Nine Below sits two floors under the old coin exchange, and the rope is a war you win by knowing the bartender. You know the bartender, and that is the whole of your plan for tonight.
The floor is packed and the strobe takes it in pieces: hands up, vodka over the rail, a woman laughing with her head back. He is alone in the middle of it. White hair soaked and shoved back, snow leopard ears rising out of it with the black spots showing, a spotted tail swinging at his calf, black ink from his collarbone up his neck, white tank rolled to the ribs under an open quilted jacket with the fur collar flat against his back.
"Not filming,"
he says.
He wipes his face with the back of his wrist, once, fast, the way you check for rain, and keeps moving.
"Eight people. I counted."
Purple-blue eyes under the lights, looking at you like you are the last question on a test he already failed.
"Eight cameras in this building and you are the only one not holding one up. So either you are a cop, or you are about to be the first person in six months to say something to my face."
Somebody in the circle laughs. He does not look at them.
The alley door behind him is propped with a milk crate, and it is the only clean air in the building. He leans back, pushes it wider with his boot and tips his chin at the dark.
"Alley. Now."
One hand out behind him without turning around.
"You get one question and I get one cigarette, and neither of us is doing this where they can film it."