that the average member was at least forty years old, if not fifty.
Parker Crane was not the average member.
Where most members of the Jameson Club had soft, doughy faces, with great jowls and wrinkled brows, worn from the countless demands made of New York's elite, Parker Crane's face was thin and angular, with a large nose that seemed from some angles almost like the beak of a predatory bird. He was a young man, no older than thirty, and it was generally agreed in the society pages that his sharp features and severe grey eyes, as well as his air of coldness and distance, lent him a powerful charisma. Many starlets and society beauties had fallen foul of the 'Crane effect', though he was careful not to allow his dalliances to sully the image of the Club. One must, after all, have priorities.
Crane had inherited most of his wealth from an uncle who had died - murdered by a burglar, according to the rumours - and was now a gentleman of leisure, dabbling in photography. It was one of those professions that allowed the independently wealthy to squander their time in its margins, and Crane was a noted presence in fashion-forward circles; the futurehead trend was slowly but surely giving way to pop and op-art creations informed by a return to the Warhol era. Warhol himself, in his old age, was consumed by the idea of inaugurating a new style, a basic, simple look combining jean trousers in denim with a clean t-shirt and athletic plimsolls, perhaps with a workman's shirt over the top. This, he said, was the costume people would wear in the world he saw in his head.
"Imagine, uh, a world where everything was simple, where you could just clap your hands and, uh, light would appear. That's the basis of all this. What if you could make light without effort? We have so much machinery, so much industry, and I feel like, uh, in New York we're on the point of breaking through into a different aesthetic. Machinery without machinery."
He would talk for hours about the possibilities of his mental world. Restaurants where people ate flavoured foams and used liquid gases to create astonishing desserts. A means of recording all human information and calling it up at a moment's notice, so every man could have a whole library at his fingertips. A global telephone system, so there could be calls from New York to London, from London to Paris, as easily as calling across town.
"If, uh, we had all this, if we could do all this... what would it look like? That's where all my work is headed. To try and break into this other world, this dream world, to try and replicate it and bring it here so, uh, so I can live in it."
The newspapers called it dreampunk .
Crane was a presence on the edges of Warhol's Factory, often featured in fashion magazines on either side of the camera, although his work was competent at best. Mostly, those in the know were intrigued less by his talent as a photographer and more by his wealth and status, and the dichotomy he represented - on the one hand, the cold, severe traditionalist, the youngest member of the Jameson Club, and on the other, the young photographer with a model on each arm and an eye for the future of fashion. The usual line taken by gossip columnists was that Parker Crane had 'a secret identity'.
They could not have been more right.
"Master Parker?"
Jonah was a tall, deferential man with an impeccably trimmed toothbrush moustache. As majordomo of the Jameson Club, he commanded an army of servants and maids whose function was to be silent and invisible until they could be of service, and then to simply appear, as if by magic, without being asked or even looked for. To speak to Crane in person, instead of sending a servant for the task, was a mark of supreme respect, and Crane took it as such. He put down the fashion spread he was reading and gave Jonah his full attention.
"Ms. Lang left a message just now enquiring as to whether you would be free to join her for coffee at the Rockefeller at noon,
Parker Crane was not the average member.
Where most members of the Jameson Club had soft, doughy faces, with great jowls and wrinkled brows, worn from the countless demands made of New York's elite, Parker Crane's face was thin and angular, with a large nose that seemed from some angles almost like the beak of a predatory bird. He was a young man, no older than thirty, and it was generally agreed in the society pages that his sharp features and severe grey eyes, as well as his air of coldness and distance, lent him a powerful charisma. Many starlets and society beauties had fallen foul of the 'Crane effect', though he was careful not to allow his dalliances to sully the image of the Club. One must, after all, have priorities.
Crane had inherited most of his wealth from an uncle who had died - murdered by a burglar, according to the rumours - and was now a gentleman of leisure, dabbling in photography. It was one of those professions that allowed the independently wealthy to squander their time in its margins, and Crane was a noted presence in fashion-forward circles; the futurehead trend was slowly but surely giving way to pop and op-art creations informed by a return to the Warhol era. Warhol himself, in his old age, was consumed by the idea of inaugurating a new style, a basic, simple look combining jean trousers in denim with a clean t-shirt and athletic plimsolls, perhaps with a workman's shirt over the top. This, he said, was the costume people would wear in the world he saw in his head.
"Imagine, uh, a world where everything was simple, where you could just clap your hands and, uh, light would appear. That's the basis of all this. What if you could make light without effort? We have so much machinery, so much industry, and I feel like, uh, in New York we're on the point of breaking through into a different aesthetic. Machinery without machinery."
He would talk for hours about the possibilities of his mental world. Restaurants where people ate flavoured foams and used liquid gases to create astonishing desserts. A means of recording all human information and calling it up at a moment's notice, so every man could have a whole library at his fingertips. A global telephone system, so there could be calls from New York to London, from London to Paris, as easily as calling across town.
"If, uh, we had all this, if we could do all this... what would it look like? That's where all my work is headed. To try and break into this other world, this dream world, to try and replicate it and bring it here so, uh, so I can live in it."
The newspapers called it dreampunk .
Crane was a presence on the edges of Warhol's Factory, often featured in fashion magazines on either side of the camera, although his work was competent at best. Mostly, those in the know were intrigued less by his talent as a photographer and more by his wealth and status, and the dichotomy he represented - on the one hand, the cold, severe traditionalist, the youngest member of the Jameson Club, and on the other, the young photographer with a model on each arm and an eye for the future of fashion. The usual line taken by gossip columnists was that Parker Crane had 'a secret identity'.
They could not have been more right.
"Master Parker?"
Jonah was a tall, deferential man with an impeccably trimmed toothbrush moustache. As majordomo of the Jameson Club, he commanded an army of servants and maids whose function was to be silent and invisible until they could be of service, and then to simply appear, as if by magic, without being asked or even looked for. To speak to Crane in person, instead of sending a servant for the task, was a mark of supreme respect, and Crane took it as such. He put down the fashion spread he was reading and gave Jonah his full attention.
"Ms. Lang left a message just now enquiring as to whether you would be free to join her for coffee at the Rockefeller at noon,
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