The Immortalists(16)

‘We just need something to tide us over,’ she says. ‘Something easy, something that makes fast money. It doesn’t have to mean anything about us.’

Simon thinks of the club downstairs. He’s passed it at night, when it’s full of young men and dizzying purple light. The next afternoon, he smokes out front until a middle-aged man – barely five feet, with bright orange hair – walks up to the door carrying a jumble of keys.

‘Hey!’ Simon crushes his cigarette beneath his shoe. ‘I’m Simon. I live upstairs.’

He sticks out his hand. The other man squints at him, shakes it.

‘Benny. What can I do for you?’

Simon wonders who Benny was before he came to San Francisco. He looks like a theater kid with his black sneakers and black jeans, a black T-shirt tucked into the waistband.

‘I’d like a job,’ Simon says.

Benny nudges the glass door with one shoulder, then holds it open with his foot to allow Simon through.

‘You do, huh? How old are you?’

He strides through the space: flicking on the house lights, checking the smoke machines.

‘Twenty-two. I could tend bar.’

Simon thought it would sound more mature than bartend, but now he sees he was wrong. Benny smirks and walks to the bar, where he heaves down the stools that wait in stacks.

‘Firstly,’ he says, ‘don’t lie to me. You’re what – seventeen, eighteen? Secondly, I don’t know where you’re from, but you gotta be twenty-one to tend bar in California, and I’m not losing my liquor license over some cute new hire. Thirdly –’

‘Please.’ Simon is desperate: if he can’t get a job and Gertie keeps after him, he’ll have no choice but to go home. ‘I’m new here, and I need money. I’ll do anything – wipe your floors, stamp hands. I’ll –’

Benny holds up a palm. ‘Thirdly. If I were to hire you, I wouldn’t put you at the bar.’

‘Where would you put me?’

Benny pauses, one foot propped up on the rung of a stool. He points at one of the tall purple platforms spaced evenly throughout the club. ‘There.’

‘Oh yeah?’ Simon looks at the platforms. They’re at least four feet high and perhaps two and a half wide. ‘What would I do up there?’

‘You’d dance, kid. Think you can handle that?’

Simon grins. ‘Sure, I can dance. That’s all I have to do?’

‘That’s all you gotta do. You’re lucky Mikey quit last week. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have anything for you. But you’re pretty, and with the makeup . . .’ Benny cocks his head. ‘With the makeup, yeah – you’ll look older.’

‘What makeup?’

‘What do you think? Purple paint. Head to toe.’ Benny drags a broom out of a side room and begins to collect the previous night’s debris: bent straws, receipts, a purple condom wrapper. ‘Get here by seven tonight. The guys’ll show you how.’

There are five of them, each with their own pillar. Richie – a forty-five-year-old veteran with bulky muscles and a military haircut – has earned pillar number one, by the front windows. Across from him, at number two, is Lance, a transplant from Wisconsin whose ready smile and round, Canadian o’s are playfully mocked. Pillar number three is Lady, six foot four and dressed in drag; number four is Colin, skinny as a poet and sad-eyed, so Lady calls him Jesus Boy. Adrian – devilishly beautiful, his golden-brown body entirely hairless – takes pillar number five.

‘Number six,’ calls Lady, when Simon enters the dressing room. ‘How do you do?’

Lady is black, with high cheekbones and warm eyes rimmed by long lashes. The rest of the men wear nothing except flimsy purple thongs, but Benny lets Lady wear a tight pleather minidress – purple, of course – and chunky platform heels.

She shakes her can of purple paint. ‘Turn around, honey. I’ll do you.’

Adrian hoots, and Simon turns obediently, grinning. He’s already drunk. He bends toward the ground, ass up, and shakes it in Lady’s direction, who screams with delight. Lance turns on the radio – Chic’s ‘Le Freak’ – as Adrian takes a tube of purple makeup from his toiletries case. He does Simon’s face, smoothing dyed foundation around his nostrils and hairline, then the lobes of his ears. They finish moments before nine o’clock, when it is time to line up and parade into the club.

Even at this early hour, Purp is well populated, and for a moment, Simon’s vision goes dark. Not in his wildest San Francisco fantasies did he imagine doing something like this. If it weren’t for Klara’s bottle of Smirnoff, he would have already turned around, dashing out of the club and into his apartment like a runaway extra in a sci-fi gay porn. Instead, as the men split and take their places, Simon positions himself behind pillar number six. Because Lady is the tallest, she hoists each man up onto his pedestal. Richie is athletic and energized: he hops up and down with one fist in the air and occasionally whips an invisible rope over his head. Lance is goofy, sweet; already, an appreciative mass stands below his pedestal, cheering as he does the bus stop and the funky chicken. Colin sways listlessly, high on Quaaludes. Occasionally, he extends his arms and moves his palms through the air like a mime. Adrian humps the air and runs his hands over his crotch. Simon wills himself not to grow hard as he watches.