Leo Farina, with one foot propped against the wall, peers around his hangers-on to see her. “Well, lookie here, it’s Dirty Harriet.”
This gets a few guffaws. Leo’s in tight white trousers with a shiny black shirt, open to show off his chest. He has a lot of gel in his hair and looks like he’s already got a good buzz on: It’s common knowledge that Leo gets high off his own supply.
Nomi usually ignores him; Leo is a tourist at the Riverview. His primary beat is Chachi’s, a few blocks south, where the straights are cashed up enough to afford blow, Leo’s stock in trade. But tonight, he’s in her territory, and she’s jazzed by the baggie in her hand, happy to wrestle. “Hey, Leo, the guys fromSaturday Night Fevercalled. They want the costume back.”
A chorus of “ooohhh”s from the corner boys. Lip twitching, Leo waves a hand to show he can take a joke.
“Don’t tease.” Mischa play slaps her arm. “You want some party favors?”
“Nah, nothing fancy, Meesh, just the usual.” Nomi gives him the money, they make the exchange, then she ducks behind the cloakroom to a small empty bathroom, which is badly lit and smells like moldy drywall.
From Mischa’s packet, she takes a single Valium and breaks it with her short thumbnail, swallows one half with water from the faucet. It’s less than she needs, but she’s super careful with benzos; getting into a bad habit is too easy. She has enough bad habits already.
Out in the ballroom, the Communards have given way to New Order. Nomi holds up the clear baggie from Enrique, with the pendant inside glittering like a black shark’s tooth. The arrowhead is surprisingly heavy, nicely weighted. When she takes it out, the silver wire is helpful for grip. She’s sweating a little. Normally, she would never do this here—she has rules. But it’s Friday, it’s past her regular time, and getting her new tool has got her thrumming.
She doesn’t want to ritualize it here, and this space isn’t private. Better to move fast.
Nomi lifts the hem of her shirt and flicks the sharp edge of the arrowhead against the skin to the right of her belly button. Blood wells, and the humming wasps inside her body still. Her focus returns. She sighs in relief.
Because this is also how people in the Village know her. It’s part of who she is, part of her identity, a side of herself that she occasionally lets loose. It’s one of the reasons why she’s here. Because being in the district isn’t an accident.
Nomi stanches the red with a Kleenex, pressing hard.
Chapter Five
September 1987, Saturday
What do you wear to an appointment with your private investigator?Simon stands above his dresser, scratching through his hair, before realizing it doesn’t matter. Nomi saw him yesterday with his shirt open. Admittedly, she’d come to his apartment, his space; this meeting will be in her space. But it’s not a big deal.
Except he’s spent a month and a half being mindful of how he presents, whether he blends in, and now—confronted by an outlier situation, where he’s not sure of the rules—he finds himself at something of a loss.
Americans are a paradox,Flores said.They like to talk about independence and individuality, but they actually love the homogeneous. They prefer things and people to be “regular”—just like them.
Apart from managing his headaches, Simon’s biggest challenge and most constant sensitivity has been around how to stay homogeneous. Choose the correct clothes. Wear your hair the correct way. Speak with the correct rhythms and intonation and casual slang. Blending in is vital if he wants to stay off official radar, of course, but it’s also a pathway to figuring out where he might belong—or who he might become—in the absence of a real identity.
He’s aware of how easy it might be, when you don’t know who you are, to simply fall through the cracks of daily life and become a nobody.Shapeless, formless nobodies are everywhere in New York: on street corners, in alleyways, beneath overpasses, in dumpsters. Imitation, then, is a guardrail. He can’t “be himself” because he doesn’t know what that entails, but he can imitate others, and that’s usually enough to both give him form and allay suspicion.
So he’s accustomed to playing a role. But now he has to figure out what the role of “amnesiac guy on his afternoon off” looks like, and perhaps unsurprisingly, he’s coming up blank.
There’s a knock at the apartment door.
Dammit.He grabs jeans, a white shirt. “Hold on!”
It’s the second time he’s opened the door on Nomi while barefoot, but at least this time his shirt isn’t unbuttoned.
She’s leaning one hand on the doorjamb and doesn’t seem to care. “Hi. Look, I know I said two thirty, but I have to do a thing.”
“A thing?”
“A thing, yeah, a thing.” She drops her hand, half turning and clearly in a hurry. “I’ve gotta go see a guy. Another guy, I mean. So can we take a rain check?”
He’s been agonizing over clothes for nothing. “You have to see another guy.”
“Yes, I’ve gotta catch a train in—” she checks her watch—“in, like, fifteen minutes. I’ve gotta be there before he takes off at four. So, rain check?”
He realizes suddenly that she’s dressed for action: black combat pants, black tank, black leather jacket. The shitkicker boots are still the same. She’s taken out some of the metal in her ears.
He narrows his eyes, thinking of the Italian fax sheet from yesterday with its ugly mug shots and intimidating list of prior charges. “Is this something to do with Lamonte?”
