Jody said, "I can pick that up anywhere. It's free."
"It is?"
"Yes. They give it away in every store and cafe in town."
"I wondered why they were laying out there for the taking."
Jody was angry with herself for being pulled into this exchange. "It says 'free' right there on the cover."
The bum pointed to the sign hanging around his neck and tried to look tragic. "Maybe you could give me quarter for it anyway."
Jody started to walk away. The bum followed along beside her. "There's a great article on recovery groups on page ten."
She looked at him.
"Someone told me," he said.
Jody stopped. "I'll give you this if you'll leave me alone." She held out the cosmetics bag.
The bum acted as if he had to think about it. He looked her up and down, pausing at her cleavage before looking her in the eye. "Maybe we could work something out. You must be cold in that dress. I could warm you up."
"Normally," Jody said, "if I met a guy who was unemployed and illiterate who hadn't bathed in a couple of weeks, I'd be standing in a puddle with excitement, but I'm sort of in a bad mood tonight, so take this bag and give me the fucking paper before I pop your little head like a zit." She pushed the bag into his chest, knocking him back against the window of a closed camera store.
The bum offered her the paper tentatively and she snatched it from his hand.
He said, "You're a lesbian, aren't you?"
Jody screamed at him: a high, explosive, unintelligible expulsion of pure inhuman frustration — a Hendrix high note sampled and sung by a billion suffering souls in Hell's own choir. The window of the camera shop shattered and fell in shards to the sidewalk. The store alarm wailed, paltry in comparison to Jody's scream. The bum covered his ears and ran away.
"Cool," Jody said, more than a bit satisfied with herself. She opened the paper and read as she walked up the street to the club.
Outside the club Jody got in line with a crowd of well-dressed wannabees and resumed reading her paper, enjoying the stares of the men on line in her peripheral vision.
The club was called 753. It seemed to Jody that all of the new, trendy clubs had eschewed names for numbers. Kurt and his broker buddies had been big fans of the number-named clubs, which made for Monday-morning recount conversations that sounded more like equations: "We went to Fourteen Ninety-Two and Ten Sixty-Six, then Jimmy drank ten Seven-Sevens at Nineteen Seventeen, went fifty-one fifty and got eighty-sixed." Normally, that many numbers in succession would have had Kurt diving for his PC to establish trend lines and resistance levels. Jody glazed over at the mention of numbers, which would have made living with the broker a bit of an ordeal even if he hadn't been an asshole.
She thought, I wonder if Kurt will be here. I hope so. I hope he's here with the little well-bred, breastless wonder. Oh, she won't care, but he'll die a thousand jealous deaths.
Then she heard the alarm sounding down the street and thought, Maybe I should learn to channel some of this hostility.
"You, in the LED!" said the doorman.
Jody looked up from her paper.
"Go on in," the doorman said.
As she walked past the other people on line she was careful to avoid eye contact. One single guy reached out and grabbed her arm.
"Say I'm your date," he begged. "I've been waiting for two hours."
"Hi, Kurt," Jody said. "I didn't see you."
Kurt stepped back. "Oh. Oh my God. Jody?"
She smiled. "How's your head?"
He was trying to catch his breath. "Fine. It's fine. You look…"
"Thanks, Kurt. Good to see you again. I'd better get inside."
He clawed the air after her. "Could you say I'm your date?"
She turned and looked at him as if she had found him in the back of the refrigerator with green growing on him.
"I have been chosen, Kurt. You, on the other hand, are an untouchable. I don't think you'd be appropriate for the image I'm trying to project."
As she walked into the club she heard Kurt say to the next guy in line, "She's a lesbian, you know."
Jody thought, Yep, I've got to work on controlling my hostility.
The theme of 753 was Old San Francisco; actually, Old San Francisco burning down, which is largely what Old San Francisco used to do. There was an antique hand-pump fire engine in the middle of the dance floor. Cellophane flames leaped from pseudowindows driven by turbine fans. Nozzles in the ceiling drizzled dry-ice smoke over a crowd of young professionals ar-rhythmically sweating in layers of casual cotton and wool. A flannel-clad grunge rocker here; a tie-dyed and dreadlocked Rastafarian there; some neo-hippies; a sprinkling of black-eyed, white-faced New Wave holdovers — looking alienated — contemplating the next body part to have pierced; a few harmless suburban homeboys — here to bust a move, def and phat, in three-hundred-dollar giant gel-filled, glow-in-the-dark, pneumatic, NBA-endorsed sneakers. The doorman had tried to make a mix, but with fashionable micro-brewery beer going for seven bucks a bottle, the crowd was bound to overbalance to the side of privilege and form a thick yuppie scum. Cocktail waitresses in fireman helmets served reservoirs of imported water and thanked people for not smoking.
Jody slinked onto a barstool and opened her paper to avoid eye contact with a droopy-eyed drunk on the next stool. It didn't work.
" 'Scuse me, I couldn't help noticing that you were sitting down. I'm sitting down too. Small world, huh?"
Jody looked up briefly and smiled. Mistake.
"Can I buy you a drink?" the drunk asked.
"Thanks, I don't drink," she said, thinking, Why did I come here? What did I hope to accomplish?
"It's my hair, isn't it?"
Jody looked at the guy. He was about her age and balding, not quite finished with what looked like a bad hair-transplant job. His scalp looked as if it had been strafed with a machine gun full of plugs. She felt bad for him.
"No, I really don't drink."
"How about a mineral water?"
"Thanks. I don't drink anything."
From the stool behind her a man's voice. "She'll drink this."
She turned to see a glass filled with a thick, red-black liquid being pushed in front of her by a bone-white hand. The index and middle finger seemed a little too short.
"They're still growing back," the vampire said.
Jody recoiled from him so hard she nearly went over backward on her barstool. The vampire caught her arm and steadied her.
"Hey, buddy," said Hair Plugs, "hands off."
The vampire let go of Jody's arm, reached across to put his hand on Hair Plugs's shoulder, and held him fast to his seat. The drunk's eyes went wide. The vampire smiled.
"She'll rip out your throat and drink your blood as you die. Is that what you want?"
Hair Plugs shook his head violently. "No, I already have an ex-wife."
The vampire released him. "Go away."
Hair Plugs slid off the stool and ran off into the crowd on the dance floor. Jody leaped to her feet and started to follow him. The vampire caught her arm and wheeled her around.
"Don't," he said.
Jody caught his wrist and began to squeeze. A human arm would have been reduced to mush. The vampire grinned. Jody locked eyes with him. "Let go."
"Sit," he said.
"Murderer."
The vampire threw his head back and laughed. The bartender, a burly jock type, looked up, then looked away. Just another loud drunk.
"I can take you," Jody said, not really believing it. She wanted to break loose and run.
The vampire, still smiling, said, "It would make an interesting news story, wouldn't it? 'Pale Couple Destroys Club in Domestic Disagreement. Shall we?"