Even the new clubs know us. The good clubs have the good bouncers and there’s not too many of those, maybe twenty shared between them, and so we’re known and never any trouble, never any wait. Way we look, just plain guys, has the rumor that we’re porn magnates going through the lines—which, like the bouncers, is the same people every time, and all they know is we drive up and every bouncer says, “Good evening, Artie,” good evening to me, and tells him and me how happy they are to see us there, and that a private room is available, should we want it. Artie introduces Ephram to Dragon Zip, the lanky head of security here who doesn’t look threatening but enough people saw him snap that crackhead’s arm while holding the guy on dust to the wall with his foot, all without breaking a sweat or wrinkling his pants or even stopping his fucking conversation that he’s legend in this town, probably even nationwide, since it got coverage on CNN. The crackhead tried to sue, but got real quiet before the court date, then got scarce. Word was that he got himself offed, but the truth there is he got clean and got some sense and got out.
      Dragon Zip tells Ephram he’s welcome, and it’s a pleasure to meet him. What this means is Ephram, though his com box is third-row middle, now has an E ticket to every club in town. Ephram’s fit to piss his pants: he knows what just happened. He shakes Dragon’s hand, returns the pleasantry and Dragon does Moses for us to the door. The porn speculation always in our wake is drowned by Tears for Fears shouting and thumping us as the club opens up.
      “80s tonight,” Dragon explains, as though necessary. Artie shrugs, but Ephram’s delighted.
      I hang back by Dragon, “Pretty much 80s everywhere all the time, though, isn’t it?”
      “I don’t get it either, friend.” We exchange commiserating looks and I think for a second how he’s lucky he gets to stand outside most of the time. “At least I’m outside,” he says. We do a collegial-type laugh, almost Howell, and I’m on my way in behind Artie and Ephram. Good thing there’s the room for us.
      The owner of Fusillade, who was the owner of Milton, and Portal before that, sees us ten seconds in, breaks his conversation and takes Artie’s arm on the way to the bar. “Arthur, don’t even think that you’ll make it to the bar. Follow me, please.” And Artie does and we follow Artie, while Barry, the owner, shoots me a smirk and mouths over his shoulder, “He’s simply incorrigible!” And yes, he mouthed the exclamation point and everything. I know because he used to say it out loud, every time we went to any of his clubs and Artie would try to get himself a drink at the bar. Artie told him to stop saying it, so he started mouthing it at me, making it a just-us-girls thing—Barry’s hot for my ass and won’t take no or I’m-not-gay for an answer as he has it on Kat’s authority that I am, in fact, quite a homo, and, so she hears, quite a fireball in the sack—and finishes it off with a wink and some other mouthed words that probably have something to do with how hot I’m looking tonight, or how he’ll catch up with me later… I don’t know, I don’t want to know. We’re escorted to the stairs, handed off to a go-go/hostess girl, who kisses both Artie and me on the cheek, and says hello to Ephram. Might have an E ticket, sure, but that still doesn’t get him on all the rides.
      Victoria, the girl, takes my arm and breathes something on my cheek about how she’d really appreciate it if we needed her company in our room tonight.
      “Not much for Bow-Wow-Wow?” and I hit the nail on the head. It’s not me, it’s the music. She nods and tells me we have a dj all our own up there, so if it’s not too much trouble…
      “I have to warn you, it’ll be all Skinny Puppy tonight.” And I must have nailed her again, since she kissed me full and near begged me to let her do the selecting. I meant it as a joke, but damn… I remember Kat’s warning, wonder if maybe I already failed her. Just a kiss, doesn’t mean anything, I tell myself, even though I wouldn’t mind a change-up in the cast right about now. Victoria is, as must be assumed, as per her job, incredibly hot. And if I was going to pick someone to be my girlfriend tonight, she’s the best bet, since she’s celibate. She’s got a row of eight interlocked piercings—so she’s said—to reinforce the concept. Artie and I both find that extraordinarily arousing. Me more than him. Sometimes I wonder about the hygienic aspects of that arrangement, but I figure she’s got that worked out no problem.
      Our room is one of five overlooking the dance floor and main bar. Three others are full right now, but I can’t tell who’s got them, since the occupants aren’t usually likely to stand by the floor-to-ceiling windows to be gawked at by the seething masses below. Ron Jeremy popped in our room one night at Portal, fat with the rumors about us, but realized immediately who we were—see, even he recognized us and never even saw us before—and then hung out past close anyway. That upset Kat. She was sure it was an orgy. And not upset about all the pornlets she knew Artie fucked, but about me and how she knew I’d been sucked off by that Christy Canyon. She still brings it up, even though it never happened. What happened was we made fart sounds with our hands and whatever other parts of our bodies could be employed thus, all of us glad not to be fucking anyone that night.
      I need Kat out of my head. Ephram’s standing at the door, almost blocking it, so I use the opportunity to pull Victoria close, folding my arm across her stomach, her ass to my crotch as I guide her through. I grab her hand and push her away, and she twists and turns through it as though choreographed. She draws it out, exaggerates it. She flips her hair, lowering her eyes and pouting me a kiss as we let go. I’m not completely distracted, but I’m close. Drinks arrive immediately and Victoria pulls a handset from the wall to tell the dj what he’s going to give us.
      One sign that we’re nobodies is that we do go to the windows, we don’t care who sees us. Probably people think we want to be seen, but that’s not it. Me and Artie, we just like to watch. There’s this idea I have about the dynamic of any successful club, the idea’s that any given venue’s success is entirely dependent upon the presence of transtemporized pseudo-mythological figures. There’s the people in the boxes, and I guess they serve as constellation things, representations of the ideas supposedly contained within, and so long as there are some lights shining behind the glass the people can look up and chart their courses by them and read whatever destinies they want in the arrangements of shadows and motion. Then there are the bouncers, and they’re like demons or angels, depending on where a person wants to think he is, holding the boundaries and providing an outer structure, allowing for the possibility of a transcendent chaos kind of thing within—and those angels or demons, they’ve got to be like Dragon Zip and his crew, or it’s no go—that chaos impossible without the imposed outer structure, absent the structure it’d dissipate and die, spending its energy in infinite outward motion just like the universe some billions of years or so from today, the people all particles needing some kind of terminal proximity to maintain their charges through friction and collision. But that’s all substrate, the drugs and booze and sex minor factors playing minor, though still important parts: the essential factor, the thing I’m always looking for, is the sacrifice.
      My phone goes. I grab it, praying that it’s not Kat. But it’s not mine, it’s Artie’s. We’ve got the same ring today. We both traded in our polyphonic pieces of crap for the old-school beeping things. Thing is I caught myself dancing to my phone; it was Artie calling me made it play the song I thought was so clever to have as my ring. “I’m deeply ashamed, Artie,” I said. He asked why. “I was just dancing to my phone.” He said he did it too and couldn’t help or tolerate it either. So we got rid of them. We get occasional looks when we beep and blip out in public, since everyone else’s gone polyphony, changing their rings two, three times a day, continuing the annoying precedent of everyone grabbing their phones every time one goes, since nobody’s sure anymore what they’ve set them to. Six months from now they’ll all be bleeping again, thinking it charming and retro, but they’ll be the hi-fi renditions of the old school tones, still too unsure of themselves to comfortably go simple old style. I’m changing my ring and telling myself I’m different from the masses while Artie talks and I’m not listening, figuring it’s Kat he’s talking to, but I start paying attention when he starts giving directions, start shaking when he says, “Okay then, see you in ten.”
      He flips closed and I’m trying to not panic. Kat’s coming down and she’ll see Victoria being too much my friend and then Kat’ll be at my apartment after Artie passes out, freshly fucked but looking to confirm her place, to make me understand just how things are. And then if I do get it up she’ll say she knows it’s Victoria got me hard, and there I’ll be fucking Kat and Kat screaming, “Come on faggot, call me Victoria, that’s who you want to fuck, call me Victoria, bitch!” And the stupid part is she won’t let me not call her Victoria, and then when I do she’ll cry and scream and probably she’ll get her fists into it and nothing I can do but keep pounding away till she comes, rivulets of tears to twin pools on either side of her head, and then under the hail of her blows I’ll have to pretend something, anything—probably Victoria—to get it out. I have to ejaculate. She checks. And it’s kind of a defensive mechanism now, as shitty as that sounds: I come out of fear and desperation. Can’t even jerk off anymore. But Lord help me if I don’t get it up.
      I start working out an exit strategy. Wonder if somehow I could take Victoria with me. I’m going to pay hell for it anyway, may as well get something out of the deal. One small part of me thinks maybe I can explain it to her, to Victoria, and some smaller, infinitely stupid—infinite like the universe, stupid like the universe—part of me pipes up and says that of course she’ll understand. She’ll see it all tragic and that tragedy will make me more desirable, so much so she’ll swell and pop all her locks and bathe and redeem me with her blood. The thought process so dumb it shocks even me; I wonder for just a second how my primordial idiot brain got so loud. And where it got its confused religious iconography.
      My hand suddenly wet: my drink not quite to my mouth and I tipped it and spilled. Artie sees my eyes. They’re supposed to be calmly sweeping the floor, casually observing the crowd, but they’re not. They’re huge and fixed on Artie. “A skeleton walks into a bar,” I say.
      “What the hell is wrong with you?”
      “Says: Give me a gin and tonic and a mop.”
      Artie does a coughing, obligatory chuckle thing. “That’s a stupid joke.”
      I shrug, force my eyes into a less freaky shape and turn them to the window.
      “You feeling all right? You’ve been off all day.”
      I shrug again, and if I’m playing for normal, this isn’t the way to do it. “It’s my dad’s birthday today. I spaced it.”
      Artie accepts this and I feel like crap for maybe the thirtieth time today. I console myself that at least the lying isn’t getting easier, it rips me every time and I’m starting to think maybe I’m going to have to end today not by fucking Kat or Victoria or anybody, but dropping my intestines on my kitchen floor. Or the bathroom, but there’s not space to allow for enough freedom of motion for a good, clean slice. “I’ll call him tomorrow after wrap, it’s no big deal.”
      “Call him now.” Artie holds out his phone. I hold up my own and say again that I’ll take care of it tomorrow. Dad’s fuzzy on dates anyway, I say.
      To the window, I say, “Kat coming down?”
      “Why would she? She hates this kind of stuff… oh, the phone,” he says. “No, that wasn’t Kat. She’s out with her friends tonight anyway, strip clubs or something, I think.” Artie says that was you. Says that you’re in town and you’re just around the corner. And I think maybe that’s even worse.
      Victoria slides up, lips on my ear, fingers a quarter-inch under my belt, just an indication. “I said Rabies and ViviSect VI, maybe some of the 12” mixes—that work for you? Figure it’s still sort of 80s, you know…” My exit strategy definitely includes her. Exit the state, the celibate Amazon at my side, under my belt. The dj starts with a 12” mix off Rabies, almost indistinguishable at first, or maybe I’m all out of focus, the little I do have divided between the fingers tracing my pelvis and the knots all the way up my esophageal tract at your imminent arrival. Victoria’s lower lip traces my ear and I think that this is as good a time as any to end. I can stop it here and give a Blade Runner epilogue, not the director’s cut, but the original release with the too-happy narrative: I’ll be the special model without the expiration date and though the aesthetes won’t like it, shitty reviews won’t diminish the fact of my continuing existence. Not setting up for a sequel, just not going Tarantino with it.
      But I can’t end here. I know editors, we’ve got our own at TLH, and they won’t stand for it. They’ll call a rewrite, they might even call in a ghost and give me the ending I deserve. Best to get it all out, then let them hack it to believability when they won’t accept what I give. I write it and they have to cut it; I don’t write it and they’ll put it in out of spite.
      “You spilled your drink, dummy.” Victoria pries the glass from my claw and dances away toward the bar. I turn back to the window and try counting, try picking out all the black latex tops, anything to calm me. I’m up to ten and I stop: there she is: the reason we watch. She’s probably just eighteen, nineteen at the far outside, not allowed here, but Dragon knows them when they come to the door and he lets them in.
      “You can get fit too,” Artie’s saying, he says you’re in town for three weeks. “Your tits have been a little too perky lately, you tightening your bra? We’ll have him construct some new droopers, he says he’s upgraded and we’re going to shit when we see what he’s got.” I’m about to shit anyway.
      I use two fingers on Artie’s cheek, turn him to the window. “There, about twenty feet from the door.”
      Artie sees her, sighs and I can feel his smile on my fingers. “She’s beautiful,” the end of the sigh.
      “They always are,” I say. And they are, but he said it this time because she’s one of the best we’ve ever seen. Light brown hair catching all the lights, long skirt clinging and releasing as though designed specifically for her anatomy, matching halter over small breasts and perfect, lightly tanned skin. Not an intentional tan, only that she sees the sun, that the sun sees her, that the sun rightly worships her and touches her with the utmost deference. Perfect grace, totally alone, untouched and untouchable, everyone here screened by Dragon so they know their roles: leave her alone and let her move. She dances and one of the waitresses brings her a drink. She accepts it and continues to dance. She doesn’t know her part, she just wanted to be here and there’s some part of her that knew she’d get in, though mostly she’s surprised and grateful. She thinks she looks old enough, but there’s no one here that would think that. She’s the sacrifice, and as happy as I am that she’s here, I’m sad all the same. It won’t be tonight, but it’s going to happen, it always does. There’s nothing we can do about it, and as fucked up as it is she’s essential to the mechanism. She is, tonight, the hub of this little wheel in an infinite entropic machine, the same machine as every other one in every other story, Artie and me and all the people upstairs spokes or maybe just nuts but also a part of it anyway, and now she’s here we can all continue our slow grind toward zero. What’s going to happen is she’ll come back, and Dragon, or whoever is working whatever door at whatever club, will let her in again, and she’ll be the hub once more… and again… she will need to be the hub, she’ll keep coming, and she’ll keep moving, and we’ll all continue to worship her but because she’s the hub she won’t ever be allowed integration into the machine, the need eclipsing her growing understanding that she needs to transition to a subsidiary role and let someone else play the part, and then there will come the night she’s not protected anymore, a new hub let in by Dragon, the familiarity the result of repeat performances removing her untouchable status, and then someone, one of the borderline cases, still necessary to the functioning of the machine—they’re the ones who buy most of the drinks—will touch her. And it’s just as simple as that. What makes her the sacrifice is that we know it’s going to ruin her, there’s no transition from hub to faceless constituent, but we let her in anyway, we need her here.
      I’m almost teary, watching the girl; Artie’s eyes thick with an extra lens of unshed tears all his own—and I remember and suddenly a whole lot of my life makes a little sense: Kat. At that club, Polygon or some other stupid name. Us upstairs and someone like Dragon letting her in.
      “Dance with me,” Victoria says. And I do.

You arrive an hour later, thirty minutes after I thought maybe you weren’t going to show, three drinks past where I should be if I’m going to deal effectively with you. Slammed my first two—after the one I spilled, of course—bracing for the unknown, then sipped one for thirty minutes, primed for whatever and ready to take it. Then two shots with Victoria in secret—known only to me kind of secret—celebration at your absence. We’re on a couch in a corner, trying to pinpoint what exactly Skinny Puppy felt was so wrong about Rabies, if it was just that Al made it into a Ministry record, or if they knew of some deeper, more fundamental flaw me and Victoria just couldn’t see. I’m saying something about how they have to recognize that their best song, the best song in the world, period, is on that album. “You think maybe they know that and it’s that they don’t know if it was them or Al made it what it was?”
      “I think,” she drapes a leg over mine, “it doesn’t matter who’s responsible. None of them did anything like that on their own. What matters is that somebody did, and it was all of them together that did… so who cares who played what part?” One more drink and we’ll see great significance in our conversation, layers of meaning and subtleties transcending mere industrial music, applicable across all boundaries social and philosophical.
      Enter you.
      Victoria grabs my leg. “You all right? Got a cramp?” She massages my thigh. See, you walked in and I tensed up and Victoria felt it. I say I’m fine. I think I should say more, but I can feel my face go solid so I was lucky to get out what I did.
      Barry the owner’s head visible just over your shoulder, well, the top of his head anyway. His hand on your shoulder and when you turn to thank him Barry’s eyes go to me and Victoria on the couch and I get some kind of confused I-didn’t-know-you-were-bi look from the man. Most likely he’s thinking up new scenarios involving my ass, new arrangements of anatomies including bits of go-go dancers in addition to his own bits and mine. That takes just a second, and then he’s looking at you again, and I hear him tell you how great it is you’re here and how there’s somebody two doors down would be so happy to know it and would you mind if he gave them a heads-up and maybe sent them down a little later? And of course it’s an of-course-not from you, always so gracious. You go straight for Artie, you don’t look at me. I’m close to the corner anyway, so once you crossed the threshold you’d have to crane pretty far to see me. Artie’s right in the middle, and he’s the one you’re here to see, so of course you see him and not me. I don’t want you to see me anyway. If we weren’t upstairs, if we were down on the floor, I could do some blending, cozy up to Barry, even, just to get away. But here I’m stuck and if there’s one thing I know about inevitability it’s you can’t avoid it.
      You’re happy to see Artie, sure—there’s so much money in it for you—but that’s nothing to how happy Artie is to see you. My stupidity makes me think disproportionate, my paranoia calls out a hundred scenarios, none of which allow for you having any other jobs in town, despite your being pretty much the top prosthetics guy in the industry—this coast anyway. My level of drunkenness makes me give Victoria a quick condensation of a heavily edited version of what’s going on. Not what’s really going on, but something close, bearing a Southern cousin’s resemblance.
      “He and I don’t get along,” I say. Master of understatement.
      Victoria wants to know why.
      “There was a girl,” I say. “It was years ago.”
      Victoria asks where the girl is now. I say I don’t know. And that’s pretty much true.
      “Then it doesn’t matter and he’s just an idiot.”
      I squeeze her hand and try to smile.
      “Just so we’re clear,” she says, “it was you and you didn’t do it on purpose?”
      I answer in a probably too-emphatic affirmative, even though technically, there were parts of it I did do on purpose. I did it all on purpose, I mean, it just didn’t have anything to do with you. Repercussions unrelated to personal intent is what I’m saying, but not out loud. I don’t bother with the subtleties or specifics. I don’t often have accidental sex with anyone, and certainly not in that instance, and come to think of it, that’s a stupid way of saying it anyway but drunk like I am there’s at least twelve connections not getting made out of every twenty. Probably the same for Victoria, and so eight to eight, which isn’t even enough for semantic apprehension in a simple point a to point b chat, gets us the level of cohesion needed for comprehension.
      “Okay, good. He’s an idiot.”
      “He didn’t know either,” I’m saying, coming to your defense. “It was the girl.”
      She doesn’t know why I’m defending you, and I don’t either. Maybe we’ll just cut that part out. The whole conversation. Start from me and Victoria dancing and then you walk in and I don’t notice you and Barry smiles, picturing himself in Victoria’s place and Artie turns from the window, breaking out of his Kat-reverie (one of a vastly different nature than mine) and shaking your hand, first just simple, then adding the other hand to up the intimacy, his fingers up your hand onto your wrist, which pulls you to him and you both one-arm each other. Yeah, that’s how it happened. Okay, start from there.
      The triple-slap/thumps of the greeting catch my attention, and I turn in a spin and come to you and Artie at the end of the sum of mine and Victoria’s full-extended arms and drunk like I am I tell you how good it is to see you. Even in the rewrite, where I’m externalizing a better show, my stomach’s all knots and my teeth smash against each other between words to do what grinding they can. I break out of the dance and Victoria spins away. You and me, we shake hands. “I’ve got two jobs in town,” you lean in and explain, “first one’s quick, then I got three weeks before the next one. Thought I’d stick around, haven’t been here in a while, you know.” And that’s probably the worst fucking news I’ve had in a long time.
      “That rocks, my friend,” I say. “You are a paragon of rocking.”
      “I am the quintessence of rock,” you say.
      Artie’s more than all smile. He pulls us close, three-way hug then backs up and fawns paternal over us. Ephram, who I’ve completely forgotten, sidles up for an introduction. You’re pleased to meet him and will you be doing any work on him?
      “No sir, not me,” Ephram gives you a profile, “I’m pretty enough as it is.”
      “Yeah,” you say, “you could do radio, no problem.” And boy, do we laugh at that.
      You are, in addition, so pleased to make Victoria’s acquaintance. So pleased you dance her across the room. Artie claps his hands and shuffles his feet and looks disturbingly Broadway, mid-thirties-musical sideline guy. He skips away to the bar.
      “He’s going to get new tits,” I tell Ephram.
      “Guess I’d be happy about that too,” he says.
      “I’m getting new tits too, probably a new ass.”
      Suddenly, “I don’t like that guy.”
      Crescendo of joy upswell chorus-roar, hammered bells ringing deep and exultory. I don’t care that it’s most likely simple jealousy, don’t crush him to me and make him my best friend. Instead I offer a weak defense on your behalf. I tell Ephram that we go way back, the three of us.
      “Something about him, don’t know what it is…” Ephram shrugs, “maybe I’m just jealous.”
      Trying for sly and unconcerned, “Fact remains that we’re here, and he’s just visiting… if that means anything.”
      Ephram shrugs again, “Yeah, I guess.”
      Fighting down my elation at the arguably dubious comfort offered by having Ephram on my side on this, I turn him to the window and explain transtemporal pseudomythology to him while you monopolize Victoria.
      You hand off to Artie, swipe something off the bar and stroll to the window. Ephram ducks away to the bar as you approach, turning sideways to avoid you instead of just stepping to the side. “Kid’s skittish,” you say.
      “Fighting for his place,” I say, “afraid you’ll upset the hierarchy, slip his tenuous hold on his newly-found misperceived stature.”
      “Sounds like you’re a little threatened too.”
      “By Ephram? The lighting guy?” You’ve always been more perceptive than I’d like. I’m not obvious, I’m good at playing close, great at the shell game, but you’ve got some direct-line thing on me. I give up. “Guess we’ve all got to fight to keep what’s ours.” And there were maybe fifty better ways of saying that.
      You let it go, or maybe don’t even hear what I realized I’d said, slip your hand into my shirt pocket and steal a cigarette. Normally I don’t like anyone touching me, but in this corner of this convolution of our universe of infinite stupidity I’m used to your touch. So much it’s almost a comfort just for familiarity, for its uncomplicated intent, even with our history. I take one too and you flip and flick your Zippo with that trick we spent an entire night mastering back in ‘90 at that club in Santa Monica.
      “I walked by her on the way to the stairs,” you say. “She’s amazing.”
      You’re talking about the sacrifice. That line of chatter will take us directly to Kat. I go head-on. “We’re cool, right? You and me?”
      “Why wouldn’t we be?”
      “Don’t fuck with me, you know exactly why wouldn’t it be.”
      “None of my business, chum.” You’re talking about Kat, and I’m not.
      I act like I don’t get it, don’t know we’re talking about different things. “Fuck it’s not your business, if it’s not yours, then whose is it?”
      And then you say it direct: “That’s between you and Artie.”
      The plan here was to not talk about that at all, to smooth everything out so we wouldn’t come anywhere near it. I realize I’m yelling, “I’m not talking about–” lowering my voice when everyone fixes on me, “Kat. That’s over. That was over before it started. It was a stupid mistake, all right?”
      Here I wonder briefly about your sanity, you glaze over like you don’t have any idea what the hell I’m talking about. Then there’s a little light, or maybe just a strobe reflecting off your eyes, “Oh… you’re talking about… shit, what was her name?”
      I don’t get this at all. “Amy,” I say. Flat, confused.
      “Yeah, Amy.” And then you’re laughing. “I’d forgotten all about that.” You keep laughing.
      “You were pretty freaking pissed off about that.”
      “I had a right to be, too, but shit, man, she dumped both of us for that chick. I can’t believe you thought I was still holding on to that.”
      “There’s massive cinematic and literary precedent for that kind of infinite grudge-holding.” You and me, we’re both proud of that sentence.
      You’re staring at the floor, watching the girl. My knots should have loosened, but they don’t let go. I don’t care how natural that bit came off, don’t care that I believe you. There’s something else going on, I’m just not always the big-picture guy. You keep watching her, and maybe you’re remembering the same things me and Artie remembered a little while ago. You were there too. I do noir left-field: “How many ulterior motives do you have?”
      “That, my rocking friend,” you smile, touching the glass, tracing the path she makes on the floor, “is none of your fucking business.”
      “You don’t have any jobs in town, do you?”
      “In fact,” turning to me, “I do.”
      I don’t know what that means. I get the words, but our conversation had been following a very specific script and you ended it wrong. All the alcohol’s been spit back by my liver into my stomach and I’m sober but sick. I make for the bathroom and flush half my esophagus. Barry knows his business, knows his clientele: there’s mouthwash and cloth towels in the bathroom. I take a few minutes and when I go back out I think I probably look better than when we arrived. New cigarette; I hit the bar and start over.
      Three hours later, we’re pretty well done. Ephram’s asleep on a chair by the door, you and Artie backs to the window, playing rock-scissors-paper for percentage discounts or increases. You end the game when you get back to zero. You’re on retainer anyway, retainer plus parts, so I don’t know where the discount or increase would go. Guess on our parts. Victoria’s ivory face touching my shoulder, lacquered-chocolate hair down my chest, her fingers tracing the inside of my arm where we decided I’d get a full-length pinup-style tattoo of her between my wrist and elbow. The music’s soft and Victoria’s humming something else. She tilts her head and presses her lips to my cheek and I close my eyes to watch the Cinemax late-night softcore montage play out in my head. I let her give the soundtrack. It’s nice. I’m too tired now, I’ve got no energy to maintain my paranoia, my fear or confusion. Figure I’ll get some sleep and kick-start it in the morning. Victoria gets up and disappears into the bathroom.
      “Say it’s about time, dollface?”
      “Yeah, Artie, I’d say it is.”
      “We’ve still got to shoot tomorrow,” Artie tells you. You nod and without Victoria’s distraction I’m able to muster up some trepidation. You’re acting more drunk than you can be. By my count you had exactly two drinks, one of them just water. What purpose you think a fake drunk could serve here I can’t figure. But you’ve declared your inscrutability, made plain to me your machine’s extra wheels, pretty much called yourself Transformer, so I’m on guard for everything. Artie gets up and kicks at Ephram’s feet, calling him sport, telling him it’s time we got ourselves gone. I’m watching you and not hearing it when you tell me all polite and formal how good it is to see me again and how you’ll see us in a couple of days when you finish up the job. I don’t even hear myself tell you how much I’m looking forward to it.
      We’re almost to the door, me hanging back a little, looking for Victoria, when she comes out of the bathroom and straight up to me. She says she had such a nice time, saying the words through a kiss on the corner of my mouth while her hand opens in mine and then closes my fingers into a loose fist. Another kiss and she bites my lower lip just a little and she says good night to me, says I should come back soon, then good night to everyone and slips out the door.
      Barry’s bringing someone down the hall to you, so we say more goodbyes and shuffle toward the stairs. At the landing I open my hand. In it Victoria’s left a ring, one of those bead-rings for piercings. I wonder what it means, figuring if I get seven more it’ll be pretty damn clear. I fight the urge, and I don’t know why, to put it in my mouth. I follow Artie and Ephram to the front to wait for Dragon to send a kid for our car.