Eye Candy (29 page)

Danny did not possess such a chin dimple.

Candy found herself admiring his features while he drove. In his airplane, she’d been able to catch glimpses of his face in his rearview mirror. But while they drove, she watched him guide the car down Sunset Boulevard toward West Hollywood. A patch of white light reflected from the mirror and onto his face. Candy adored the expression of Danny’s eyes. And when he smiled, his entire face lit up. She studied the thin, rectangular bandage on the inside of his forearm. She didn’t want to think about what might have been.

~

The club was a building painted entirely black, situated on the corner of Sunset and Doheny. The line to get in was more than a block long. A white marquee bore four large black letters: RHCP. And below this: ONE NIGHT ONLY. Perhaps this had something to do with the long line.

Danny looked up at the huge, neon green letters glowing above the door: C/Fe

“What’s See-Fee?” he asked.

“
I think it’s the letters ‘C’ and ‘F-E’, like the atomic symbols for carbon and iron. It’s supposed to be a fusion between carbon-based humans and iron- or metal-based robots. It’s a metaphor for race relations between the two species.”

“
That’s pretty deep for a night club.”

“
Look at the line.” Candy craned her neck to see just how bad the wait was going to be.

“
Don’t worry. We don’t wait in line.”

“What do you mean, we
don’t wait in line?”

“We
don’t wait in line.”

Danny pulled up to the curb and two valets—human valets, interestingly enough—opened their doors. The valets were clean-cut young men dressed entirely in black, with
illuminated green
C/Fe
logos emblazoned on the backs of their vests.

Danny handed the valet a folded fifty-dollar bill.

The young man looked at the fifty. His eyes widened for a moment and he smiled. Then he composed himself. Inflation was a reality of every nation’s economy, and the good ol’ U.S.A. had seen her fare share since the turn of the century, but not so much that a valet at a nightclub often received such a generous tip. “Thank you, sir. Sergio is the door man. He’ll take care of you. My name is Roderick, in case you need anything. Anything at all. Give me fifteen minutes, and I guarantee I can get it.”

“
Thank you, Roderick.”

“
My pleasure, sir. Enjoy your evening.” Rod’s eyes strayed to where Candy stood on the curb. Rod’s eyes perused Candy once up and down quickly, but without lingering longer than was polite. But his face was a picture of disbelief as he slid behind the wheel and coaxed Danny’s car around the corner and out of sight.

Candy watched the car turn the corner. She turned back to Danny and saw him fiddling with something in his hands. It looked like money.

“What are you doing?” She took his arm and together they walked toward the door. The first one hundred or so people in line who were in visual range could do nothing but watch while the tall, striking couple—particularly the blond with the sexy hair and long legs—proceeded to the door.

“
Watch this,” said Danny.

He and Candy reached the door, where a large, muscular man even taller than Danny stood behind a glowing green-and-black fiber optic rope drap
ed between two pylons that glittered with gold light. Sergio also wore a black vest, but was bare-chested and very muscular beneath it.

Sergio dropped his chin and surveyed Danny above the upper rim of his black sunglasses. He then looked at Candy. Sergio
’s eyes began at Candy’s blond hair and traveled all the way down her body, where they lingered on her black heels. “Those are some nice shoes.”

“
Thank you.” Candy accepted the compliment; no more, no less.

Sergio turned back to Danny.

Danny extended his hand. “You must be Sergio.”

Sergio accepted Danny
’s handshake. “And you must be the luckiest son of a bitch on earth.”

“
I hope we’re not too late to come in for a drink,” said Danny.

Sergio glanced down at his hand
and then eased it into his pocket. “No, sir, you’re right on time. Right this way. Please. . . .”

Sergio unclipped the luminous green-and-black rope and spread his arm, beckoning Danny and Candy into the club.

When they were out of earshot of Sergio, Candy turned to Danny. “What did you do?”

“
I slipped him a hundred.”

“
You gave him a hundred dollars?”

“Like I said, we don’t wait in line. Besides,
I’d have given him
five
hundred.”

Candy smiled.
“I didn’t see the money.”

“
That’s the whole idea. You take a bill and fold it into a square about the size of a postage stamp.”

Candy watched as Danny folded a $100 bill several times into ever-smaller squares.

“Make sure the number is clearly legible,” Danny instructed. “You then put it in your hand, face down, so you can’t see the number.” Danny extended his hand to Candy. “When you shake hands, you press the bill into his palm.”

Candy shook Danny
’s hand, feeling the corners of the folded bill in her palm.

“Now look at your hand,” said Danny.

Candy opened her hand. The little green
100
was plainly visible.

“
He slides the bill nice and easy into his pocket, and no one’s the wiser.” Danny smiled at Candy. “Shall we have a drink?”

“
Sure.” Candy slipped the little folded bill inside her bra, enjoying the moment as Danny’s eyes widened. She took him by the arm and led him to the bar.

The thump of drums and melodic guitar fille
d the club. On stage, a band was performing. “These guys are really good,” said Candy. “They’re the Red Hot Cyborg Players.”

“
They’re robots?”

“
Cyborgs. Humans who had their bodies integrated with robotics, so they could keep on rocking. The singer is Blackie.”

Blackie jumped and twirled around on the stage. His
long black cords of hair streamed out behind him. He looked human in his black leather pants and black boots. His bare torso was lean and trim and sported a lot of tattoos. But when he stopped dancing and sang into the mic, his eyes glowed bright red.

“
That’s Whitey on the bass,” said Candy. She leaned close to Danny’s ear, speaking loudly over the rising chorus. “He and Blackie have been friends since they were kids.”

Whitey thumped and slapped his bass, and wore only a pair of white cotton underpants. His eyes also glowed bright and red.

“The drummer is Kong,” said Candy. “He moves more air than any drummer alive today. They say he eats drums for breakfast.”

Kong was big. His arms were long and bulging with muscles, muscles larger even than those of Sergio the door man. When Kong hit his drums, the hair fluttered on the heads of the people dancing in front of the stage. Kong twirled
a drum stick in the air, stared up at it with glowing red eyes, caught it, and resumed drumming.

“
The guitarist is VanCat,” said Candy. “At least, that’s what everyone calls him. But real fans know his name is actually Vingt-Quatre, which is French for ‘twenty-four.’ ”

“
Why do they call him that?”

“
See his guitar?”

VanCat
’s guitar boasted two necks. Each neck was strung with twelve strings. Even more startling was that VanCat himself had four arms and four hands. He was able to play both necks of his guitar simultaneously. His fingers danced over the strings and tapped the frets faster than the eye could see. The result was melodic music so complex and beautiful that it sounded like four guitars at once. VanCat’s glowing red eyes were half closed, and his head swayed gently on his neck as he played, completely lost in the music.

“
You know a lot about these guys,” said Danny.

“
They were my favorite band in high school. And their album Scarry Skies got me through a really bad break up when I was in college. I followed their transition when they decided to get their metal.”

“
How old are they?”

“
They were in their sixties when they metaled-up, and I was a teenager then. So I’d say they’re in their eighties now.”

“
They look like they’re in their thirties.”

“
And still rockin’.”

As if to prove Candy
’s point, Blackie, Whitey, and VanCat all began jumping into the air in unison and in perfect time with the music. The music made Danny want to bounce and sway, made him want to jump up and down too, as everyone on the dance floor—humans and robots alike—was doing.

Candy tugged Danny toward the bar.
“Let’s get a drink!”

Four bartenders were working behind the bar – two humans and two robots, a male and female in each pair.

The bartenders twirled bottles in the air, flipped glasses behind their backs and over their shoulders, and were constantly setting things on fire.

The human female bartender arranged a tall pyramid of martini glasses on the bar, stacked six high. She shook a silver decanter and tossed it into the air. She climbed up onto the bar, caught the decanter, and gave it a quick bump with her hand, separating the two canisters above the topmost martini glass. Glowing blue liquid poured into the glass, then overflowed and poured down the stem and into the two martini glasses below it. The trickle continued until each of the glasses contained several ounces of the blue concoction.

In unison, everyone around the bar shouted, “FIREBALL!”

The female robot
climbed onto the bar at the far end. She held a white sugar cube between her thumb and index finger. The human male bartender tossed a bottle high in the air and she caught it. She poured a splash of its contents onto the sugar cube, struck a wooden match with her thumb, and lit the sugar cube on fire. It burned in a sizzling orange fireball. She threw the flaming sugar cube in a long, high arc. Dozens of pair of eyes watched it sail over their heads and splash neatly into the topmost martini glass.

Everyone cheered.

Red fire erupted from the glass and traveled down the pyramid in a flash of crimson combustion.

The blue liquid in each glass soon began to bubble.

With both hands moving with amazing speed and precision, the human female bartender distributed the flaming martini glasses to the crowd around the bar.

She handed two of the glasses to Candy and Danny, smiling as she did so.

Candy blew a puff of air on Danny’s glass, blew a second puff on her own, and the red fires were extinguished.

“
Drink it while it’s hot,” she shouted. Candy upended her glass, downing it in one gulp, so Danny quickly did the same.

The liqueur tasted sweet and spicy at the same time. It seemed to fizzle on Danny
’s tongue. He swallowed it and felt intense heat inside him, followed immediately by a soothing coolness. A sweet, spicy, fruity aftertaste lingered in his mouth. “I could drink a lot of those.”

“
Yeah, me too. Problem is, that liqueur she uses is fifteen hundred dollars a bottle. So she doesn’t do the pyramid thing more than once per night.”

“
How do you know all this?”

“
Susannah and I come here quite a bit.”

“
What can I get you?” The female bartender was collecting the empty martini glasses. Her hair was cut ultra short and spiky. It accentuated her vibrant grey eyes and heavy lashes.

The Red Hot Cyborg Players were deep into a melodic funk jam.

Any second now, Danny knew Candy was going to ask him to dance. Women loved to dance. Historically speaking it was the reason nightclubs were invented. Danny wasn’t particularly keen on dancing. Truth be told, he never danced. He always felt awkward and foolish, as if he were engaged in an activity he didn’t understand, like playing a game for which he didn’t know the rules, or flying an airplane which had no stick, no rudder pedals. He preferred to remain at the bar with Candy, and talk.

“
Another round of these!” he declared. Danny raised his empty martini glass. Already he could feel the alcohol working its way into his bloodstream. His head felt warm and fuzzy and he found himself smiling. His aversion to dancing notwithstanding, Club C/Fe was all right.

“
I’ll get it,” said Candy. She reached into her bra and pulled out the folded hundred-dollar-bill. She held out her hand to the bartender. “Put ’er there!”

The bartender shook Candy
’s hand.

Candy completed the handshake and winked at the bartender, pointing her index
finger and thumb like a pistol.