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fighting the drunken foot traffic. Valac comes out of his stupor and scans the crowds as we inch forward. Nico is driving with Two-Pints riding shotgun. He points to a bar up ahead that shouts Shooter in neon-blue electric graffiti. The air is so thick with smog that the blaze of the lettering mutes and turns hazy. As we climb from the car, I realize that Shooter has at least three different connotations, none of which are good for me, being here, dressed the way I am.
    Music from the club pulsates through the warm night air, and I feel the hum of it through my thin-soled shoes on the sidewalk. Nico and Two-Pints push ahead through the crowd, looking like security in their imported suits. Valac stands out a little less, in his half-unbuttoned black silk shirt and tailored pants. Ophelia is invisible among the stumbling, similarly makeup-drenched girls weaving along the walk. Valac drapes his arm across my shoulders and yanks me out of the path of two barrel-chested men in leather shorts, blue glow-tattoos, and not much else.
    I shoulder his arm away. “I’m not your date, Valac,” I say loud enough to be heard over the thumping of the music.
    He slips a hand around my waist and leans close to my ear. “If you’re my date, little bird, you’re more likely to make it to the back room where we’re meeting our client.”
    I glare at him and pull away. “I’m not exactly unarmed,” I say as we stride toward the door, mostly because I think he’s messing with me.
    But the usual humor is gone from his eyes. “Well, you could announce your status as a debt collector to a bar filled with junkies. Your choice.” I can barely hear him over the noise now that we’re at the entrance. Nico and Two-Pints negotiate our entry.
    When we step inside, I see what Valac means.
    Barely dressed boys dangle from electric-blue ropes and swing from light-up bars that have to be maglev by the way they float over the heads of the crowd. Curls of smoke stir up as the aerialists glide past. The glow-tattooed hands that reach for them belong to a full range of clubbers from shirtless, muscle-bound men in leather pants to skinny, trash-dressed junkies that look like me. There’s a sprinkling of glam girls like Ophelia and slick-haired fashion plates like Valac, but mostly the bar is wall-to-wall male flesh on display.
    “Ok,” I say to Valac. “Get me through the gauntlet with all my body parts intact.”
    He nods and claims me by curling an arm around my neck and pressing his palm flat against my chest. Ophelia struts ahead of us like she owns the place, and the sea of men parts before her. Even in a gay bar, she commands presence.
    Nico and Two-Pints follow her, leading us across the main floor, where couples undulate to the music in a way that’s half-dance, half-sex. Scattered among them are tables with clubbers smoking skeet. The bar is rank with its sickly sweet smell. The giant bulbous lamps in the center of the tables look vaguely Turkish, each stacked globe lit up with blue plasma and sprouting a tentacle that ends in a smoking mask strapped to a junkie’s face. Their eyes are too glazed to notice us passing, but the neon-jacketed dealers supplying them watch us like hawks.
    Valac should be laughing at me, but instead he’s glaring at everyone, like he’s ready to suck down their life energy with the slightest excuse. Which almost makes me laugh.
    I lean into him. “Next time, you get to play the skeet-addict boy-toy. And you owe me big time for this.” The music from the club is so loud I have to shout, and even then I’m not sure if he’s heard me.
    He bites his lip, like he’s actually sorry for putting me through this, so I go for more.
    “I want some alone time with Ophelia.”
    He grimaces. “Fine. When we get back, I’ll sneak her into your room.”
    That was easy. Too easy. “No, now. Otherwise, Kolek will find out. Find us a closet or something and get Nico and his pal to look the other way.” I smirk at him.