He discovered the outfit in a shop called, incredibly enough, the Marquis de Suede, where it hung inside a small annex of traditional costumes nearly overwhelmed by disco jumpsuits formed of parachute cloth and tiny leather shorts dripping with brass and aluminum hardware. His tie-dyed T-shirt, jeans, and fringed leather jacket he not only removed but chucked into the shop’s trash bin—they were as much a costume, anyway, as this new disguise. Then, after scrutinizing the clientele and any passersby visible through the shop’s storefront glass to be certain he remained free of surveillance, Lenny Angrush peeled cash payment off a roll made entirely of the new two-dollar bills—just waving the talismanic bills at the jaded, mascara-and-stubble-wearing Village Person manning the Marquis’s register, to say currency’s a history lesson if you trouble to examine what rides in your wallet but who ever does?—then descended into the Christopher Street IRT. The MTA operative trapped in his booth there made no remark on Lenny’s costume but, unlike the homosexual, attempted at first to refuse a Bicentennial Two.
