Fifteen Thirty One, 1531 N. Kingsbury: Marlon Brando, in full leather, walked in, gave the waitress a look, and played some dicey jazz on the jukebox.
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Jamie was standing near the bar, drinking a Diet Coke and watching The Wild One on a 12-way split screen. It was the club’s opening night. She saw that her black leather motorcycle jacket looked just like Marlon Brando’s though hers was from Bloomingdale’s. She also saw that three girlfriends from her ad agency were wearing the same jacket. They all looked like they were going to hit each other over the head with pipes. One was on her way to the club’s toy tattoo parlor to get a python painted on her shoulder. Jamie heard that the club’s owner, Jim Levin, had a rose tattoo on his right calf and a yin-yang on his back. Jamie wondered what was happening to everybody. Why did they look so murderous? Jim Levin’s father had started a nice fence company, Tru-Link. Their old slogan was “Beauty, Privacy, Security,” though on TV they had to say “Beauty” twice to fill up all the images on the four-way split screen. Jamie bet Jim Levin’s father didn’t have a tattoo.
Jamie wondered if she was more sensitive than usual because she had just seen Robert De Niro bite off a woman’s cheek in the movie Cape Fear. Plus a man was coming to her house later and she didn’t know him very well and she was afraid he might be into stuff. She had this feeling because he’s a trader and they ride around in Jaguars talking on the phone without a lot of conscience. Plus once he told her when they were running on the track at the East Bank Club that he saw a sex scene in a David Lynch movie that he thought was “interesting.” Another time he told her he had experimented with alternative sex, and when she asked if that meant he wore a dress he said no.
