demanding a stiff price for… ecstasy—ecstasy!—the consummate thrill of being known as a player, a playa, in this magical market, which seems to have been concocted out of thin air. What on earth is all that so-called art they ask a fortune for at Art Basel? Imagination without skill gives us modern art. Then she turns modestly, demurely, toward her seatmate and says, “Who did you say said that?” She has the horrible realization that the entire table has gone silent. She hasn’t mentioned Maurice by name nor the artist whose work he bought… nor Miss Carr, his adviser, but Maurice and Norman aren’t stupid.
She cuts a glance at them. Both look stunned, like they’ve been punched in the nose for no reason. Yet she can’t just… stop, can she… not in front of Sergei and her new friend, Mr. Strauss. All she can think of doing is dropping the subject of art advisers—and switching to the insane scramble of the rich on the opening day at Art Basel to get to the booths of the artists they’ve been advised to like. Throughout this little gossipy disquisition she keeps interjecting temporizing comments, such as, “I don’t mean every collector” and “but some art advisers are completely honest—I know that,” but it’s too late. Fleischmann can’t help but know this juicy stuff is about him. Norman does, too. And he’ll be furious. Maurice’s are the coattails Norman thinks he’s going to ride to social eminence—and here is his own nurse… doing her best to ruin it all!
Sergei is beaming. He loves every point she’s made! That was sensational! She’s sensational!
She has to endure the rest of the dinner sitting there scalding in guilt and shame over what she has just said about Maurice, even though she never mentioned his name. Sister Clota’s girls never commit such treachery. She feels so guilty, she can’t enjoy the attention everybody at her end of the table is now eager to lavish upon her. One question after another! What an interesting young woman! And… to think of what we thought when we first saw her!
The attention only makes Magdalena feel worse. Guilt! Guilt! Guilt! Guilt! How could she have done this to Maurice? Norman will be enraged… justifiably!
As soon as the dinner is over, she stands up and goes directly to Sergei, smiling and extending her hand as if she’s expressing her thanks… and look at her: the very picture of a polite, properly grateful guest.
Sergei is the very picture of a gracious host. He takes her proffered hand in both of his… and with a perfectly proper smile and a perfectly polite expression on his face, he says to her as if it were protocol straight out of the book:
“How can I reach you?”
14
Girls with Green Tails
The supposed habitat of Igor Drukovich’s supposed sex habit, the Honey Pot was the last building in a decrepit little shopping strip down a nondescript road off Collins Avenue up in Sunny Isles, where Miami Beach merges with the mainland. The building looked like it had been built as a warehouse… big, drab, featureless, and only one story high. But out front was a blindingly bright backlit plastic sign—an enormous thing, at least twenty-five feet wide—with the honey pot written across it in a lit-up blood-orange script outlined in red and yellow neon. This hot, gaudy production was mounted atop a freestanding steel column about four stories high. After dark nobody driving along Collins Avenue could keep from gawking:
THE HONEY POT
Huge huge huge brilliant brilliant brilliant lurid lurid lurid, that sign was, but it was also more than forty feet above the ground. The dozen or so men standing down here outside the club’s entrance were lit by little more than the usual dim electro-gloaming that prevailed outdoors in Greater Miami’s nightlife. The little more was an electro-tinge from above that turned all these white faces the sickly color of orangeade…
Sickly hyper-diluted orangeade was the way it struck Nestor, who had just arrived with John Smith. Sickly? It couldn’t get much sicker-looking than it did right before him, on John Smith’s fair white face. Too bad for John Smith… but it also did bad things to Nestor’s nerves. What the hell did he know about strip clubs? There were 143 of them in the Miami area—it was a fucking industry!—but Nestor Camacho had never been inside even one. He had entertained John Smith all the way out here with cop stories about these funk holes. Too bad they