Jamey hands the bouncer three crisp hundred-dollar bills to slip into the Ninth Avenue club. He and Elise hold hands when they enter the stenciled door like kids about to jump in a pool.
Inside, the bass churns the crowd, rumbling through bodies. It almost seems that a stage disintegrated and the performers fell into the crowd. A woman in white slacks with duct-taped nipples smokes a Cuban cigar. A banker wears a Savile Row suit, his tiara tilted, his eyes ruined. A fuchsia crocodile hangs on the wall, life-sized and dead, descending to eat everyone. The girl in the dime-store satin dress scrounged train fare from Massapequa to get here tonight. Anyone can tell by looking that she bought a one-way ticket, and this is the underpinning of her glamour.
They go from club to club. Egos crow like roosters, all these inner childs coked to the gills, and the coat-room boy and society man fall in love for one hour. The ladies in diamonds won’t come out of the stall, having too much fun, watery liquor spills from plastic glasses, a gown is violently slit to the thigh, computerized music pings and twangs. What time is it? A blond girl checks—Where? she asks, because each of the eight transparent watches on her arm represents a zone.
Jamey gets home after a meaningless day at Sotheby’s, inventorying porcelain Bavarian plates. The evening sky is dry with hot clouds. Jamey is supposed to meet Alex at Harry’s for another “talk,” but he suggests to Elise they go dancing instead, and glibly leaves a message with Alex’s secretary.
“Won’t your dad be mad?” Elise asks.
“Very,” Jamey says.
Jamey suggests starting the night with oysters at the Plaza. Their taxi driver is an old man, with white sideburns under a fedora, who speeds up at red lights.
They meet a couple as they finish their second dozen at the bar.
“I’m Tom, this is my wife, Sheryl. Mind if we take a seat?” the man asks, pointing to the wooden stools.
“Go ahead,” says Jamey.
“Oddly enough, we’ve been here before but never on a Wednesday,” Tom says, surveying the place.
Later he says, “My wife and I, weirdly enough, were born on the same day, just two years apart.”
“Isn’t that bananas?” Sheryl asks, touching a cocktail stirrer to her bottom lip.
Tom buys the next round. Jamey reaches for his wallet, and Sheryl puts her hand on his arm; her burgundy nails flex. “Oh, let him. He’s had a good month. He gets sort of spendy, and I don’t see why not.”
The four of them are giddy, Elise and Jamey not sure why, until eventually they realize, and then realize they’ve known all along.
Sheryl is telling the couple they should join her and Tom on a cruise in December.
Jamey and Elise look at each other, and almost lose it. Elise cuts eye contact with Jamey in a desperate attempt not to laugh. “Where to?”
“Meh-hee-co,” Tom says.
“God, I wish I could get off work long enough. Sounds fun!” Jamey says.
“Next time,” Sheryl says.
The bar’s closing. Tom invites them up for a nightcap, one last drink before they go home. “Our room’s got a stupendous view. Why not. No reason why not.”
Elise and Jamey grin hesitantly at each other. Try to read each other’s face.
“Why not is right,” Elise says, making the decision, and looking at Jamey as she says this.
As they all walk the opulent carpet on the tenth floor of the hotel, Jamey takes her hand, and voltage jumps from his body to hers.
Jamey hangs the Do Not Disturb sign on the door.
It’s strange and beautiful for Elise to taste Sheryl’s perfumed lipstick; it’s like hearing her own voice on the radio or something.
Jamey and Elise sit on either side of Sheryl. They all have their thighs squeezed shut, like nervous and polite schoolkids on a bus seat, and Jamey and Elise each have a hand inside Sheryl’s unbuttoned shirt.
Jamey ends up on a king-sized bed, positioned between four legs. Elise is lying on top of Sheryl; he moves from Elise, to Sheryl, back to Elise. It shouldn’t be that different, but one has nothing to do with the other.
This can’t be happening. It’s like finding out that the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy, after years of nonexistence, are alive and well. It takes effort.
Tom is doing something in the peach jacquard chair, and encouraging them all sincerely, in a low voice.
Jamey is starting to operate in a trance, biting his lip. He’s a mystical version of an orangutan in a nature show. He actually has the thought: I’m a monkey, and that’s okay. He’s got a dumb look on his face and that’s okay. For a minute, an hour later, right before he comes again, with two tongues licking him like kittens, he understands everything.
At daybreak, Tom is knotting his tie when he thinks of something.
“You two want our tickets for tonight? We got third row for Chorus Line. Can’t use them. You’d be doing us a favor because otherwise the tickets will go to waste.”
“Why aren’t you going?” asks Elise, lacing her high-tops, braids hanging to the floor.
Sheryl’s brother just got engaged and they’re flying down for the party.
“Overnight Bobby decided,” Sheryl says. “That’s how he does things.”
“Yeah, so, he got in a boat accident a couple months ago. Two catamarans, actually—in Florida. And he fell in love with a girl on the other boat.”
“Nice girl,” Sheryl adds, clipping her earring on. “I think. We haven’t met her.”
Sheryl moves to the window, one hand in her Gloria Vanderbilt jeans pocket, the other holding a croissant smeared with apricot jam. She starts tearing up.
“What’s wrong?” asks Jamey when he notices.
“It’s okay,” Tom assures him.
“What happened?” Elise asks.
“It’s so beautiful,” Sheryl finally murmurs, looking at the pale-blue buildings, the massive world they can’t hear through the glass.
“She loves the cityscape in the morning,” Tom says, almost proudly.
They’re tired when they get home from the Broadway show. Fucked out, eyelids full of spotlights, starry-brained. They fall asleep holding hands.
The phone rings at dawn. Elise picks up.
“Who’s this?” Alex asks roughly.
“Who’s this?” she says.
“Give me my son.”
“He’s sleeping,” she says crisply, and hangs up with finality.
Jamey groans, but doesn’t wake, while Elise listens to her heart pound.
Something in that man’s voice sounded like doom, and she decides right in this moment not to tell Jamey the truth about their future. Not now. She’ll carry it alone, as long as she can. She kneels in the sheets, still and silent in this game of hide-and-seek, feeling invisible just because she closes her own eyes.
Walking to work the next morning, Jamey’s gait has an extra beat.