Harlan Coben: Live Wire

“Nice,” Myron said.

“Nice?”

“Awesome?”

Esperanza nodded, still smiling. “There are things I could do with an ass like that.”

Looking at the rather erotic dancer and then at Esperanza, an image popped into Myron’s head. He immediately forced it out. There were places your mind best not go when you’re trying to concentrate on other matters. “I’m sure your husband would love that.”

“I’m married, not dead. I can look.”

Myron watched her face, watched the excitement there, the strange feeling that she was back in her element. When her son, Hector, was born two years ago, Esperanza had immediately gone into Mommy-mode. Her desk was suddenly filled with a corny potpourri of classic images: Hector with the Easter Bunny, Hector with Santa Claus, Hector with Disney characters and on kiddie rides at Hershey Park. Her best business clothes were often stained with baby spit-up and rather than hide it, she loved to tell how said spit-up made its way onto her person. She made friends with Mommy types who would have made her gag in the past, and discussed Maclaren strollers and Montessori preschools and bowel movements and what ages their various offspring first crawled/ walked/talked. Her entire world, like many mothers before her-and yes, this was something of a sexist statement-had shrunk down into a small mass of baby flesh.

“So where would Lex be?” Myron asked.

“Probably one of the VIP rooms.”

“How do we get in?”

“I undo one more button,” Esperanza said. “Seriously, let me work it alone for a minute. Check out the bathroom. I bet you twenty bucks you can’t take a pee in the urinal.”

“What?”

“Just bet me and go,” she said, pointing to the right.

Myron shrugged and headed into the restroom. It was black and dark and marble. He stepped over to the urinal and saw immediately what Esperanza meant. The urinals sat on a giant wall of one-way glass like something in a police interrogation room. In short, you saw everything on the dance floor. The languorous women were literally feet away from him, some using the mirror side of the glass to check themselves out, not realizing (or maybe definitely realizing) that they were staring at a man trying to relieve himself.

He headed out. Esperanza had her hand extended, palm up. Myron crossed it with a twenty-dollar bill.

“Still got the shy bladder, I see.”

“Is the women’s room the same?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“So what next?”

Esperanza gestured with her chin at a man with slicked-back hair oiling his way toward them. When he filled out his job application, Myron had little doubt that it read, Last Name: Trash. First Name: Euro . Myron checked the man’s wake for slime tracks.

Euro smiled with ferret teeth. “Poca, mi amor.”

“Anton,” she said, letting him kiss her hand with a tad too much enthusiasm. Myron feared that he might use those ferret teeth to gnaw the skin to bone.

“You are still such a magnificent creature, Poca.”

He spoke with a funny maybe-Hungarian, maybe-Arabic accent, like something he made up for a comedy sketch. Anton was unshaven, the stubble on his face glistening in a not-pleasant way. He wore sunglasses even though it was cave-dark in here.

“This is Anton,” Esperanza said. “He says Lex is in bottle service.”

“Oh,” Myron said, having no idea what bottle service was.

“This way,” Anton said.

They traveled into a sea of bodies. Esperanza was in front of him. Myron got a kick out of watching every neck turn for a second glance. As they continued to wind through the crowd, a few women met Myron’s gaze and held it, though not as many as one, two, five years ago. He felt like an aging pitcher who needed this particular radar gun to tell him that his fastball was losing velocity. Or maybe there was something else at work here. Maybe women just sensed that Myron was engaged now, had been taken off the market by the lovely Terese Collins and thus was no longer to be treated as mere eye candy.

Yeah, Myron thought. Yeah, that had to be it.

Anton used his key to open a door into another room-and seemingly another era. Where the actual club was techno and sleek with hard angles and smooth surfaces, this VIP lounge was done up in Early American Bordello. Plush sofas of burgundy, crystal chandeliers, leather moldings on the ceiling, lit candles on the wall. The room also had another one-way glass wall, so the VIPs could watch the girls dance and maybe choose a few to join them. Several robustly implanted soft-porn model types wore period corsets and merry widows and walked around with champagne bottles, ergo, Myron figured, the term “bottle service.”

“Are you looking at all the bottles?” Esperanza asked.

“Um, close.”

Esperanza nodded, smiled at a particularly well-endowed hostess in a black corset. “Hmm… Could do with a little bottle service myself, if you know what I’m saying.”

Myron thought about it. Then: “Actually, I don’t. You’re both women, right? So I’m not sure I get the bottle reference.”

“God, you’re literal.”

“You asked if I was looking at all the bottles. Why?”

“Because they’re serving Cristal champagne,” Esperanza said.

“So?”

“How many bottles do you see?”

Myron glanced around. “I don’t know, nine, maybe ten.”

“They go for eight grand a pop here, plus tip.”

Myron put his hand to his chest, feigning heart palpitations. He spotted Lex Ryder sprawled on a couch with a colorful assortment of lovelies. The other men in the room all shouted aging musician/ roadie-long hair weaves, bandanas, facial hair, wiry arms, soft guts. Myron made his way through them.

“Hello, Lex.”

Lex’s head lolled to the side. He looked up and shouted with too much gusto, “Myron!”

Lex tried to get up, couldn’t, so Myron offered him a hand. Lex used it, managed to get to his feet, and hugged Myron with the slobbering enthusiasm men save for too much drink. “Oh man, it’s so good to see you.”

HorsePower had started off as a house band in Lex and Gabriel’s hometown of Melbourne, Australia. The name had come from Lex’s last name Ryder (Horse-Ryder) and Gabriel’s last name Wire (Power-Wire), but from the moment they started together, it was all about Gabriel. Gabriel Wire had a wonderful voice, sure, and he was ridiculously handsome with nearly supernatural charisma-but he also had that elusive, intangible, the “you know it when you see it” quality that raises the greats to the status of legendary.

Must be hard, Myron often thought, for Lex-or anyone-to live in that shadow. Sure, Lex was famous and rich and technically speaking, all songs were Wire-Ryder productions, though Myron, being the one who handled his finances, knew Lex’s cut was 25 percent to Gabriel’s 75. And sure, women still hit on him, men still wanted to be his friend, but Lex was also the ultimate late-night punch line, the butt of all jokes involving second-to-the-point-of-irrelevancy bananas.

HorsePower was still huge, maybe bigger than ever, even though Gabriel Wire had gone completely underground after a tragic scandal more than fifteen years ago. With the exception of a few paparazzi shots and a lot of rumors, there had been pretty much no sign of Gabriel Wire in all that time-no touring, no interviews, no press, no public appearances. All that secrecy just made the public hunger for Wire all the more.

“I think it’s time to go home, Lex.”

“Nah, Myron,” he said, voice thick with what Myron hoped was just drink. “Come on now. We’re having fun. Aren’t we having fun, gang?”

Various vocalizations of agreement. Myron looked around. He may have met one or two of the guys before, but the only one he knew for certain was Buzz, Lex’s longtime bodyguard/personal assistant. Buzz met Myron’s eye and shrugged as if to say, what can you do?