“What’s that?” Myron asked.
“You don’t know Three Downing?” Esperanza asked.
“Should I?”
“It’s probably the hippest bar in the city right now. Diddy, supermodels, the fashionista, that crowd. It’s in Chelsea.”
“Oh.”
“It’s a little disappointing,” Esperanza said.
“What?”
“That a playah of your magnitude doesn’t know all the trendy spots.”
“When Diddy and I go clubbing, we take the white Hummer stretch and use underground entrances. The names blur.”
“Or being engaged is cramping your style,” Esperanza said. “So do you want to head over there and pick him up?”
“I’m in my pajamas.”
“Yep, a playah. Do the pajamas have feetsies?”
Myron checked his watch again. He could be downtown before midnight. “I’m on my way.”
“Is Win there?” Esperanza asked.
“No, he’s still out.”
“So you’re going down alone?”
“You’re worried about a tasty morsel like me in a nightclub on my own?”
“I’m worried you won’t get in. I’ll meet you there. Half hour. Seventeenth Street entrance. Dress to impress.”
Esperanza hung up. This surprised Myron. Since becoming a mother, Esperanza, former all-night, bisexual party girl, never went out late anymore. She had always taken her job seriously—she now owned 49 percent of MB Reps and with Myron’s strange travels of late had really carried the load. But after a decade-plus of leading a night lifestyle so hedonistic it would have made Caligula envious, Esperanza had stopped cold, gotten married to the uber-straight Tom, and had a son named Hector. She went from Lindsay Lohan to Carol Brady in four-point-five seconds.
Myron looked in his closet and wondered what to wear to a trendy nightspot. Esperanza had said dress to impress, so he went with his tried and true—jeans-blue-blazer-expensive-loafer look—Mr. Casual Chic—mostly because that was all he owned that fit the bill. There was really little in his closet between jeansblazer and all-out suit, unless you wanted to look like the sales guy at an electronics store.
He grabbed a cab on Central Park West. The cliché of Manhattan taxi drivers is that they are all foreign and barely speak English. The cliché may be true, but it had been at least five years since Myron had actually spoken to one. Despite recent laws, every single cabdriver in New York City wore a mobile-phone Bluetooth in his ear, twenty-four/seven, quietly talking in his native tongue to whoever was on the other end. Manners aside, Myron always wondered whom they had in their lives that wanted to talk to them all day. In this sense, one could argue that these were very lucky men.
Myron figured that he’d see a long line, a velvet rope, something, but as they approached the Seventeenth Street address, there was no sign of any nightclub. Finally he realized that the “Three” stood for the third floor and that “Downing” was the name of the quasi-high-rise in front of him. Someone went to the MB Reps School of Literal Business Naming.
The elevator arrived on the third floor. As soon as the doors slid open, Myron could feel the music’s deep bass in his chest. The long queue of desperate wanna-enters started immediately. Purportedly, people went to clubs like this to have a good time, but the truth was, most stood on a line and ended up with a sharp reminder that they still weren’t cool enough to sit at the popular kids’ lunch table. VIPs walked right past them with nary a glance and somehow that made them want to go in more. There was a velvet rope, of course, signaling their lower status, and it was guarded by three steroid-stuffed bouncers with shaved heads and practiced scowls.
Myron approached with his best Win-like swagger. “Hey, fellas.”
The bouncers ignored him. The biggest of the three wore a black suit with no shirt. None. Suit jacket, no shirt. His chest was nicely waxed, displaying impressive metrosexual cleavage. He was currently dealing with a group of four maybe-twenty-one-year-old girls. They all wore ridiculously high heels—heels were definitely in this year—so that they teetered more than strutted. Their dresses were skimpy enough for a citation, but really, that was nothing new.
The bouncer was examining them cattle-call style. The girls posed and smiled. Myron half expected them to open their mouths so he could examine their teeth.
“You three are okay,” Cleavage told them. “But your friend here is too chunky.”
The chunky girl, who was maybe a size eight, started to cry. Her three waiflike friends gathered in a circle and debated if they should go in without her. The chunky girl ran off in sobs. The friends shrugged and entered. The three bouncers smirked.
Myron said, “Classy.”
The smirks turned his way. Cleavage met Myron’s eyes, offering up a challenge. Myron met his gaze and did not look away. Cleavage looked Myron up and down and clearly found him wanting.
“Nice outfit,” Cleavage said. “You on your way to fight a parking ticket in traffic court?”
His two compadres, both sporting tourniquet-tight Ed Hardy T-shirts, liked that one.
“Right,” Myron said, pointing at the cleavage. “I should have left my shirt at home.”
The bouncer on Cleavage’s left made a surprised O with his mouth.
Cleavage stuck out his thumb, umpire-style. “End of the line, pal. Or better yet, just head out.”
“I’m here to see Lex Ryder.”
“Who says he’s here?”
“I say.”
“And you are?”
“Myron Bolitar.”
Silence. One of them blinked. Myron almost shouted, “Ta-da,” but refrained.
“I’m his agent.”
“Your name isn’t on the list,” Cleavage said.
“And we don’t know who you are,” Surprised O added.
“So”—the third bouncer waved with five beefy fingers—“buh-bye.”
“Irony,” Myron said.
“What?”
“Don’t you guys see the irony?” Myron asked. “You are gatekeepers at a place you yourselves would never be allowed in—and yet, rather than seeing that and thus adding a human touch, you act like even bigger overcompensating ass-clowns.”
More blinking. Then all three stepped toward him, a giant wall of pecs. Myron felt his blood thrum. His fingers tightened into fists. He relaxed them, kept his breathing even. They moved closer. Myron did not step back. Cleavage, the leader, leaned toward him.