Reed Farrel Coleman - Moe Prager 01 by Walking the Perfect Square

Author:Walking the Perfect Square [Square, Walking the Perfect]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780452283893
Publisher: Penguin Group (USA)
Published: 2001-01-02T06:00:00+00:00

"You

still think like a cop," Katy observed.

"I'll take that as a compliment," I said, before kissing her again.

!:;!Ť

I

Located off Broadway, below Canal Street, in a part of Manhattan that was not unlike Pooty's neighborhood, Dirt Lounge was our third stop after CBGB's and The Vatican.

This area, however, was still heavily commercial and unlikely to go completely artsy-fartsy anytime soon. Dirt Lounge played the dance hall equivalent of the anti-Christ to Studio 54: no glitz, no neon, no paparazzi. If not for the black leather and spandex crowd milling about at the short flight of steps outside the little factory building, you might miss the place altogether.

I showed my badge to one of the motorcycle-jacketed bouncers at the rope and asked to speak to the man in charge. The bouncer grunted. Turning, he whispered to someone who must have been standing directly behind his mountainous body. Stepping around to the bouncer's right came a slender little man with a magenta mohawk, sickly white skin and black lipstick. His ears were so littered with studs, safety pins and dangling razor blades that if he were to stand between two strong magnets his face would peel off. Betraying all the metal and makeup, his droopy eyelids and downturned mouth lent him the bearing of cultivated boredom more closely associated with eighteenth-century French aristocrats than with punk rockers.

"Badges don't get you an entree here," he said, looking past me and pointing to people in the crowd. "And what's with the cane, new undercover squad?" He almost smiled.

That joke was getting old fast. "I'm not looking for an in," I said, "just two minutes of your time."

"Please," Katy pleaded over my shoulder. "Please."

"Okay, I need a break anyway. Bear, you can handle it for a few," he told the bouncer before turning back to us. "This way."

The bouncer unhitched the ratty velvet rope, letting us and three or four other people through. Poorly lit and shabby, the place smelled like the bathroom of an Irish bar on St. Patrick's Day, only not as sweet. But the music was loud and snappy, even if the snippets of lyrics I caught were as dark as the lighting. Some of the dancers--mostly kids just jumping up and down like palsied pogo sticks--smiled in spite of themselves. Dancing makes alienation a tough mask to wear.

The mohawked aristocrat led us past the caged ticket window, down a long hallway and up a flight of stairs. The office was lined with album covers literally stapled to the walls and ceiling. The albums covers of bands like Yes, Pink Floyd, the Moody Blues, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Jethro Tull, the Strawbs, Gentle Giant, Genesis and some I'd never heard of were defaced in one way or another, mostly with rude graffiti. "Fuck" and "suck" comprised the bulk of the Magic-Markered criticism. Some of the defacement was pretty skillful, however. "Days of Future Past" had been sliced into razor-thin strips and reconstructed into a nonsensical but striking square of blues, yellows, blacks, whites and reds.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.