“No,” said Miles.
“You will one day; trust me,” I said. I turned back to Tracy and Ms. Winston. “Sorry for interrupting. We were trying to whisper.”
“It was more the smell,” said Tracy with a nod toward the bag in my hand.
“Is that Dinosaur’s?” asked Ms. Winston. “It’s got to be, right?”
“Yes, and there’s plenty of it,” I said. “Have you eaten lunch yet?”
“Thanks for offering,” she said. “We actually have a lesson to get to.”
“I play the trumpet, too,” said Miles. “I’m not as good as Miles Davis yet, though.”
“That’s what the lessons are for,” I said. “Right?”
“Yeah, and lots of practice in between. Sometimes I like to play in front of my window in our apartment and pretend that the whole world is watching me,” said Miles.
“Maybe one day it will be,” I said. You never know.
Tracy walked Miles and his mother out as I waited in his office. I was emptying the bag from Dinosaur’s when he returned.
“So are you trying to cheer me up or just put me in a food coma?” he said, staring at the feast laid out on his desk.
“It is a lot, isn’t it?”
“No, it’s perfect,” he said. “I really appreciate it. Thank you.”
“I was worried,” I said.
“I know you were. But this place is the best cure for feeling sorry for yourself,” he said. “Miles and his mother? They might be homeless in a week. Their landlord thinks he found a loophole in their rent-controlled status.”
“Did he?” I asked.
“I don’t care if he did. I’m going to close it,” said Tracy.
That wasn’t the lawyer speaking; that was the former Academic All-American lacrosse player who played his last three games as a senior with two cracked ribs. Always determined, never deterred. That was Tracy.
“So do you want to make the call to the adoption agency on Monday morning or should I?” I asked as we began eating.
“None of the above,” said Tracy, popping a spicy shrimp into his mouth.
He had a different idea.
Chapter 12
TEN HOURS later and more than a hundred blocks south, Bryce VonMiller—black sheep son of famed restaurateur Aaron VonMiller—was coked out of his mind, something he hadn’t been for years. Cocaine, after all, was the pay phone of drugs. Still around but barely ever used.
Instead Bryce’s usual party drug of choice was Ecstasy, and lots of it, although he wouldn’t have been caught dead—or, even worse, caught by an undercover narc—calling it that.
Bean, blue kisses, white dove, thiz, hug drug, disco biscuits, Skittles…
Proper slang was a badge of honor for the twenty-three-year-old regular of the Manhattan club scene, but it wasn’t enough to stay current. You had to stay ahead.
Same for the drugs themselves. Bryce had been one of the first in the city to try the concentrated form of Ecstasy, called Molly. He was always on the lookout for the next big thing, the latest high.
Tonight, though, he was going decidedly retro with some good old-fashioned blow, inspired by the recently opened White Lines, a 1980s throwback club in SoHo. Saturday was their masquerade night, but it wasn’t about wearing masks. Instead the theme was the classic eighties B movie Masquerade, starring Rob Lowe, Meg Tilly, Kim Cattrall, and Doug Savant, the actor who played “the gay guy” on Melrose Place. Dress up as any one of them and the fifty-dollar cover charge was waived.
Grinding on the dance floor with a mixture of Tillys and Cattralls, Bryce thought he looked pretty damn fetching in his tight shorts and polo shirt, the same outfit Rob Lowe wore throughout most of the movie. It was the hair, though, that was key. Feathered just so, it was longer than what Lowe sported in Oxford Blues but not quite as long as his St. Elmo’s Fire look.
“I’ll be right back,” Bryce lied to some random Tilly he’d been making out with under the dozen or so mirrored balls hanging from the ceiling, which looked like the Liberace solar system. After a DJ mash-up of Duran Duran’s “The Wild Boys” and “Girls on Film,” it was time to look for trouble elsewhere.
Sweat dripping down his cheeks, Bryce strolled into the Leather Room, toward the back of the club, which had been renamed the Junk Bondage Room for the night. With images of Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken—both with and without his toupee—projected on the walls and ceiling, Bryce watched for a minute as a naked S and M couple took turns hitting each other with horse whips while sucking on cherry-flavored Ring Pops.
Ho-hum.
After a shot of absinthe at the bar, Bryce slipped a Benjamin to the man working the velvet rope of the VIP Room, but there was only a collection of Eurotrash sprawled on the sofas. For most of these shiny-shirt-wearing clowns, an eighties bar was a contemporary setting.
Quickly Bryce was out of there, a waste of a hundred dollars.
Then again, it wasn’t like it was his money. It had been earned by his father, who got it by wildly overcharging tourists and self-proclaimed foodies for Wagyu beef sliders and “fresh” Miyagi oysters FedExed in from the Karakuwa Peninsula. Domo arigato, suckers!
Finally Bryce ended up in the men’s room for the least likely reason that any guy at White Lines ever ended up in the men’s room: he actually had to take a piss. Before he could, he was approached by a guy wearing black Ray-Bans and a shoulder-length blond wig.
“Hey,” said the guy.
“Hey, yourself,” said Bryce back.
He knew most of the dudes in the neon-lit bathroom were there for one of two things—getting high or giving head. Bryce just didn’t know which of the two this guy was leaning toward.
“Pulp?” the guy asked.
Pulp?
Clearly he wasn’t talking about orange juice. It was a drug. But Bryce had never heard of it before. How could that be?
No matter. For the first time that night, Bryce VonMiller was genuinely interested in something. Intrigued.
“Tell me more,” he said.
Chapter 13
“IN HERE,” said the guy, motioning to the last stall. Step into my office…
Bryce followed him, any reservations subdued by the rush of the unknown—and, he hoped, an even greater rush after that. It had a nice ring to it, he thought. Concise and catchy. Pulp. All the kids are doing it—but not before I do it first.
“Who are you supposed to be, by the way?” Bryce asked the guy, eyeing his wig and sunglasses, which all but obscured his face.
“Michael Caine,” the guy answered.
Huh?
“Not exactly seeing it,” said Bryce with a chuckle. “Besides, he wasn’t in Masquerade.”
“Yes, I know. He was in a different movie from the eighties. I liked it much better.”
Bryce was about to ask which movie when the guy opened his palm to reveal a small syringe, half the size of a crayon. An orange crayon. The liquid loaded in the barrel was bright orange.
“What’s up with the color?” asked Bryce.
“Pulp,” said the guy. “Like with orange juice.” Get it?