“Fuck no.” He smiles nervously. “Why would you think I’m a cop?”
My spirit of caution finally gives way to the greedy desire to more than double my daily pay. I follow the kid across the street into an office building. We walk past a front desk, nodding at the security guard, and ride an empty elevator to the twenty-third floor.
As soon as the doors close, he extends a hand. “Rick Cleary.”
“Okay.” I ignore his hand.
“So are you, like, Danny’s drug dealer?”
“I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know, I know. Just the question about me being a cop.” I scan the elevator for potential hidden cameras, pretending not to hear him. “You don’t want to talk about it, that’s chill.”
We reach the twenty-third floor, where a reception desk welcomes us to DC Investments. The desk is empty, as are most of the cubicles Rick leads me past on the way to the corner office. Inside, a guy in the right suit but with Art Garfunkel hair barks what sounds like Japanese into a speakerphone. Danny Carr, I presume. Noticing me, he gestures toward the couch. Noticing Rick, he waves angrily toward the exit. Rick backs out like a geisha, closing the door behind him.
As I settle into the black leather, Danny reaches into a cabinet behind him, pulling out an unfamiliar appliance that reminds me of a birdhouse I built in tenth-grade wood shop. This birdhouse is wired for electricity, I note when he jams the plug into the wall, causing a light in the box to glow neon green. Without breaking from his conversation in Japanese, Danny returns to the cabinet for a two-foot length of surgical tubing and a small metal disk about the size of a can of Skoal.
“Where’s Carlos?” he says, finishing his call.
Carlos was my predecessor, the kid I’d seen smashing his Motorola in the stairwell. “I’m the new Carlos,” I say.
“New Carlos.” He chuckles. “Like New Coke. Let’s hope you last a little longer. You don’t look like a drug dealer.”
“It’s funny. Everyone keeps telling me that.”
“Carlos and I had a few arrangements, is all. Among them a little extra juice for making the trip upstairs.” He peels two hundred-dollar bills from a money clip and hands them to me. “You don’t mind, do you?”
“I guess not.” My eyes drift back toward the birdhouse.
“It’s called a vaporizer,” he explains. “My cousin sent me one from Los On-hell-eez. It’s like a health food thing. No tar—just pure THC. Just takes forever to heat up.” Danny pulls out a pack of Vantages and bangs it against his hand a couple of times before offering me one. I shake my head no. My pager’s already buzzing again.
“I should get going.”
“The Candyman’s work is never done. But while I’ve got you here, let me run something else by you. Another arrangement I had with Carlos. These skimpyass quarters are fine for the office,” he says, gesturing at the bag I’ve placed on his desk. “But for the weekend, I need a little weight. I know: They’ve already told you they don’t do weight.”
He’s right: Rico made it clear, during our time together, that transactions involving anything above and beyond the “gentleman’s quarter” are forbidden by papal decree. It’s the kind of modesty that keeps the Pontiff under the radar and out of jail. It’s also, he hinted, the reason why Carlos was fired.
“First day,” I say, holding up my hands in surrender.
“Sure,” Danny says, handing me a business card. “When you change your mind, there’s an extra five hundred dollars a week in it for you.”
I MEET THE NEXT CUSTOMER at the corner of Twenty-third Street and Seventh Avenue. My first thought is: Who knew so many beautiful women smoked pot?
My next thought: She’s a he. Not a transvestite… just, I have to admit, a very attractive man wearing skintight leather pants and black mascara.
He screams when he sees me. “Yah! Pleeeease tell me you’ve got the damn weed!” He stomps his foot impatiently while I take him through the standard script, but manages all the right answers. Until we get to the part about the money.
“Fuuuuck!” He fumbles through his pockets, coming up with a condom and some lint.
“We’re done here,” I say, walking back toward the subway station.
He grabs my shoulder. I spin toward him, putting on what I hope is a scowl. I consider myself more lover than fighter, but I’m not about to get intimidated by a guy wearing eyeliner. “You’re violating my personal space,” I say.
“Follow me back to the crib. Kristof’s got the scratch.”
“Call again when you’re flush.” I turn again to leave.
“It’s right down the goddamn street. You know the Hotel Chelsea?”
5
I HAVE SEEN SID AND NANCY FOURTEEN TIMES.
Despite what you probably think, I’m not some crazyass obsessive fan. I mean, it’s a great movie, even if they got Johnny Rotten all wrong. A love story that isn’t full of shit, that recognizes the stupidity of it all—true love, impossible in the real world, only leads to pain.
But that’s not the reason I’ve seen it fourteen times. I’ve seen it fourteen times because it was the only movie Daphne owned, and we were usually too lazy, wasted, or horny to make it to the video store.
“Remind you of anyone we know?” she’d ask me each time after it ended. A question that should have been, let’s face it, a gigantic red flag, given that—sorry if I’m spoiling the ending for you—Sid winds up stabbing Nancy to death in a room at the Chelsea Hotel.
But then Daphne would sing Leonard Cohen: “I remember— you well in the Chelsea Hotel, you were talking so brave and so sweet, giving me head on the unmade bed…”
At which point she would stop singing and reenact the scene—the TV was conveniently located in the bedroom. Thankfully, unlike the song or the movie, Daphne’s version always had a happy ending.
We used to talk about staying at the Chelsea for what I assumed would be a night of mind-blowing sex. Before she tried to kill me. Still, I kind of owe it to myself to see the place.
“In and out,” I say to Leatherpants. “And that’s not like, you know, a metaphor for anything. I’m serious. You better not offer to blow me when we get there.”
He’s already racing down the street. “You know, for a drug dealer,” he yells over his shoulder, “you’re dressed like a real asshole.”
The hotel, a hundred years old, looks her age. Not so much from the outside, but inside there’s an ongoing war between patchwork and decay. The smart money is on decay. But I still feel a tingle when I see the familiar lobby, nearly every square inch of wall space burnished by paintings whose placement and artistic value both seemed to have been chosen completely at random.
I follow Leatherpants—who by now has introduced himself as Nate—past the front desk toward the elevators. A guy in an expensive sweater, possibly cashmere, pressed slacks, and tassel loafers looks up from the floor he’s mopping. He examines us through a pair of glasses hanging from a cord around his neck. He doesn’t look pleased.
“Hello, Herman!” says Nate, waving as he shoots past the guy onto the square-spiral case, ripping off three steps at a time. I jog after him, feeling Herman’s stare on my back. We don’t stop until we reach the fourth floor.
I’m not sure what I expected. Kind of a punk-rock Animal House, maybe. The peeling wallpaper and rusting pipes feel right, but the hallway is quiet and empty. It occurs to me that for the second time in my first three Meet-Ups, I’m violating the rule against following customers back to their rooms. The police could be waiting for me. Or worse, I’m going to get jumped and rolled when I step through the door.