The Disillusionists cont'd...

Someone who looked vaguely familiar opened the steel door of the warehouse after repeated banging. He welcomed Mike with a hug. Mike turned to me and nodded - was I supposed to hug this dude as well? I nodded at him and he nodded back and then stepped aside. Jay and the girls knew everybody anyway and were already inside.

The dimly lit, blue space held six other people. The dance floor was empty except for a swing, a young couple and a wide leather strap, fairly common place these days. The couple were taking a smoke break which seemed weird because they were smoking inside a bar. The bar served no alcohol though, only "enhanced juices". Nobody talked. Then it came to me, the doorman was the guy in a long-running series of car commercials...

"It'll pick up," said May. "It's only eleven, once the bars start closing..."

We took a booth in the far corner. Some guy wearing boxer shorts and combat boots came over and put a candle on the table. He half smiled and then turned and walked away without taking a drink order or nothing - just went to his perch at the end of the bar. The bar itself was made of old truck tires standing bolted to the floor, with a couple of planks screwed to the top. It was loud, but not too loud - some kind of industrial crap on the p.a. I looked at Alexis. Her eyes were lit up and whenever I made eye contact she smiled wearily. I wondered if it was her voice I heard at all because it didn't really suit her. It belonged to a woman twice her age, a lifetime pack-a-day smoker who drank whiskey and lived in a trailer. I didn't know that at that point she hadn't slept in forty-eight hours and her voice was hoarse from yelling and that she was just glad to have someopne else in the spotlight. She wanted to take her boots off but was afraid her feet might stink. She could feel her eyeballs drying by the light of the candle and if she kept looking at it she would fall into it but this asshole kept staring and her jaw might shatter if she kept smiling and oh my god, now I'm smiling - staring at the candle - someone please just give me a glass of water... oh, there's some...

I watched her sip from a bottle of spring water that had been on the floor. Mike had apparently been talking the whole time, "...then there was this time we were working in the arctic. This was years ago and it was actually cheaper to just go there than to manufacture it for ourselves but it was a huge pain in the ass. I mean, think of the logistics... And horseflies,ots of horseflies. We'd spend entire days locked in our trailer because the bugs were so bad there was no way of doing anything useful which of course fucked with the budget but I said look, you want this thing to look natural don't you? Well how much more natural can you get than the fuggin' arctic..."