Love Monkey (22 page)

A
t work, I reread the priceless e-mail from Monday:

She suggests an Icelandic fishing saga, a French cross-dressing comedy, a Chinese soap opera. What is it with chicks and foreign films? The same ones you see creasing their foreheads over the mysteries of the horoscopes in
Marie Claire
suddenly are all brains when it comes to the manyplex. When was the last time you saw a foreign film that wasn't overrated? Okay,
Enter the Dragon
. Surprisingly, though, she wouldn't mind seeing the new Jackie Chan flick.
Maybe she's compromising, i.e., suggesting we do what I want to do? We hash out an agreement to see it next week as though we're signing an international peace treaty.

As I'm walking out of my building in the dying sunlight, I'm calling Julia to see if she's free for a drink before she leaves. She's going to Mexico with the Dwayne this weekend, and I won't see her for a while if I don't see her tonight. But instead of getting her on her cell, I get Darth Vader telling me, “The Verizon customer you are seeking is not in the service area.” Why does every corporation think it's such a cool idea to have that guy do their voice-overs? He blew up Alderaan, for God's sake, not to mention slicing up Obi-Wan.

As I'm putting my cell phone back in my backpack, though, I have my own persuasive black guy to deal with. Shooter is walking across the plaza, his dreadlocks pulled back neatly in a ponytail, wearing a black suit, white shirt, skinny tie. He looks like a Rastafarian Reservoir Dog. Mr. Black. It takes me a second to notice that he has a companion on either side of him: Mike Vega and Eli Knecht. Both of them are trying hard to look ruthless.

Shooter removes his Churchill-sized Cuban from his mouth and blows a vast plume of smoke at me. “Seize him,” he says.

Mike and Eli grab me by the elbows and hustle me into a dark-windowed limousine.

“What is this?” I say. “Have you signed up for the Mafia? Is it prom night?”

But Eli and Mike shove me in the middle of the back bench and take up guard-dog positions on either side of me. Shooter settles imperiously into the row of seats opposite. Then a guy in uniform comes to shut the door. The sound of the street is completely cut off.

“Fellas,” I say, “I'd love to hang with you, but I've got to see Julia tonight.”

“That,” Shooter says, “is precisely the point.”

I look at Mike and Eli, knowing full well that shameful things could
happen tonight. Shooter inhabits a place where there are no rules, some sort of private Amsterdam of the soul. “What's the gag?” I say.

“Call it what you will,” says Shooter. “It is what it is.”

“It's an intervention,” says Mike.

Shooter raps on the glass. And we're off.

Shooter reaches under his seat and locates a concealed fridge. He takes out a bottle of Bollinger. “And what is this?” he says. “We must utilize it.”

“Yes, we will utilize it well,” says Mike, who has located the champagne flutes in another hidden compartment. He makes a surprisingly inspired henchman, I have to admit.

“We will utilize it to the last drop,” says Eli. Am I the only one in this town who hasn't read
The Sun Also Rises
? So many young men get their likes and dislikes from Hemingway.

When we pull up to the velvet ropes, there's a guy with a mustache and a tuxedo standing at the ready. There are really only three kinds of guys who wear tuxedos anymore. And this guy doesn't look like a headwaiter or a groom.

“Welcome to the place where men are men,” says Shooter.

“And women are surgically modified,” says Eli.

“Come on, guys,” I say as the driver opens our doors. A spotlight sweeps around trying to create some drama on the red carpet between the ropes. “I don't need this. I have a girl to call.”

“Girls, did you say?” Shooter says. “I'll show you girls.”

Shooter confers with the guy at the rope for a minute. There is discussion as to where we will be seated. There's the VIP area (the entire club), the VVIP area (all but the back two rows of tables), and then there's the Executive Chamber, which is the front, and the Bull's Eye, which is described as a zone of such mighty exclusivity it consists of a single raised table surrounded by burgundy ropes and dedicated staff. Mike and Eli steer me discreetly by the elbows.
They're both spiffed up a little, wearing jackets and ties. I'm wearing wrinkled old Gap pants and scuffed shoes. I look like some kind of derelict or graduate student.

“Shooter,” I say. “I'm not dressed.”

“That's okay,” he says. “Neither are the girls.”

Then he pulls out a single bill and hands it to the velvet-rope wrangler. I didn't know President McKinley was on the $500 bill, did you?

“Looks like a special night,” says Eli as we make our way through the corridor to the place where the colored lights swirl around madly. The music is deafening.

“It's Bad Girls night,” says Shooter, giving me a little wink.

Gorillas in monkey suits crowd around us, fawning and mewling with tip lust, depositing us at the best table. Shooter and Mike distribute cash to the waiters while Eli looks the other way. Mike gives me a little glance.

“Don't look at me,” I say. “I didn't ask to be here.”

Shooter confiscates my cell phone and gets a round of double Scotches. And here come the girls.

A guy at the edge of the stage pats down his toupee and hits us with a comical Cockney accent.

“All right, lads, all right? I'm your host Ken Talent, here to remind you that history is being made tonight at Stallions Gentlemen's Club. Literally.”

I can never figure out why they call these places gentlemen's clubs when they cater exclusively to our most primal grunting baboon urges.

“I love this guy,” Shooter says. “He's the Robin Leach of titty bars.”

Cue the opening guitar blast of the Beatles' “Revolution.” Talent yells, “The women you are about to meet are scantily clad Satans,
devils with the blue dress
off
, each and every one of them a tempest in a D cup, the
most evil girls
in all of history! Please give a snarling Stallions welcome to…Marie Antoinette!”

Enthusiastic hisses ensue as a lady emerges from behind the tinselly curtain in full 1789 dress. The big hoop skirt. The flouncy frills. The powdered wig. The saucy beauty spot.

Shooter is whistling with his fingers in the corners of his mouth. I wish I could do that. He pounds his Scotch and another appears at his elbow. I haven't taken my first sip yet.

Shooter gives me a look. “You look like a lump of something.”

“Bad mood,” I say.

“You'll be dead a long time,” he says. “No need to start practicing now. Drink your medicine.”

“Alcohol is not the answer,” I say.

“No,” he says. “But it'll keep you busy until you forget what the question was.”

I take a sip. It rips a black trail of fire all the way down my gullet. Which feels good.

“I don't want to use booze as a crutch,” I say.

“It's not a crutch,” he says. “It's a life-support system.”

“Now, lads,” says Talent, “is that all you have to say about one of history's cruelest women? Marie's crimes include marrying for money, starving the masses, trying to escape the people's justice, and tacky interior decorating! What do we have to say about that then?”

“Boo!” shouts Eli, giving me a wink.

“Please,” I say. “Do not wink.”

I look around the club. The place is empty except for seven or eight desolate-eyed men with receding hairlines trying valiantly to be crazy. A lot of them are yelling and booing and nudging each other. Most of them are wearing wedding rings.

The temptress on the stage is wearing one of those little black ribbons around her neck, the ones that look like dog collars, with a little pendant hanging from it. She's fingering the collar suggestively. As if we've never seen a naked neck before.

“You know, lads,” says the announcer, “I do believe that collar is the only thing what's keeping her head on!”

The three guys at the table behind me are chanting. “Off with her head! Off with her head!” But only until one of them comes up with, “Off with her clothes!” and they all pick up on it.

“The dress looks uncomfortable,” says Mike.

“Stiff. Starchy,” says Eli.

“Probably got on a whalebone corset underneath,” says Mike.

“So constricting,” says Eli. “Like a prison. Like the Bastille.”

“Political prisoners,” says Mike, “must be freed.”

Marie's got one foot up on one of those Frenchy-looking chairs that clutter the sets of talky period movies, and she's pulling up her dress to expose an endless leg in a pristine white stocking. It takes hours for her to reveal the little black garter on her lovely lean thigh. It has a nice cloth rose on it.

The guys behind me are in a frenzy. “Let her eat cake! Let her eat cake!”

The garter comes off first. Marie twirls it around on her index finger, which has a long bloodred nail. She looks around for target possibilities and notices Shooter. She gives him a little smile that looks suspiciously unstaged, and flings the garter in his lap.

The guys behind me make wolfy noises. “Let her eat me!” one of them shouts.

Marie has both stockings off and is running an index finger along her décolletage when Ken Talent breaks in with a breathless update.

“Lads, bad news, I'm afraid. The queen of France has been too
tightly stitched into her corset. It just may be that Marie Antoinette will need a little help getting out of her kit tonight.”

The red curtains are already parting behind her.

“That's why it's a good thing she has friends like Lucrezia Borgia!”

Lucrezia is dressed in the hottest look of the fifteenth century, much simpler stuff than Marie's getup. Just a modest stiff cone of a white robe, like a giant coffee filter with red borders. The thing weighs about 50 pounds and, like Marie's, it's floor length. No need to unpack the goods too soon. She and Marie fix their gazes on each other.

The queen of France is reaching up to her powdered white wig and taking it off, shaking out her long red hair so it cascades down her neck. I have to admit, I'm paying attention.

This time the song is “Papa Don't Preach.”

“Daddy's girl Lucrezia got married at age thirteen,” Talent tells us. “But her father, Pope Alexander VI, didn't like the boy so he had the marriage annulled. Then Papa Pope had her declared a virgin while she was six months pregnant. Wild days, then, in a time they called the Renaissance!”

“They seem well acquainted,” says Mike.

“Old friends,” says Eli.

“Kiss each other hello,” says Mike.

“And good-bye. And every occasion in between,” says Eli.

“Too bad it's hot in here.”

“So hot. Brutally hot.”

“Taking off something might cool her down.”

Talent is leering over his microphone. “Her first husband said the baby wasn't his; in fact, he said even Lucretia didn't know who got her pregnant, because it could have been either her father or her brother! But poor Lucrezia didn't get to keep her baby, boys!”

The crowd answers as one man. “Awww!” they say, as Lucrezia starts to slow-dance with Marie.

“Sadly, the boy was raised in secrecy,” says Talent, “but Lucrezia consoled herself by killing her second husband and rising to the title of history's most evil woman!”

Cue new song. Familiar piano chords. Wow. This one sends me somewhere. I'm thirteen again.

“Yeah,” I say, nodding.

“That's the fucking spirit!” says Shooter. “You like what Lucrezia is doing with Marie's sash, don't you?”

“I meant the song,” I say. “I love ELO. It's ‘Evil Woman.' ” Hearing this on the club's stereo was worth the trip. So few of the neighbors in my apartment building have signed off on allowing me to play late seventies art rock on a four-thousand-watt system.

The guys behind me are stomping their feet and whistling. They look Italian. Maybe they carry a grudge. They like the idea of a nice clean Vatican. Why should popes go dating their daughters when there are plenty of perfectly healthy altar boys?

Marie and Lucrezia are peeling away each other's inhibitions and getting pretty creative in the kissing department too. But Ken Talent is back on the mike to ask us if they look lonely. Meanwhile the deejay takes off a great song and replaces it with that insipid synth-pop torch song from
Top Gun.

“While Marie and Lucrezia are celebrating a new era in Franco-Italian cooperation,” Talent tells us, “little do they know that they're being spied on by a lusty lady in lederhosen, the frisky fräulein who couldn't find a boyfriend who wasn't a mass murderer! Give a weak
wilkommen
to that heil-raising Valkyrie vixen: she's bad, bad, Eva Braun!”

“This could take a while,” says Mike. “I'm going for another round before anyone gets naked.”

“What's the name of this stupid song?” Shooter says as guys slap their tables and stomp their feet. One guy gets up and goose-steps around the back before a gorilla can chase him down.

“ ‘Take My Breath Away,' ” I say.

“The fuck?”

“By Ber
lin
,” I say.

Shooter motions one of the waiters over to our table urgently, stuffing twenties into his pockets.