Rivers of Gold (2 page)

—Renny, we've booked Johnny Retch and Miyuki for the cover story. All next year's Dolce, Canali, and Giovanni Kwan, Chalk intones in his trademark Boardroom Baritone, the overheads casting a fine patina over his smooth coriander dome.

Fashion photography was something I did to pay the bills. That had been the plan, anyway, before the bottom fell out of the art market four years ago—a harbinger of worse things to come. I had talent, I had contacts, I had a portfolio made up of girls I knew and others I'd picked up. But what caught the eye of guys like Marcus Chalk were my cityscapes, long washes of light and shadow play in motion, an animation of staid facades and gridlocked intersections—think Berenice Abbott on meth shooting digital. It's a technique I worked up with X, but I don't want to think about X now. If I do, I'll want a drink. Then another. There'll be time enough to torture myself with memory later. Right now I've got things to do.
Roundup
's monthly circulation runs to a million downloads. No matter how much I dislike these people, it's all about the ducats.

—Just what is it you're looking for?

—We want more of what you did for
Diazinon
, the Hollywood issue, Fabryce lisps, his eyes sliding over to his BlackBerry.

Diazinon
is
Malathion
's sister magazine for the West Coast. They flew me out there last spring for a week-long shoot. I was lucky enough to get paid just before the editor in chief was found in somebody else's Brentwood house with two naked teenage boys, one of whom was already catatonic from an overdose. Things haven't been quite the same between the two rags since, though there's been no buzz yet about a formal breakup.

—Just with a little less …
motion
, Johnette says in her icy snarl, biting off the last word.

—Yes, Renny, we're looking for the same urban backwash effect you've been doing, but not so much that it detracts from Johnny and Miyuki. A bit less movement in the background, a bit more contrast to bring focus to the actors and the clothes. You understand, Chalk says regally, pouring on the Professional Indoor Sincerity-Speak.

You prick, I want to snarl at him. Can you even spell
photography
, or do you have people who do that for you?

But I say:

—Of course. You want something a little more toned-down, low-light, maybe fewer lightscapes?

—We don't want any
lightscapes
, Johnette says in her warmthless, gender-neutral voice.

It's nice to see Johnette hasn't gone all warm and fuzzy on me. You need to be able to count on some things in life.

Johnette continues mercilessly:

—How do you do those anyway, do you just shoot out the window of a moving taxica—

The food arrives, allowing me to regroup. I can hardly look at my seafood bruschetta, but take a few obligatory nips to look busy. Mousy Diane, who looks like she hasn't eaten or slept for a week, is about to tear into her calamari when Chalk abruptly sends her out on some meaningless errand. Fabryce can't stop toying with his BlackBerry, probably lining up a date at Splash. Johnette just glares from beneath her steel bangs, the serrated edge of her steak knife, dripping blood, turned toward me. I'd rather be anywhere but here.

This is how it happens.

There are moments of such unforeseeable synchronicity that they actually make you Believe. This is a good one. My phone gives a double-thump heartbeat in my jacket pocket, which tells me Prince William's ready to meet, which means he's got next week's speak number. This is a legitimate excuse to cut the
Roundup
meeting short if it gets too unbearable. Business is business.

Then Marcus Chalk says:

—Okay, Renny, September cover's yours. Twenty thousand. Sign here.

And then my phone gives out the soft sample of a tritone from a Balinese
gamelan
. That would be L. Her timing's always been uncanny (I think she really is a witch).

Now I just need to get out of here. I make a show of reading the contract, but only the payment catches my eye. I scrawl my signature across the bottom of each page with my titanium Thoth and hand them back to Marcus Chalk, who wordlessly co-signs and hands me back one copy. (You'd think by now digital signatures would be legally binding; fucking lawyers.)

Any further conversation is perfunctory; the main business has been transacted, and my presence is no longer required, nor perhaps even desired. The feeling is mutual. The end of dinner is a blur. Without quite knowing it I'm outside on the sidewalk, trying to hail a cab, check my messages, and suck down as much of a Davidoff as possible. Luck is with me; I hail a Ford Friesian. Best kind of cab, really, since I'm alone. While hybrids are righteous and good and blah blah blah, those separate seats make serious backseat cavorting well-nigh impossible. If you stick with the third-row bench seat, you risk the ire of a pissed-off cabdriver, who knows what you're up to and a) is worried you'll get him a ticket from cops with nothing better to do than hassle him, b) worried you're going to make a mess back there he'll have to clean up later, or c) wants to watch. Since more and more cabs now have cameras in them, it's not a good idea to risk an altercation over anything other than the fare (unless you're already in business with him).

First things first. A short exchange with Prince William, and we're set to meet at the Broome Street Bar and Grille at ten. A good spot for me, because it's practically a straight shot across town from where he knows I'm heading to now, and because it's high profile without being exclusive, and downmarket without lacking class. He'll give me the new speak number, I'll get the word out to my Special clients, and add a Fast Forty to the twenty I just signed up from Marcus Chalk. I love it when my legal and illegal paydays overlap.

Having attended to logistics, I turn to the not-to-be-forgotten matter of pleasure. L desires some time off later this evening from the man who thinks he is her fiancé, and could we perhaps meet at our usual spot around ten thirty, ten forty-five?

This is how it happens.

The Friesian groans up Fifty-seventh, leans hard left on Seventh, throwing my erection and me into an uncomfortable configuration against the armrest, and we're on the downtown glide path through the neon hell of Times Square.

Capitale is a modern temple to indulgent exclusivity; how it survives is beyond me. From the moment you pull up in front of those fluted columns, those stately carved capitals spelling
BOWERY SAVINGS BANK
(a charming holdover from Gotham's storied past—nobody actually
saves
any more, not with a zero-percent interest rate), past the stone lions and stone-faced security thugs into the glorious main chamber, all Corinthian columns and friezes and mosaics and gel-tinted spots.

Here, the children of privilege giggle and pose and sniffle and flirt, lit up by a hundred flashbulbs, for the pleasure of the leering older crowd that can actually
afford
such a place. In here, every banker's a pasha, every fund manager a khan. This is the domain of the hyphenated name, indoor shades, and hectares of pampered, succulent, magazine-quality flesh. It will either turn your stomach or make you hard. Or both.

This is where I live, by choice as well as by necessity. I may not always be thrilled with it either, but I've learned to go with the flow.

This is the great fluid confluence of endless possibility.

Let the Games Begin.

I'm needing some high-octane fuel after that meet at Shelley's, so I join the horde by the long draped bar, behind a gazelle in sandals with straps reaching all the way up beneath her short pleated skirt. By the time we get our drinks, I've already forgotten her name. She waves a kiwirita around while I carefully balance a massive double Mumbai martini for the obligatory exchange of digital cards. Here, unlike the Outside, it's permissible, even encouraged, to gawk (whereas Outside we all studiously avoid making eye contact at all costs; these days, it can get you killed). So my less-than-surreptitious appraisal of her décolletage and gluteal musculature does not earn me a kiwirita shower.

It's not long before I see the first familiar face, and the gazelle apparently doesn't like the company because she's gone with an audible
Nice meeting you
and a muted
Call me
before I sit down at one of the tables along the perimeter of the dance floor (deejays only tonight, but it's too early for this crowd to achieve the requisite chemical boost for a floor show). It's the usual rogues' gallery tonight: here's Luigi, and Chas, and Euan and Timo, and Joss and Tory and Dylan and Siobhan. These are my clients, for better or worse.

—I didn't think you'd all be out on a Tuesday, I offer from behind my Mumbai.

—Tuesday's the new Thursday, quips Tory.

—Monday's the new Friday, adds Chas.

—Wednesday's the new Saturday, Dylan puts in, eager to catch up.

—And
every
hour is happy hour! they chorus, laughing and clinking glasses and inadvertently mixing ingredients. The happy squeals of adult children at play.

—Here's lookin' at you, kids, I intone, finally starting to relax.

—So, Dr. Feelgood, pipes Timo, got the new number yet?

Timo's a spoiled fucking brat who knows nothing about discretion. But he's also a client, and business is business.

—You'll be the first to know, I assure him with my best Wry Insider grin. I should be getting it later tonight.

—You
always
get it later at night, Luigi guffaws through his Negroni. (He's a client, too, but for carnal, rather than chemical, services, and I'm not in on that end of the business, strange as it may seem.)

—Pig, Joss sighs in disgust. (I wonder if Luigi's had her, too. Joss would seriously freak if she knew where he's been ensconcing his conch. I would have tried for her myself by now, but Renny's Rule Number Two is, No Client Coitus.)

—But you
will
let
us
know first, yes? Your benefactors? Timo drawls, tipping his martini toward me for emphasis.

The prick is playing the boss for his friends, trying to lord my access to this party and others like it as being due to his patronage. He sees me as some shiny piece of rough trade in from the boroughs to hobnob with Manhattan's hoi polloi, a chance find that adds a dash of edgy color to his safe, easy life. Whatever. I tell myself to relax. I don't need the shit I will surely get if I lose steady customers, but I also don't need to
take
any shit from a brat like this, client or not. Without me, they won't find the speaks, and if they don't find the speaks they can't buy my Specials. I lean forward and say in a low voice:

—I
said
, you'd be the first to know.

It's momentary, a fleeting thing, but the shift is palpable. Timo blinks, the bated breath of the congregation eases out, Joss gives me an appraising look that says,
Not tonight, but soon
.

But not tonight. I make my good-byes with just enough haste. There's more business waiting for me at Broome Street.

I call Prince William that because (a) he's British, and (b) he can make money out of thin air. How he came to work for our boss, Reza, I have no idea, but it's a natural fit.

I might not be in the position I'm in had we not met at the launch party for Moan cologne at the Flatiron Lounge, sponsored by
Pyrethrum
magazine. I was shooting for the mag; he was there because he's got The Knack. (Any party, anywhere, anytime, he'll know about it before it happens.) Over round after round of ginger-pear-basil-aspic martinis (those with The Knack never see a bar tab), I told him about how I was funding my digital media classes at Pratt with magazine work. He told me I should be at Parsons or the Art Institute (like I could have afforded that at the time). His accent was mesmerizing, his speech hypnotic. He told me about how he parlayed two double-default mortgages into one of the new three-thousand-square-foot loft conversions in the Mink Building in Harlem for no money down, that's how fucking slick he is. Plenty of players can trade up these days with the glut of housing on the market, but Prince William fucking cleaned up, no mistake.

I know a sales pitch when I hear it, but the Prince was a cut above the rest. He recruited me for Reza with the skill of a master angler, all in a night's work. And when the money started flowing, I was hooked. That was then, and this is now, and the wheels on the bus go round and round. Life in the Big Apple in 2013 isn't about pride or principles, it's about
survival
. And you have to survive to thrive.

Tonight the Prince is at the far end of the bar under the chalkboards, chatting up a pair of buzz-cut birds in tank tops, perhaps planning a threesome. Even if they're actually lesbians, it wouldn't matter to him, he'd simply see it as yet another challenge. Prince William could talk the devil himself out of his pitchfork, he can certainly talk a couple of dykes too young to be set in their ways yet into a surf-and-turf. The Brits have this sense of
restraint
about them, which explains how they get away with such excess. Not just in speech but in print: English-style text layouts are so much more pleasing to the eye, all em dashes and no quotation marks cluttering up dialogue.