'I almost passed out. She was quoting
'And she chimed in, '
'We grinned at each other for a second, and I shooed her outside before someone came in. She was waiting for me across the hall. 'I'm Paddi Mann,' she said. 'And you're Davey Chancel, of the famous Chancel House Chancels. Want to buy me a drink tonight?'
'Normally, assertive women put me off, and we're not supposed to go out with women from the office, but she could quote Hugo Driver!' I told her to meet me at six-thirty at Hannigan's, a bar a couple of blocks away, and she said no, we should go to the Hellfire Club down on Second Avenue, great place, and let's meet at seven-thirty so she could take care of some things she had to do. Fine, I said, and she came right up in front of me and tilted up her head and whispered, '
Nora had heard these words before, but she could not remember when.
'You know what? I thought I could learn things from her. It was like she had secrets, and they were the secrets I needed to know.'
'Sure,' Nora said. 'You needed to know the secret of how to score coke better than Bang Bang's.'
Davey had gone home and changed into jeans, a black sweater, and a black leather jacket before walking to Second Avenue. The Hellfire Club was between Eighth and Ninth, on the East Side. He reached the corner of Ninth and Second only a minute or two past seven-thirty and walked down the east side of the avenue, passing a fast- food restaurant, a Mexican restaurant, and saw a bar farther down the block. He picked up his pace and went past a window that showed a few men huddled over a long, dark bar, put his hand on the door, and just below his hand saw the name MORLEYS.
He had managed to miss the club. He went back up the east side of the avenue checking the names on buildings, and missed it again.
A rank of three telephones stood only a few feet away.
The first had a severed cord instead of a receiver, the second did not provide a dial tone, and the third permitted six-sevenths of Davey's quarter into its slot and then froze.
Disgusted, Davey stepped away from the telephones and went to the corner to wait for the light to change. He glanced down the block and this time noticed a narrow stone staircase with wrought-iron handrails between Morley's bar and a lighting-goods shop. The stairs led to a dark wooden door, which looked too elegant for its surroundings. Centered in the door's top panel was a brass plate slightly larger than an index card.
The light changed, but instead of crossing the street, Davey walked to the foot of the stairs and looked up at a five-story brownstone wedged between two apartment buildings. On either side of the door were two curtained windows. The lettering on the plaque was not quite legible from the bottom of the stairs. He climbed two steps and saw that the plate read HELLFIRE CLUB and, beneath that, MEMBERS ONLY. He went up the stairs and opened the door. Across a tiny entry stood another door, glossy black. Three commands had been painted on a white wooden plaque fixed just beneath the level of his eyes:
DO NOT QUESTION.
DO NOT JUDGE.
DO NOT HESITATE.
Davey opened the black door. Before him was a hallway with a floral carpet which continued up a flight of stairs. To his left an elderly woman stood behind a checkroom counter beside the opening into a dim barroom. Past the bar, a wide leather armchair stood beside an ambitious potted fern. A white-haired concierge at a glossy black desk turned to him with a diplomatic half smile. To eliminate the preliminaries, Davey peered into the barroom and saw only prosperous-looking men in suits seated around tables or standing in clusters of three or four. He noticed a few women in the room, none of them Paddi. In the instant before the man at the desk spoke to him, he saw - thought he saw - a naked man covered to wrists and neck with elaborate tattoos beside a naked woman, her back to Davey, who had shaved her head and powdered or otherwise colored her body a flat, dead white.
'May 1 assist you, sir?
Startled, Davey looked at the concierge. He cleared his throat. 'Thank you. I'm here to meet a woman named Paddi Mann.' He glanced back into the bar and had the sense that the other people in the room had shifted their positions to conceal the surreal couple.
'Sir.'
Davey looked back at the concierge.
'That was Miss Mann?'
When Davey said yes, the concierge told him to be seated, please, and watched him proceed to the leather chair, which provided a view of nothing more provocative than the wide mahogany doors and a row of hunting prints on the opposite wall. The concierge opened a drawer and drew out a ribbon microphone at least fifty years old, positioned it squarely in front of him, and said, 'Guest for Miss Mann.' The words reverberated from the barroom, from rooms upstairs, and from behind the mahogany doors.
One of the mahogany doors opened, and a Paddi Mann who looked less raffish and more sophisticated than her office persona stepped smiling into the hallway. The dark suit into which she had changed looked more expensive than most of Davey's own suits. Her shining hair fell softly over her forehead and ears.
She asked why he was dressed that way.
He explained that he, thought he was going to meet her at a bar.
Bars were disgusting.: Why did he think she had invited him to her club?
He hadn't understood, he said. If she liked, he could go home and put on a suit.
She told him not to bother and suggested they swap jackets.
He took off his leather jacket and held it out. Paddi slipped off her suit jacket and twirled herself into his jacket so smoothly that he barely had time to notice that she was wearing suspenders.
'Your turn,' she said.
He was afraid he'd rip the shoulder seams, but the jacket met his back and shoulders with only a suggestion of tightness.
'You're lucky I like big jackets.'
Paddi opened the mahogany door to a lounge in which groups of chairs and couches were arranged before a window. He saw the backs of several male heads, a white gesticulating arm, newspapers and magazines on a long wooden rack. A waiter with a black bow tie, a black vest, and a shaven head held an empty tray and an order pad.
Paddi directed him to a pair of library chairs before a wall of books at the right of the room. Between the chairs stood a round table on top of which lay a portfolio-sized envelope with the Chancel House logo. The waiter materialized beside Paddi. She asked for the usual, and Davey ordered a double martini on the rocks.
He asked what the usual was, and she said, 'A Top-and-Bottom: half port and half gin.' It was an outsider drink, she told him.
While he pondered this category, Davey took in that the owner of the naked arm he had glimpsed from the hallway was a middle-aged man seated in a leather chair near the center of the room. The arms of the chair cut his midsection from view, but there were no clothes on his flabby upper body, and none on the thick white legs crossed ankle to knee in front of the chair. A leather strap circled his neck. From the front of the strap, a chain, an actual chain, said Davey to Nora, like you'd use on a dog if the dog weighed two hundred pounds and liked to munch babies, hung between him and the bearded guy in a three-piece suit holding the other end. The man wearing the chain swiveled his head to give Davey a do-you-mind? glare. Davey looked away and saw that while most of the people in the room were dressed conventionally, one man reading a newspaper wore black leather trousers, motorcycle boots, and an open black leather vest that revealed an intricate pattern of scars on his chest.
He wondered how Paddi could have objected to his clothing when at least one person in the club wore no clothing at all.
'In here,' she said, 'people wear whatever is right for them. What's right for you is a suit.'
'Some of these people must have a lot of trouble when they leave the club,' he said.
