There was some trouble later, in the back, by a pool table, where a footballish-looking guy made the inebriated error of calling Club, rather loudly, Popeye, and got dropped with a hard flush right.
So Club came in handy. Say you wanted to sell eight thousand dollars’ worth of blow to someone you didn’t know; you could bring Club along, since he looked unpredictable—a dodgy Brit who might be off his rocker. Diane brought him. He liked his role—played it as a prickly, agitated, shiv-concealing ex-con—and got a sap out of a pawnshop case, and started carrying it inside his coat, along with pepper spray. Diane had to preface her transactions now with, “This is my brother, don’t worry about him,” but she could see people worrying anyway. Which was good.
Club, decked out in military-surplus fatigues, a stained, ribbed tank, and combat boots, started throwing dumbbells around at Serious Fitness, partly because he had time on his hands, but also, he said, “to back up my evil stare, Di, at crunch time.” Club made some gym friends, other lowlifes and losers, two-bit bodybuilders who endorsed, while they worked out, amino acids and protein powders. There were televisions mounted in each corner of the weight room, usually playing MTV videos, and Club and his mates, between sets, gave commentary—thumbs up for Aerosmith’s “Dude (Looks like a Lady)” and for fucking Madonna in “Who’s That Girl?,” thumbs down for fucking Run-D.M.C. and the fucking-all lame Steve Winwood. Nevertheless, Club exercised judgment in mixed company and, at least at The Palms, was generally a gentleman whose sense of decorum had an element of the maudlin only if, like Diane, you were looking for it. At home he was impeccably, even rigorously, not a problem, and if somebody like Emily came to the apartment, he had the good sense to sidle out. He’d say two or three polite, safe things, then rise, take his jacket off a hook, and declare that he was “off on a peregrination”—he applied class deference and reassuring syntax so that no one would be scared to show up. The gormless Emily didn’t seem to mind him, though, except for his fags. She treated him as if he wasn’t a mongoloid, and he started hanging around when she called—for popcorn and Hearts—and going out to the railing to blow his smoke rings over the swimming pool so Emily wouldn’t cough.
Since Club’s visa was post-deadline, he couldn’t work legally. What he could do was stand around on Western Avenue near Bell Street with a lot of other charity cases and wait for a contractor to pull over in search of shovel labor. This way he met some on-parole roofers and got a bit of a paid stint doing the vilest work they had, and then he met a mason who needed a hod carrier on a major job, someone willing to break his back for shite. Club was the ticket. He told Diane he’d done like jobs in Manchester, not just the two thousand bricks a day but brewing tea for the layers. The Yanks didn’t want tea, he added; here what they wanted was to snort all his blow, one or two bumps at a time.
But that was fine. Club just developed his own two-bit customers. He was like a kid about it—that is, he brought his tens and twenties to Diane, except what he held back for menthols, ale, and big plastic sacks of black licorice. Then, one day, he came home empty-handed and ripped off, but only to get what he called “his tools,” which now included a Colt .45.
She took him with her to a hand-off at The Aegean, an innocent-enough-looking café with potted hothouse plants, a fat owner in a short-sleeved shirt, posters of Mykonos and the Parthenon, and at the register a display case of homemade baklava. They were meeting two communitycollege kids who looked like steroid users—friends of friends at Serious Fitness—and who, when Diane and Club arrived, were eating big meals at a table for two. “Babe, you brought a dude,” one observed. “Not cool.” Club dragged two chairs over and sat in his backward. He shook hands with the bodybuilders, who called themselves Lance and CJ, then cleared his throat, scratched his Adam’s apple, and looked around the room as if he worked for Scotland Yard. Club was so good that “Lance” stopped eating and said, “What’s up? You nervous?”
“Yeah,” said Club. “I get a bit nervous. Apologies for that, mate. Nerves.”
Diane said, “Club’s sort of fucked up, I guess you could say, from some shit times he had in the Falklands.”
The bodybuilders were interested in the Falklands, it turned out, so they talked about the Falklands for a while. By a stroke of good fortune, Club was an expert. He bullshitted with ease; he talked about the Gurkhas; he extolled the prowess of the Argentines. There was five minutes of mano a mano combat talk, followed by a slice of baklava for Diane and, for Club, two consecutive Winstons. Finally, and abruptly, Lance said, “This is pretty simple, babe. Put it this way. We know where you live. We know your name.”
“Oh, come on,” said Diane. “There’s no problem between us.” She picked up her gym bag and put it on the table. “So you know where I live,” she said, “but let’s just sit here, finish our coffee, and talk like friends, because we are friends, right?” She said this looking directly at Club, as if he were a dog about to be unleashed. “Am I right, mate? Friends, now? Caleb? Are we friends?”
Club scratched his neck and nodded, eyes averted. “Hmmm,” Diane said. “You guys should show the cash, then. Product’s on the table, so it’s time to show the cash. You show me the cash, then take my product to the gents’, do what you want in there, you know, test it, then I take the cash and make my count in the ladies’ while my brother and you boys hang out.”
The steroidal-looking guys began nodding at each other. “Cash,” Club said. “On the table.”
“Fuck you,” said Lance, scooping up Diane’s gym bag. “Wait here. I’ll test this in the can.”
“Whoa,” said Club. “You skipped a step, mate.” Casually, he unzipped his sheepskin bomber jacket and showed both bodybuilders the grip of his pistol. “Either of you lads drink Colt .45?” he asked. “It’d be my pleasure to order you a round.”
“In a restaurant?” asked Lance. “Come on, dude.”
“Try me,” said Club. “Now get your mitts off that bag.”
After that, it was as Diane had said. There was no more trouble from the college kids. Back from the loo—where first she’d urgently emptied her bladder, then made a speedy count of the bills—Diane told them, “You and the blow can go now, all right? And no hard feelings, because we don’t have any. No worries, right? Just run along. My mate will be picking up the tab.”
When they were gone, Club said, “Round of canasta in the laundro, then, mate?”
“Colt .45, I like that,” Diane answered.
Club laughed. “Man’s best friend,” he said. “Levels the turf. Classic Yankee game-changer, the tried-and-true boom-stick. Speaks to the natives every time.” He slid the bag of cash toward Diane. Winking, he said, “Same mum, different das, but still, you know, birds of a feather, luv. Peas in a pod and all of that.”
At The Palms that night they drank celebratory Boddingtons, listened to used albums Club had come across, sang along to “Apeman” and “Lola,” and finally, like a married couple, ate popcorn while watching Letterman.
“Domesticated, that’s me,” said Club. “Tamed. Fat. A jolly couch potato.”
“Every summer we can rent a cottage in the Isle of Wight if it’s not too dear,” said Diane.
“And sell ’em blow,” said Club. “Now pass the popcorn.”
She gave him five hundred dollars, which he used to buy a touring bike with a melted wiring harness. Club fixed that via what he described to her as “triage” and made a hobby out of fair-weather rides.
On-the-go Emily went to work for Microsoft, which, as she put it to Diane, was kind of like Aldus but with fifteen hundred people. Now she was excited about Frisbee golf with colleagues, and dating “a very sweet guy” named Gray, who’d introduced her to recreational racewalking. Her company stock had doubled in the few months she’d had it; Emily was buying a new wardrobe.
Microsoft sent Emily to a conference in Atlanta—paid for everything, for the first time in her life—and she manipulated her flights to straddle a weekend so she could meet an
old college friend in Nashville. At home again in her apartment at The Palms, showing Diane photos of clubs on Bourbon Street, Emily said she’d sort of cheated on Gray by “stumbling” with a cute guy to his hotel room, though she’d stopped short of “going all the way.” Diane said maybe they should test her fidelity with drinks at the Pelican, but Emily preferred Ginger’s because of its martini list. As soon as they sat down on a sofa at Ginger’s, Emily pointed out a guy “worth probably about twenty million right now.” She knew other people, too, at Ginger’s, who were in the middle of getting rich.
The martini list was humorless, overwrought, and precious. You could have one made with cocoa-flavored vodka, or garnished with anchovy, but whatever you asked for, it came to the table as if under a spotlight, and in a cocktail glass with a mouth so wide it could have been a nut bowl. Diane and Emily had two martinis each while trying not to spill, and Emily made clothing comments: she predicted that people would look back on parachute pants with, “What were they thinking?,” and she thought Guess jeans were tacky. Diane asked, point-blank, about sex with Gray, and learned that he and Emily weren’t doing it yet, because Emily didn’t want “to go all the way unless it’s exactly the right guy.”
Emily wondered if Diane wanted to meet people, and Diane said, “Why wouldn’t I want to meet millionaires?” Then they accompanied their martinis to the bar so they could hang out with two of Emily’s colleagues—girls who were nice but not interested in Diane, not even in her English accent. They were sharing a plate of hummus and pita, next to which sat travel brochures. Marnie’s strong teeth were like what’s-her-name, on the news, who was sort of a Kennedy but married to Arnold Schwarzenegger—New England, whole-milk, good schools. Whitney wore Laura Ashley with white socks and Keds and was obviously smart in a quiet way, but she and Marnie both looked soused, as if they’d stopped at Ginger’s after work and hadn’t moved from their bar stools for hours. They worked together in Human Relations, and the year before they’d gone to Belize for snorkeling, nightclubs, and trips to Mayan temples. Whitney described a reef, a rain forest, the resort they’d stayed at, a trail through a jungle, a well-prepared red-snapper fillet, and a trip to Guatemala by water taxi. Marnie let her, adding nods, then said Grand Cayman had been “a major dud. Tiki bars and calypso. Sort of a theme park. There’s no there there,” she explained. “Where is it?”
Twenty minutes of this. Then, yes, they did want to buy some coke, so as to have it on hand for a party they were planning. Another friend was getting married, and they were in charge of some girls-only festivities at which coke would be a definite plus.
The next day, Diane bought a little black dress, in order to be arresting at Ginger’s. Since it was better not to look too slutty, she added a cashmere sweater and loafer pumps. She fit in after that, but her metamorphosis wasn’t complete until she went all the way and had her hair pixie-cut. With kohl-like mascara around the eyes just to bring things down a little, she quickly attracted some tentative come-ons and some furtive but motivated coke customers. In other words, Ginger’s was worth frequenting. Diane couldn’t take Club there, because Club was too coarse, but that didn’t matter, because sales to the tech sector were innocent and safe, lucrative with no hint of danger. Order a martini, chat, close the deal, and go your separate ways with nothing threatening or sinister. The profit margins were better, too. And the buyers, for the most part, were guys who understood discretion. In the main they were pensive and understated techie riche, with bad wardrobes and terrible haircuts, who wanted blow, Diane knew, as a social invigorator—as an expensive Saturday-night confidence builder that would make them feel like cocks-of-the-walk when in fact they were mouse-clicking nerds. These guys, as a rule, conducted themselves as if Diane was off limits, as if the dealer was a dealer, not a date. Though her vanity was wounded by that, she didn’t blame herself, because beyond-reproach computer geeks were not a good measure of desirability; on the other hand, she had to wonder a little, given that she was on the way to forty. In this frame of mind, on a Saturday, at Ginger’s, she engaged a blueblood with a cleft chin who, on entering the bar, made no effort to conceal from Diane his interest in her boobs. He just looked right at them while passing by, and then he looked Diane in the eye, as if they were communing over the possibility of a stand-up snog in the loo.
They hung out, with their martinis, at a high table for two. His name was Ron Dominick, and he worked “as a consultant to the software industry.” He wore a white shirt and jacket, black jeans, sharp shoes, and an amused expression. She gave him a reading, then activated her accent—the Pride and Prejudice approach—before revealing that she was divorced and lived alone, not far away, in Kirkland. Ron confessed to being married, but there were no kids, and his marriage was “sort of on the skids.” He liked glam rock and seemed rather hopeful that Diane’s British derivation might yield some insight into glam rock’s roots. Beneath his all-American smile he was a dedicated and even relentless ironist, which Diane found wearying. Nevertheless, she carried on without flagging, because coke had come into the conversation early. He said, “As I understand it from those in the know, you deal.”
“Not really. But I’m nice to my friends.”
Ron put his business card on the table. “Check me out,” he said, and pushed it toward her. “Am I cool or what?” he added. “Listen to me.”
“Okay.”
“Just okay? Am I that unfunny?” When she nodded her assent he added, “So the dude you divorced—left his socks on the floor? Toilet seat up?”
“I didn’t want kids. And there was nothing to talk about.”
“That sounds generic.”
“Well. So it is.”
“Was he mediocre in bed?”
“We hit it off there.”
“Is that a throw-down?”
“Maybe, maybe not.”
“Now I’m intimidated,” Ron said. “What have I gotten myself into?”
She didn’t tell him. Instead, three nights later, when he’d checked out as not a narc, she gave him a sample in Ginger’s parking lot, where he stood beside his Alfa Romeo with his jacket hanging on his index finger, one hip cocked disco fashion, two parodic gold chains around his neck—a strapping guy with attitude and wit—saying, “What if I take, like, twenty grams?”
“That’s five grand.”
“I’ll give you three.”
“You sound like a dealer.”
“Not really. But I’m nice to my friends,” said Ron.
“Are you a dealer?”
“My hook-up bailed.”
Diane said, “I can’t sell for three. Find someone else at that price.”
“What about four?”
“I can’t do that, either.”
“What about getting a room with me, then?”
“That’s very cute,” said Diane.
He lunged, grabbed her by the waist, and kissed her. Diane wished he hadn’t gone overboard with the Old Spice, because the cloves made her gag. It was an asphyxiation she associated with more than one less-than-entirely-triumphant night as Candy Dark. It was the smell of choking on unlovable men, powerful narcissists, and insistent strangers. And now this Ron was taking his turn, smelling, underneath his cheap cologne, like gym clothes. She hated him intensely. Transactional sex had sometimes been rank with the exudates of desperate men, and sometimes clinical and antiseptic, but, however it was, it paid by definition, whereas this was point-blank pillage. “Okay,” she said, when Ron unlocked his lips. “Let’s get a room, then.”
Ron was a reliable high-stakes buyer, and since his own clientele was so well-to-do, he could afford to pay more before markup. He liked room service, and he liked Diane with her black dress wrinkled and her mascara running. He liked to talk about his customers, but not by name—guys he knew from Willamette University, guys at an athletic club, guys, he said, who ran companies. Ron’s attitude toward Diane, when not needy, was collegial—two dealers in the sack, trading insider insights—and it was
good for his ego, in this arena, to feel that he had the upper hand. “I have a serious launderer,” he told her. “Guy’s great. Not somebody you mess with. Connected, backed up. Basically, I bank with him—dirty money in, clean money out. Used to be I smurfed, but you do that enough you get paranoid. You smurf?”
“Smurf?”
She let him drone on about it, about a shell company with a bulletproof balance sheet that his launderer used, banking in the Caymans, money-counting machines—whatever he needed to drone on about. Sometimes he was so relaxed and unprotected that he engaged her in the intimate emotions of his marriage as if she were his therapist or counselor. His wife, a cosmetician, was petulant, he complained, and moody in the extreme, and pouted when they argued, and liked to have her car detailed more often than was necessary. She was in the habit of telling him how he felt instead of listening to him when he told her how he felt. She was impulsive, impetuous, and hyper-susceptible, she couldn’t relax, she was anxious about her work and about people at work, and liked to talk about people at work he didn’t know and therefore didn’t care about. “I know I’m not being fair,” he said. “There’s two sides to everything, and I’m sure she sees it differently.” Diane let him confide in her and kept her comments private, because Ron bought a lot of coke, and why not make life easier by dispensing with the penny-ante sales and living off a middleman’s—or middlewoman’s—markup? In the margin lay considerable free time.