When I checked Amber Valletta's blue velvet coat I thought it smelled nicer than the others and did someone make a special perfume just for her that no one else could buy?

When she came to retrieve it I remembered exactly where I had hung it. I had a sort of custom voodoo system of giving lucky coat check numbers to nice people and unlucky numbers to snotty people. She was a nice number, 86, even, balanced, divisible by 2.

I asked if she had a nice time.
She sighed that it was 'weird going out, when I don't go out anymore.'
I nodded.
'All these people you've never met, coming over and talking, you know?'

I couldn't nod because I don't know. I just stood there and smiled thinking how plain she looked fumbling through her purse for a single.

Once in a while the birthday girl, a scantily sequin clad thing named just 'Natani', would come rushing over squealing to leave more birthday presents in my coat closet. The lights of the cameras outside would start flashing wildly indicating some famous person was coming in. I didn't recognize a lot of them, and found myself feeling sort of smug when they gave me coats from The Gap, and Banana Republic.

I guess the hi-light of my night should have been Leonardo di Caprio smiling at me, or giving Chris Rock his jacket, but they were out-shined by a girl named Inga who had a horse and an elephant sticking out of her purse with moving mechanical legs.

She said she found them walking down the street together. We ran them along the ledge of the coat check counter and she showed me how to turn them off by pushing their little tails down. She gave me the horse and kept the elephant.

By 3:00 a.m. we finished ushering out all the tiny drunk models, turned up the lights and played Squeeze on the sound system. I ran my new mechanical horse up and down the bar and sang 'coffee in bed' while the staff counted tips and ate super model birthday cake.