The girls and boys standing on line outside were talking noisily among themselves, trying to look supremely confident about their chances of getting into the place. The man in charge of granting admission was about six and a half feet tall, and Michael guessed he weighed at least three hundred pounds. He had bushy black eyebrows, curly black hair, wide shoulders, a narrow waist, and hands like hamhocks.
Despite the cold, he was wearing only a black jacket over a white turtleneck shirt, black loafers, white socks, and gray trousers that were too short. Michael heard one of the kids on the line referring to him as Curly.
There was a sudden buzz of excitement when what earlier had appeared to be part of the building’s seamless facade now parted to reveal two green panels that served as entrance doors. An intense green light spilled out onto the sidewalk.
There was the blare of heavy metal rock. Two youngsters walked out—the girl dressed as a somewhat precocious Dorothy in a pleated skirt that showed white panties and half her ass, the boy wearing a gray suit and a funnel on his head. Both were wearing grins that indicated they’d been allowed to meet the Wizard and all their wishes had been granted.
On the line, all faces turned expectantly toward Curly, who was now parading the sidewalk like a judge at a dog show. He chose two people at random, pressed a button that snapped the doors open again, and, with a surly nod, admitted the couple. The girl was dressed as a Munchkin with a frizzed blonde hairdo.
The boy was wearing blue jeans and a long cavalry officer’s overcoat. Apparently, then, admission to the club was not premised on fidelity to the film. The doors swung shut again. The sound of music was replaced by the keening of the wind blowing in fiercely off the Hudson. Nobody on the line complained, not even the kids standing at the head of it. This was simply the way it was. Curly decided who would go in, Curly decided who would stand out here in the cold. Nor was there any way of knowing upon which criteria he premised his choice. Either you waited for his approving nod or you went home with your dreams. That was it, and this was Oz, take it or leave it.
Michael walked over to where Curly was disdainfully glaring out over the crowd.
“Mama’s expecting me,” he said.
Curly looked him over.
“Expecting who?” he said.
“Silvio,” Michael said.
“Silvio who?”
“Just say Silvio.”
“Mama ain’t here yet.”
“I’ll wait. Inside.”
Curly hesitated.
“Push your button,” Michael said.
Curly shrugged. But he pushed the button.
The panels sprang open. Connie and Michael stepped together into the interior of the jewel, and were immediately inundated by a mortar explosion of battering sound and emerald-green light. The place was thronged with Tin Men, Cowardly Lions, Flying Monkeys, Dorothys, Wicked Witches, Munchkins, Wizards, Glindas, Scarecrows, and even ordinary folk. Green smoke swirled on the air. Bodies twisted on the small dance floor. On the bandstand, five blond men wearing black leather trousers, pink tank-top shirts, and long gold chains played guitar and electric-keyboard backup to a young black woman standing at the microphone and belting out a song that seemed to consist only of the words “Do me, baby, do me good” repeated over and over again. She had a big, brassy gospel singer’s voice. She was wearing brown high-heeled boots and what appeared to be draped animal skins. The thudding of the bass guitars sounded like enemy troops shelling the perimeter. The room reverberated with noise, skidded with dazzling light. Out of the deafening din of the music and the refracted green glare of the lights and the dense hanging fog of smoke, a young man in a red jacket materialized.
“Sir?” he asked. “Did John admit you?”
He looked extremely puzzled. Had the system somehow broken down?
“Mama’s expecting me,” Michael said.
“Who’s Mama?” the young man asked.
Michael winked.
“John knows,” he said.
“It’s just that I haven’t got a table,” the young man said.
He seemed on the edge of tears.
“We’ll wait at the bar,” Michael said.
“But how will I know her?” he asked.
“Don’t worry about it,” Michael said, and winked again.
He took Connie’s elbow and led her toward a bar hung with rotating green floodlights that restlessly swept the room like the eyes of Martians, striking the tables around the dance floor, exploding upon them like summer watermelons and then moving on swiftly as if there’d been a prison break, Michael’s motion-picture associations recklessly mixing similes and metaphors, the probing green searchlights in a London air raid, the sky-washing green klieg lights outside Graumann’s Chinese, green tracer shells on a disputed green killing field—but in reality the shells had been yellow and red and the world of Oz was green and loud and somewhat frightening in its insistence on colorization. They sat on high-backed stools alongside a young man dressed as a Cowardly Lion whose mane, awash in the overhead light, looked as green as wilted asparagus.