and her together?
Taylor suddenly gave a brief laugh as she realized the title of the tune she found herself playing, selected by some subconscious hiccup.
The song was “Someone to Watch Over Me.”
“Hey,” the young man shouted over the music cascading from the club’s million-decibel sound system, “I’m sorry I’m late. Are you still speaking to me?”
The blond woman glanced at the chubby man. “What?” she called.
“I can’t believe I kept you waiting.”
She looked over his smooth baby-fatted skin, the newscaster’s perfect hair, the gray suit, wing tips, Cartier watch. He examined her right back: red angular dress, paisley black stockings, black hat and veil. Small tits, he noticed, but a lot of skin was exposed.
“What?” she shouted again. Though she’d heard his words; he knew she had.
“I got held up,” he explained, hands clasped together in prayer. “I can’t really go into it. It’s an unpleasant story.”
These were lines he used a lot in clubs like this. Cute lines, silly lines. As soon as the women realized that they’d never seen him before and that he was hitting on them in a major way, they usually rolled their eyes and said, “Fuck off.”
But sometimes, just sometimes, they didn’t. This one said nothing yet. She was taking her time. She watched him sending out Morse code with something in his hand, tapping it against the bar absently, while he smiled his flirts toward her.
Tap, tap, tap.
“I thought for sure you would’ve left. Would’ve served me right. Keeping a beautiful woman waiting,” said this young man with a slight swell of double chin and a belly testing his Tripler’s 42-inch alligator belt.
The process of scoring in a place like this was, of course, like negotiating. You had to play a role, act, be somebody else.
Tap, tap, tap.
The club was an old warehouse, sitting on a commercial street in downtown Manhattan, deserted except for the cluster of supplicants crowding around the ponytailed, baggy-jacketed doorman, who selected Those Who Might Enter with a grudging flick of a finger.
Thom Sebastian was never denied entrance.
Tap, tap, tap.
True, mostly the women roll their eyes and tell him to fuck off. But sometimes they did what she was doing now: looking down at the telegraph key—a large vial of coke—and saying, “Hi, I’m Veronica.”
He reacted to the gift of her name like a shark tasting blood in the water. He moved in fast, sitting next to her, shaking her hand for a lengthy moment.
“Thom,” he said.
The sound system’s speakers, as tall as the six-foot-six, blue-gowned transvestite dancing in front of them, sent fluttering bass waves into their faces and chests. The smell was a pungent mix of cigarette smoke and a gassy, ozonelike scent—from the fake fog.
Tap, tap, tap.
He offered his boyish grin while she rambled on about careers—she sold something in some store somewhere but wanted to get into something else. Sebastian nodded and murmured single-word encouragements and mentally tumbled forward, caught in the soft avalanche of anticipation. He saw the evening unfold before him: They’d hit the john, duck into a stall and do a fast line or two of coke. No nookie yet, nor would he expect any. After that they’d leave and goover to Meg’s, where he was a regular. Then out for pasta. After that, when it was pushing 3 A.M ., he’d ask her with mock trepidation if she ever went north of Fourteenth Street.
A car-service Lincoln up to his apartment.
Your condom or mine …
And later, after a Val or ’lude to come down, they’d sleep. Up at eight-thirty the next morning, share the shower, take turns with the hair dryer, give her a kiss. She’d cab it home. He’d down some speed and head to Hubbard, White & Willis for another day of lawyering.
Tap, tap, tap …
“Hey,” Thom said, interrupting her as she was saying
something
, “how about—”
But there was a disturbance. Another incarnation of Veronica
Taylor suddenly gave a brief laugh as she realized the title of the tune she found herself playing, selected by some subconscious hiccup.
The song was “Someone to Watch Over Me.”
“Hey,” the young man shouted over the music cascading from the club’s million-decibel sound system, “I’m sorry I’m late. Are you still speaking to me?”
The blond woman glanced at the chubby man. “What?” she called.
“I can’t believe I kept you waiting.”
She looked over his smooth baby-fatted skin, the newscaster’s perfect hair, the gray suit, wing tips, Cartier watch. He examined her right back: red angular dress, paisley black stockings, black hat and veil. Small tits, he noticed, but a lot of skin was exposed.
“What?” she shouted again. Though she’d heard his words; he knew she had.
“I got held up,” he explained, hands clasped together in prayer. “I can’t really go into it. It’s an unpleasant story.”
These were lines he used a lot in clubs like this. Cute lines, silly lines. As soon as the women realized that they’d never seen him before and that he was hitting on them in a major way, they usually rolled their eyes and said, “Fuck off.”
But sometimes, just sometimes, they didn’t. This one said nothing yet. She was taking her time. She watched him sending out Morse code with something in his hand, tapping it against the bar absently, while he smiled his flirts toward her.
Tap, tap, tap.
“I thought for sure you would’ve left. Would’ve served me right. Keeping a beautiful woman waiting,” said this young man with a slight swell of double chin and a belly testing his Tripler’s 42-inch alligator belt.
The process of scoring in a place like this was, of course, like negotiating. You had to play a role, act, be somebody else.
Tap, tap, tap.
The club was an old warehouse, sitting on a commercial street in downtown Manhattan, deserted except for the cluster of supplicants crowding around the ponytailed, baggy-jacketed doorman, who selected Those Who Might Enter with a grudging flick of a finger.
Thom Sebastian was never denied entrance.
Tap, tap, tap.
True, mostly the women roll their eyes and tell him to fuck off. But sometimes they did what she was doing now: looking down at the telegraph key—a large vial of coke—and saying, “Hi, I’m Veronica.”
He reacted to the gift of her name like a shark tasting blood in the water. He moved in fast, sitting next to her, shaking her hand for a lengthy moment.
“Thom,” he said.
The sound system’s speakers, as tall as the six-foot-six, blue-gowned transvestite dancing in front of them, sent fluttering bass waves into their faces and chests. The smell was a pungent mix of cigarette smoke and a gassy, ozonelike scent—from the fake fog.
Tap, tap, tap.
He offered his boyish grin while she rambled on about careers—she sold something in some store somewhere but wanted to get into something else. Sebastian nodded and murmured single-word encouragements and mentally tumbled forward, caught in the soft avalanche of anticipation. He saw the evening unfold before him: They’d hit the john, duck into a stall and do a fast line or two of coke. No nookie yet, nor would he expect any. After that they’d leave and goover to Meg’s, where he was a regular. Then out for pasta. After that, when it was pushing 3 A.M ., he’d ask her with mock trepidation if she ever went north of Fourteenth Street.
A car-service Lincoln up to his apartment.
Your condom or mine …
And later, after a Val or ’lude to come down, they’d sleep. Up at eight-thirty the next morning, share the shower, take turns with the hair dryer, give her a kiss. She’d cab it home. He’d down some speed and head to Hubbard, White & Willis for another day of lawyering.
Tap, tap, tap …
“Hey,” Thom said, interrupting her as she was saying
something
, “how about—”
But there was a disturbance. Another incarnation of Veronica
Similar Books
