FOURTEEN The room, heavy with the Florida midsummer heat, swam in a thick purple light. We wriggled through it like undersea creatures. The Grateful Dead bounced their rhythms off my skull. Eyeballs and teeth gleamed bone white in the ultraviolet. Somewhere behind me the steady roar of an airconditioner contributed its soporific effect. The fumes of grass were laid out in ribbons of smoke. It occurred to me that anyone passing the exhaust outlet of the airconditioner would be instantly stoned. What kept the fuzz from busting the joint? Heavy payoff, probably. Outside, the neon glare of the sign reading RED'S JOINT flickered in disturbing counterpoint to the interior strobes. The bar was three-deep in Beautiful People, all barefoot and wearing fashionably faded denims. Faggots, whores, pimps, beachboys, and Palm Beach society churning together like amoebae in the purple mixture. Talk of Jackie O and Ari, and St. Moritz, and the Guinnesses and Rothschilds, and Manalpan, the fashionable little Florida town where the truly great and elegant lived, those for whom even Palm Beach was too crass.
