Chapter Thirty-One
-- Summer, 1977
Bee-Gee’s – “Nights on Broadway”
With help from his mother, Nick and Cody got an apartment in Manhattan together on East 29th. It was spacious and airy with warehouse windows that let in the morning light. They made a day of moving in, playing Elvis Costello and drinking while they carried Sandra’s old couch up the fourth-floor walk-up. Nick’s mattress was next. They laid it down directly on the floor of his room and he and Cody took turns flipping onto it.
When he was good and soused, Nick put the poster of Bruce Lee up and practiced doing karate moves in front of it. Cody yelled from his room. “Doesn’t your brother live out here? We should call Bill up.”
Nick took a break from the karate and walked to his open doorway, so that he could see Cody across the hall.
“Why?!” he asked, which made the two of them fall over laughing.
That night they wanted to paint the town. They decided to check out a swinger’s club they had heard about on television. But to get in they needed dates. They rang up Maggie and Simone, who lived down the street and were only too happy to get out of the house.
An hour later, Nick and Cody stood in the considerable line of people waiting to get into Plato’s Retreat. They stared at the dozens ahead of them, their hopes dwindling, as a cab pulled up. Maggie and Simone hopped out. Maggie, in her tube top and blown-out Fawcett hair, was already blatto. Next to her, Simone was decked out in a pale blue leisure suit halter top. She looked like she had stepped off the pages of Mademoiselle. With these women in tow, they had no problem getting in.
Plato’s was a dimly-lit bacchanalia of disco, backgammon, and whirlpool baths. There were writhing couples as far as the eye could see. As they climbed the stairs to the second floor, Simone updated Nick and Cody on the recent modeling she’d done for Andy Warhol.
Maggie couldn’t resist cutting in. “She’s his fucking muse!”
Simone blushed. “He barely knows who I am!”
Upstairs, the club was just as packed. Somehow, they found a couple chaise lounges that were unoccupied and claimed them as their own. Maggie went off to get drinks as the others sat looking around. None of the other guests seemed shy about their drug use, so Simone cut up a couple of lines.
“Don’t mind if I do!” Nick said when Simone offered him her rolled up hundred after doing a bump of her own. Taking it, Nick “accidentally” did two lines by mistake. He handed the bill off to Cody as Maggie returned, dragging over a couple she met in line at the bar. She introduced Al and Tina, a knowledgeable husband and wife from the upper west side. They were friendly and helpful, offering Nick his very first Quaalude.
Al took a particular shine to Nick, telling him about a secret new gym he could check out in the East Village called “Man’s Country.”
“It’s my favorite spa in all of New York,” Al explained.
“I thought you said it was a gym!” Nick yelled over the deafening, percussive music.
“Spa, gym, bath house – it’s all the same thing!”
Nick nodded. He was starting to feel delayed in a really amazing kind of way. He wanted to do another bump, but Maggie was hogging the little mirror that Simone had brought with her. Not that Simone noticed. Cody was talking her ear off about Star Wars for the umpteenth time that night.
Nick realized he’d been tuning everyone out when he noticed Al talking to him non-stop.
Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.
“But why Sal Mineo?” the man cried. “Why not kill someone who deserves to die, like that bitch Anita Bryant?!”
Nick nodded, unsure of what it was he was supposed to say.
“I want to dance,” Tina announced to the table. Standing up, she pulled Nick onto the dancefloor before he could object. She began to grind against him to a slinky disco beat, when the lights suddenly went out.
Everyone booed thinking someone had bumped up against a light switch, but soon there were shouts from the front door that the whole block was down.
Nick and Cody sat stubbornly in the darkness for nearly ten minutes for the power to come back on. When it didn’t, they reluctantly decided to call it a night.
As they emerged from Plato’s, they realized that the whole city had gone black. Nick wanted to keep the party going and invited everyone back to their new place. But with the trains down and a huge line waiting for a cab, they would have to walk back to the apartment. When the others heard this they politely begged off, so Nick and Cody set off on their own.
Within a block or two, teenagers started to loot and throw public trashcans through storefronts. Cody and Nick exchanged a look and decided to jog the rest of the way.
They didn’t get home until very late. The first thing they did was light candles. Still feeling groovy, Nick was hit by a strong desire to paint. He couldn’t sleep anyway. He set up his canvas, opened all the windows, and turned Blondie up on his battery-powered radio, full blast. It was three in the morning.
He stared at the blank expanse before him, turned on by the possibility. Realizing he hadn’t taken his Thorazine, he dry-swallowed a pill and picked up a brush. He drew a self-portrait, a cry for help; a head that was bursting open. When Cody walked by to get another beer, Nick explained, “I feel like I have beautiful music playing inside my head, but I can't get anyone to hear it.” Cody nodded, concerned. He went back to his room but continued watching from afar.
As Nick went back to painting, he could hear the looting down on the streets below and the police sirens as they roared by. It was good to have a soundtrack. Their neighbors in the building across the way were out on their balcony smoking a late-night cigarette. Acutely aware of the audience he had, Nick took his shirt off. He felt erotically superior as he stood in the moonlight. He could do anything.
He thought quietly to himself that he would like living in the city.
**
When their names were officially on the lease, offers started coming in the mail for endless amounts of credit cards. Cody had no need; his family was still loaded. But Nick saw only the possibilities. He threw most of his money away on clothes: Perry Ellis suits with pinstripes, couture bell bottoms, ultra-suede dinner jackets, pure Egyptian madras pants, and velour evening wear for every night of the week.
Because of this, it was always a race to make rent. Nick never thought about it until the day before it was actually due. He had many failed ventures, like breaking into tenements and construction sites to strip the copper. He was willing to do anything not to work. He would go to the ends of the earth for an end around.
If that failed, he could always count on his mother. She was a soft mark. She and William were currently forced to stay with friends out in Westchester, but he knew she had a trust fund to fall back on. She could afford it.
When he made rent, it was always joyful, always a cause for celebration. He would think about treating himself to something. Perhaps even a gym membership?
And things were looking up. He had a meeting at Desnudo - a hip, up-and-coming gallery in the meat packing district - with a woman named Carla-something that he had met out dancing. She had seen some of his paintings and wanted to talk seriously about some kind of exhibit.
Nick finished the gunshot painting he had started weeks ago and packed it up. He didn’t have money for a cab and the close quarters of the subway didn’t exactly guarantee the painting would survive transport, so he decided to walk the painting the thirty blocks. By the time he got to Desnudo, he was covered in sweat.
Carla was excited to see him and touched his arm for an extended period. “What’s that?” she asked, finally pointing to Nick’s painting.
“Oh, this is something new...” he said, pulling off the drop sheet.
Carla stared at the image, breathlessly. She had a feeling about him. He was something to lean into. Something she could sell. She went to grab her boss, to bring him in on this.
While she was gone, Nick spied an open file cabinet with a dented, black lock box inside.
He looked around to make sure no one was watching. He rose, quickly. Forcing the lock, he saw the stack of endless hundreds. There wasn’t even a question of whether or not he would take it. He grabbed the wad and bolted.
By the time Carla returned with Luther, Nick was long gone. All that remained was his painting. Luther gazed at it long and hard. Carla might be right about this one, he thought. Even after they discovered the theft of the petty cash...
They could just add small-time thief to his artist’s biography.