L'Express

249 Park Ave. S. (20th St.)212-254-5858

When I think of all the nights I spent at the formerly good Kiev diner, or French Roast on 6th Ave., hanging out with bums because I simply could not sleep until daybreak, I wish my life had been better.

L'Express, I recently discovered, is a 24-hour restaurant that's not so far from my own neighborhood as to give me that agoraphobic nosebleed New Yorkers used to joke about when venturing above 14th St. It seems fancy, but it's really only a couple of dollars more than getting a Caesar salad at French Roast and guiltily splitting the bread four ways. For those too untutored to risk ordering the moules marinières, the L'Express graveyard menu offers ham and brie on a baguette for $9.50. From 2:30 a.m. to 4 a.m. on the weekends, a line of like-minded souls runs out the door; everything just tastes better when the evening's been resolved.

Gary Indiana, one of my favorite writers, chose L'Express to meet.

"I used to come here for lunch quite often, when they had smoking tables," he told me. "And I'm always looking for places that remind me of cafes in Paris."

He ordered one of the specials, grilled hangar steak, which came with caramelized apples, onions and mashed potatoes.

Then Iris, the general manager, came over. "I'm here with a very well known novelist!" I said, gesturing subtly toward Gary.

"Hangar steak," Gary told us, "was what the butcher brought home because nobody wanted it. But now it's become very popular, in the last five or six years."

Iris didn't take the bait.

Although I could have ordered from a variety of fine Lyonnaisse cuisine, their specialty, I went conservatively with the grilled chicken caesar. I once took a Greyhound bus trip across the country and sampled the potato salad at every stop. I often like to sample the full range of one order before moving on. It was good, but of course sitting with Gary Indiana-whose Andrew Cunanan book Three Month Fever thrilled me from the moment I spotted it on a stack of otherwise uneventful works in a used bookstore-just about took the cake.

In Three Month Fever and Depraved Indifference, another novel in the crime genre, he seems to have an almost supernatural ability to see into other people's thought processes and motivations. He's no Ann Rule, though, not even on the same planet, because he transcends the entire crime-novel genre, using the techniques of literary journalism, fiction and poetic leaps that show most of our other writers to be small in scope. He is consistently able to examine the most perverse aspects of American contemporary society without flinching or losing his sense of humor.

"I love career criminals," he says. "I've known quite a number of them, and I'm proud of being arrested for assaulting a police officer. I wish there were more occasions to break the law."

Although he is critically acknowledged as one of our top writers, I'm always amazed that he isn't more widely known to the average reader. "You should be part of the canon!" I say, maybe a bit overzealous, even a little pretentious.

"Or fired from a cannon," he counters. Right on cue.

Indiana's reputation precedes him. A dishy bartender at the Boiler Room once told me that he's banned from there. Being banned always impresses me-it's easy to just get kicked out for the night, or a week, but the more permanent nature of a ban requires enterprise.

"It's only when I've done something that is particularly provoking that I get thrown out," Gary tells me. Like this one time at the Crab Cafe?

"I had just gotten a bunch of money, and I was trying to convey how stupid money is, and I started burning $20 bills in the ashtray. We were drinking cocktails and I just kept pulling 'em out and burning 'em. They just came over and said, 'You've had too much to drink.' And I said, 'On the contrary!'"

Right now, he's working on a nonfiction book about Arnold Schwarzenegger. It's not a predictable slam piece, though. Indiana, who is strongly for the reform of the grand jury system and mandated sentencing, says, "The thing I don't understand is that under Schwarzenegger the number of parolees is bigger than ever before. I've met some of the best people I know who've been in prison. The idea that there's possibility of redemption is one of the most powerful ideas that there is-we have a ridiculous cycle of punishment just for being black and young. I don't think any stigma is attached to going to jail in this country."

We lingered over coffee, and Amy, my photographer, surprised me by sitting down at a nearby table and ordering tuna tartare with escargot. I never saw her as that kind of person.