The Metropolis Case_ A Novel - Matthew Gallaway [103]
MARTIN’S FIRST “REAL” job after college, as a paralegal at the downtown office of his uncle’s white-shoe law firm, had been marked by a similar—if somewhat more complicated—anomie. At first he enjoyed his immersion in the “high-stakes” atmosphere, where millions of dollars were tied up in lawsuits and corporate transactions; as a government major with a concentration in international relations, he felt it was important to understand whether corporations could be said to act more or less rationally than the countries they had displaced. But over a relatively short period of time—perhaps an hour, he joked to Dante—he grew to dislike the work, not so much because it was boring and draining—which it was—or because he had been required to wear a coat and tie—bothersome as that could be—but because everyone at the firm viewed him as a recent Cornell grad and Division I hockey player, which were two facets of Martin Vallence that had begun to resonate with him less and less as he spent more time in the East Village.
He was living with Jay Wellings in an apartment on Second Avenue and St. Marks, surrounded by random flea markets—full of doll heads, bent silverware, and porno mags—junkies and punks, boarded-up storefronts, and anarchist graffiti. Almost every weekend they went to hard-core shows at the Shoe, an abandoned tenement on Tenth and A. The ground floor was essentially a plywood cave with a small riser in the back covered by doormats stolen from restaurants in SoHo, lit by a single naked lightbulb hanging from the ceiling, and adorned with a couple of very tortured-looking microphone stands that seemed to be held together with duct tape and admonition. The smell was sour and rank—they smoked cigarettes as “air freshener”—while the bands were loud and fast and violent. Martin loved it; he threw himself into the mosh pit and emerged bruised but scrubbed, ready for revolution.
This process was not without unexpected repercussions, not only in terms of his increasing displeasure with his law firm work but in a seriously lamentable disinterest in girls and a corresponding desire for the opposite. Given this tension, it could hardly be considered a surprise—although it had felt like it at the time—when one night he found himself smitten by a friend of Jay’s named Keith Loris, who helped run the shows. With sunken eyes, a boxer’s nose, and a full black beard, Keith had the idealistic and slightly sadistic aura of a young Fidel; he seemed to be everywhere at once, helping the bands set up, checking the PA, and even selling beer. Martin was officially introduced when Jay ordered a few cans of whatever, and during this transaction—they had shaken hands—Keith seemed to regard Martin for perhaps a whole second, a gesture Martin barely acknowledged as he turned away, taking care not to move too fast or too slow, with a calculated air of indifference that he hoped in the deepest corner of his heart might make an impression, though to what end he could not even begin to think about.
THE NEXT DAY at work, with his ears still ringing and his thoughts infected by visions of Keith, Martin found himself unable to bear the more immediate and conceptual proximity of certain associates, partners, and—worst of all—senior partners, all of whom at one point or another in the previous months had corralled him into their offices for teeth-grinding sessions in which they had reminisced about their own glory days overlooking the Cayuga (or the Charles or wherever else), on the ice, or both. Which perhaps wasn’t so horrible—i.e., the talking or the listening part—except for what Martin had noticed was an assumption held without exception by every single lawyer that his paralegal