Chapter Eight #4
They charted a course down Broadway, the same one he’d taken to Colony Records, but this time, they walked even farther, ’til the glass buildings opened and Times Square stretched out before them like a neon canyon.
Danny tried to play it cool, tried his best not to gawk at the marquees or the mile-high bottle of Coca-Cola or the man urinating on a Village Voice newspaper box.
They rounded the corner at Forty-Sixth Street, passing the giant teal sign for Howard Johnson’s, a 1950s-style diner with chrome-plated windows and sun-bleached photos advertising minute steaks and apparently famous clam platters.
“It’s right up here,” Nina said, approaching a simple black awning, its name written in Gothic letters: “Gaiety Theater.”
“Wait,” Danny muttered, his feet suddenly replaced with cinder blocks. “Is this one of your dad’s…spots?”
“Mm-hmm,” Nina hummed as casually as if they’d arrived at her father’s dental office instead of his porno theater.
“Maybe I should just wait downstairs,” Danny said.
Nina crossed her arms, clearly exasperated.
“Danny, if you keep avoiding all the things that are new or weird or scary to you, you’re never going to have any fucking fun.”
Danny’s grip tightened on the straps of his backpack.
“Also,” she continued airily, “if you stand too long on the sidewalk in this part of town, people are going to think you’re a hooker.”
And with that, she disappeared behind the unmarked glass door.
Danny hesitated for only a moment before following her up the dark zigzagging stairs, a volcano rumbling in his chest, the combination of entering a forbidden place and what had to be the steepest stairwell in all of Hell’s Kitchen.
The place had a distinct, familiar odor that Danny couldn’t quite put his finger on.
It wasn’t anything foul—a kind of musty warmth, maybe, like hamburger grease.
At the top of the stairs was a tiny cubicle with a sign above it that read “ADMISSION,” where a middle-aged woman with a cannonball of red hair sat reading a book.
“Hi, Fiona!” Nina waved. “I just need to pick up keys from my dad.”
“Go right on ahead,” she said in a Scottish accent, not even bothering to look up from her page.
Come on, Nina gestured with her head.
“Wait! Hold on there a minute.” The woman set down her book and pointed to Danny. “Who’s he?”
“Just a friend from school,” Nina said.
“Is he eighteen?” Fiona asked, peering over the top of her glasses. “If he’s not, he’s gotta stay in the lobby. Sorry, darlin’. Fackin’ Giuliani.”
“That’s fine!” Danny cried, the volcano in his chest already spewing molten lava into his veins. “I’ll just wait here!”
“What-ever,” Nina sighed, turning and pushing through the curtain of beads. “I’ll be right back.”
Danny crossed his arms, then uncrossed them, trying to take on the posture of a person for whom this was a completely normal Tuesday afternoon.
He squinted up at the ceiling. Perhaps he could be the type of guy who looked like he was interested in the brand of stucco they’d used, or the exact shade of paint (which was almost certainly just “black”).
Next to Fiona was a corkboard pinned with photocopied advertisements for guitar lessons and furniture movers and “body work/massage” and a missing persons flyer for that Club Kid “Angel” Melendez, the one with the feathered wings and the $4,000 reward money for information.
From down on the street, Danny heard the door open and a heavy pair of feet thump up the narrow staircase.
When he turned, he was met with the sight of the tallest, most muscular man he’d ever seen in his life, ascending the final steps and waltzing into the lobby like a high roller at an Atlantic City casino.
He was a black guy with an impeccable flattop haircut, wearing leather work boots and a pair of faded jeans stretched to a shine around his enormous thighs.
He sported a T-shirt with a graphic that read “Gold’s Gym” with its sleeves cut off, ripped so deep that the armholes almost stretched down to his waist, revealing two giant arms that looked like they’d been the artist’s inspiration for the Popeye cartoon.
“Afternoon, luv,” Fiona said, setting down her book and holding her pale cheek out for the man to kiss.
“Big crowd today?” the man asked in a voice that sounded like he’d been practicing for a career in movies.
“Whaddaya tink?” Fiona said, laughing, which Danny could tell meant “no.” “Though I’m sure yer regulars will come crawlin’ in after their three-martini lunch wraps up.”
The stranger rapped his knuckles on the painted wood of Fiona’s desk, then turned, briefly clocking Danny standing there, clutching his backpack straps like some kind of lame fourth grader.
The man gave Danny a little up-nod of his chin, then pushed his way through the curtain, leaving Danny standing alone with nothing but the Scottish woman, her book, a thousand unanswered questions, and the light clack-clack-clacking of the beads.
Danny sucked in a gasp of air and took a step back, nearly knocking over a rack of magazines that had most definitely appeared out of nowhere.
As he steadied the display, his eyes darted wildly, thundering in colorful flashes at the bright fonts and muscled forearms and hair peeking from the tops of round-chested tank tops.
Suddenly a word—rather, two words—caught his eye: Portia Thority.
Hadn’t Christian mentioned that name? They appeared on the cover of a glossy magazine called Next, underneath a photo of a man with wet hair.
“Inside: Charlie! DJ Junior Vasquez and Portia Thority,” the cover announced.
Danny looked over his shoulder, back to the Scottish woman in the cubicle who was back to swimming deep in a sentence from her book, which Danny recognized from his mother’s nightstand as L Is for Lawless by Sue Grafton.
Before Danny could tell his hands not to, they were reaching for the magazine and lifting it gently out of its metal nest.
It’s for research, he told himself. It’ll be one less thing I don’t know.
His fingers peeled back the cover of the magazine, revealing a colorful map of Manhattan with arrows drawn to corresponding names—the Roxy, Barracuda, Uncle Charley’s, Splash, the Brick, Rose’s Turn, Triangle, the Works.
Then a photo of what he now recognized as a drag queen, wearing a turquoise wig and plastic vampire teeth, then a photo of two shirtless guys in Yankees baseball caps, then a man with hairy legs standing at a urinal, then a bare torso strapped in two leather belts, and another one covered in tattoos, then stomachs and armpits and nipples and thighs and phone numbers printed below, and lips and belly buttons and sideburns and calves and that was when he heard the rustle of beads.
Like a birthday party magician, Danny tucked the magazine into the flap of his denim jacket, then folded his arms with a crunch.
“You got the keys?” he said, whipping around as Nina reentered the lobby.
“Yeah, sorry to keep you waiting.”