Glamorous Disasters

From Chapter 1 Dr. Thayer will pay $395 an hour for Noah's services. Only the classiest prostitute could charge as much and, to any doorman glimpsing Noah stepping out of his taxi, Noah might indeed seem a well-kept callboy. Though brandless, his cobalt shirt is pressed as flat as paper, and the flesh exposed at his throat is Hamptons-tan. Diesel sunglasses dangle from a buttonhole. He has carefully chosen his pants: pin-striped dark linen, to denote a youthful vitality bobbing beneath a surface respect for decorum. His headphones are both inconspicuous and expensive. The guise is complete. Noah pauses in front of a Fifth Avenue building, appearing dumbstruck that there should exist an environment so ideally suited to him. But he is neither favored son returned from the Hamptons nor callboy. He is an SAT tutor, paid those $395 to ensure that Thayer Junior attends the same Ivy League school as Thayer Senior. He has made himself appear as one of his students -- attractive, complacent, glassy-eyed -- and he will work at them stealthily, from within their world. They don't stand a chance to resist him. When Noah feels tired -- and tonight is such a night -- he mouths, Three hundred ninety-five dollars, throughout his commute. Dr. Thayer called to ask him to come a half hour early; the family would pay the cab fare. And so, when Noah flagged the solitary yellow car arrowing between the gray brick buildings of Harlem, his meter started running along with the cabby's: twenty-five minutes' travel time added to a hundred-minute session, plus the fare itself, will run the Thayer family $835. The doormen snap to attention when Noah appears behind the etched glass of the entrance, but then they slouch when the better interior lights reveal Noah's youth, his $30 sandals, the headphones in his ears. The doormen are white, of course, but not White -- Noah listens for the trace of an Irish or Russian accent, reads the bleariness of a Brooklyn commute into their late-night eyes. They regard Noah warily, as if girding themselves to cast him back outside. The biggest snobs of any building, the doormen. "I'm here for Dylan Thayer," Noah says. A doorman nods in reluctant civility, picks up the handset, and dials. His console is gold and velvet blue, like a presidential lectern. Nine-four-nine Fifth Avenue is, like its Park Avenue neighbors, an essentially ugly structure with the artless lines of a Monopoly hotel, but the interior is done up in fleur-de-lis and chinoiserie. The doorman glances at Noah. "Noah," he says. "'Noah' is on his way up, Dr. Thayer . . . You're welcome." He hangs up and turns a key. "Eleven F." Noah crosses to the mahogany doors of the elevator. He feels the doorman's gaze on his back, and wishes he were wearing loafers, that he looked more like someone who would live here. But at least the whole doorman interchange has earned him $30. He is $81,000 in debt. Or, after today's session, $80,700. The doors open. Eleven F is the only button that will light. This is to prevent Noah from infiltrating any other apartment. The elevator is fast, but even so the ride up grosses $5. The F in 11F stands for the front half of the floor: the doors open directly into the foyer of the apartment. A woman slides over the partially opened secondary door, frail hand extended. A pair of gold bracelets tinkles. "Susan Thayer," she says. Noah takes the bony hand and rattles it once. "A pleasure, Dr. Thayer." One key to the first meeting is to get the titles right -- if he's talking to a moSchrefer, Eliot is the author of 'Glamorous Disasters ', published 2006 under ISBN 9780743281676 and ISBN 0743281675.