

“I guess.”

“We all have friends in our lives, like, well, take my mates in here. I love them, I party with them, we talk about weather and sports and hot pieces of ass, but if I didn’t see them for a year-or really, ever again-it wouldn’t make much difference in my life. That’s how it is with most people we know.”

He took another sip. The door behind them opened. A bunch of giggling women entered. Lex shook his head, and they vanished back out the door. “And then,” he went on, “every once in a while, you have a real friend. Like Buzz over there. We talk about everything. We know the truth about each other-every sick, depraved flaw. Do you have friends like that?”

“Esperanza knows I have a shy bladder,” Myron said.

“What?”

“Never mind. Go on. I know what you’re saying.”

“Right, so anyway, real friends. You let them see the sick crap that goes on in your brain. The ugly.” He sat up, getting into it now. “And you know what’s odd about that kind of thing? You know what happens when you’re totally open and let the other person see that you’re a total degenerate?”

Myron shook his head.

“Your friend loves you even more. With everyone else, you put up this façade so you can hide the crud and make them like you. But with real friends, you show them the crud-and that makes them care. When we get rid of the façade, we connect more. So why don’t we do that with everyone, Myron? I ask you.”

“I guess you’re going to tell me.”

“Damned if I know.” Lex sat back, took a deep sip, tilted his head in thought. “But here’s the thing: The façade is, by nature, a lie. That’s okay for the most part. But if you don’t open up to the one you love most-if you don’t show the flaws-you can’t connect. You are, in fact, keeping secrets. And those secrets fester and destroy.”

The door opened again. Four women and two men stumbled in, giggling and smiling and holding obscenely overpriced champagne in their hands.

“So what secrets are you keeping from Suzze?” Myron asked.

He just shook his head. “It’s a two-way street, mate.”

“So what secrets is Suzze keeping from you?”

Lex did not reply. He was looking across the room. Myron turned to follow his gaze.

And then he saw her.

Or at least he thought that he did. A blink of an eye across the VIP lounge, candlelit and smoky. Myron hadn’t seen her since that snowy night sixteen years ago, her belly swollen, the tears running down her cheeks, the blood flowing through her fingers. He hadn’t even kept tabs on them, but the last he had heard they were living somewhere in South America.

Their eyes met across the room for a second, no more. And as impossible as it seemed, Myron knew.

“Kitty?”

His voice was drowned out by the music, but Kitty did not hesitate. Her eyes widened a bit-fear maybe?-and then she spun. She ran for the door. Myron tried to get up fast, but the cushion-sucking sofa slowed him down. By the time he got to his feet, Kitty Bolitar-Myron’s sister-in-law, the woman who had taken away so much from him-was out the door.