I've been working on this chapter for months, and it is now wildly different from when I started. It grew to 32,000 words, which is why it's split into 2 parts (even though it's supposed to be one big crazy party scene.)

With that said, I hope you all like dick jokes!

Party At Adrian's PART 1

A Long Night's Journey Into Right Over There

"Take forever why don -"

Dimitri didn't bother with letting Rose finish her complaint, or with exiting the freight elevator, before he grabbed hold of her arm and reeled her in for a boozy kiss. It happened instantaneously - one second she was sassing him from the other side of the double gates, and the next she was glued to the front of him. The events of the past couple hours had him wound up all tight inside and holding her body to his as closely as possible was the only remedy he could name.

He could tell by taste that Rose had also been doing some drinking in their time apart. The steamy atmosphere they began to generate between them damn near had an octane rating. They fumed together.

They also blocked the exit.

Hans barged past the pair of horndogs without saying a word. He needed to get back to his charge, and he didn't believe their behavior warranted the politeness of an "excuse me" from him. Also, he could smell something burning in the apartment that wasn't tobacco or marijuana. "I leave him alone for ten minutes…"

Hans was the hardest working man in show business.

Dimitri tried his best to conceal his shredded knuckles in the sleeves of his leather jacket as his hands caressed Rose's shoulders and hips. His meathooks were in dire straits after fighting that brick wall earlier, and if she noticed them now, when they were in a relatively private setting, he'd have little hope of casually dismissing the injuries as drunken shenanigans. The mini emotional breakdown he had put in the alleyway needed to stay under wraps until the root source of the problem was neutralized.

Permanently.

Rose tried her best not to snarl all over Dimitri's face like a needy little beast. He was in an obliging mood at the moment, and making out in elevators was always a favored special occasion activity for her - the "occasion" of being in an elevator with Dimitri for any length of time.

When his mother wasn't around.

Or hers.

"Seriously, what took you so lo-" She managed to choke out pieces of a complaint here and there between more kisses. Special occasion or not, he'd committed the cardinal sin of making her wait around for more than ten Mississippi's, and he needed to be punished. "I was standing here for hours, hours waiting for you two - oooow!"

He cut her off again, this time with a firm pinch on the behind, another bruise in the making.

Dimitri could distract with the best of them.

Never one to be outdone, Rose pinched him back, and then sank her teeth into his bottom lip for good measure. The groan she got out of him in return was almost too hot to handle - hence why upping the ante was her usual move. Double or nothing.

One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi…

Somewhere in a remote part of his brain, Dimitri began to detect the acrid scent of smoke drifting into the elevator. He tried to ignore it, to focus on sexy things like nipples and earlobes, but the smell was definitely smoke from a fire, not cigarettes. There could be a real emergency. Or given the circumstances, there had damn well better be one!

Though he wasn't keen, and though it took some real doing, he freed his lip from Rose's bite and put it to use posing a question into her neck that was probably important.

"Is something on fire?"

The sensation of moist words spoken just below and behind her ear made Rose giggle, but she didn't answer right away. She had a pretty good idea of what was burning in Adrian's apartment, and she wanted nothing to do with it for as long as possible. Hans had a fire extinguisher, he could play marshal, and she'd exchange heated words with the party responsible, shortly.

But for now - boyfriend. There wasn't nothin' short about him.

"That's just what you do to me, Cowboy. I'm hotter than Georgia asphalt."

She climbed him like a rope ladder and kissed him again, harder.

"Oh my god!" Mickey's voice belted out from behind them. "You know, there are laws against this kinda thing, you sick jerks! First the backseat of my car, now this!" He'd been awkwardly trying to sneak past the throes of their melding since it began, but dirty talk and fake southern accents were the last straw. He threw his hands up in the air, sneaking be damned, and squeezed by giving them a much wider berth than Hans had.

None of that shit was touching any of him.

"Laws against kissing?" Rose didn't open her eyes when she responded. She didn't pull away from Dimitri's mouth, either, so her words sounded a bit more like, "Lerrhhs amsnt kiksing?"

Mickey ignored her.

He ignored her until he stepped clear of the elevator, and immediately discovered that it opened into yet another empty white corridor, identical to the one they'd just stood in two floors down. He thought he'd seen apartment behind Rose when Hans opened the gates, but it was only wall.

Wall.

Severely disliking the feeling of being frozen in time yet again, he cleared his throat loudly, hoping the heavy hint would penetrate the fog of their activities. Mickey didn't feel confident going into that apartment alone, not with the way his night had been going so far, but he refused to be subjected to witnessing any more of Rose and Dimitri's mating rituals.

His first attempt was a failure.

He cleared his throat again, this time also firmly tapping Dimitri on the shoulder.

Excited male voices bounced through the double door-sized archway at the end of the corridor along with the wafting smoke. They were closer than before, which briefly snapped Mickey's attention away from the elevator. Whatever was going on in there sounded a lot more like a frat party than it did an important business meeting. He distinctly heard someone shout, "Alright, who else here needs to take a piss!?"

Maybe he should just walk in there unannounced? For what it was worth, he did have to pee, and he was no fraidy cat.

Where is all that smoke coming from?

When Mickey turned back around, Rose and Dimitri were miraculously restored to being two separate entities. Granted, they were both red in the face and their hair was mussed, which he found gross, but there were two of them. That was progress. And not a moment later Dimitri vacated the elevator, which was further progress still.

Rose needed to fix herself up a bit before following Dimitri into the hallway. She knew a quick debriefing was in order before she tossed fresh meat into the fray, but first things first - her lipstick was all jacked up and her hat was falling off. She made fast work of tending to both issues, not that a person could tell from the way Mickey was carrying on. By the time she'd finished using the rather out of place looking mirror that Adrian had installed in the antique industrial elevator for this very reason, beautiful women trying to make themselves decent, he was on the verge of turning himself inside out.

A quick flick of her braid, and she declared herself, "Ready!"

"Hallelujah!" Mickey rejoiced. "Rose, why must I be forever waiting around for you to put on your face?"

She ignored Mickey's commentary, mostly because she understood his annoyance. She rarely wore makeup, and all these lipstick touch ups were getting on her nerves as well. She latched onto the arm that Dimitri had slung over her now slightly chilly shoulders, and the three of them advanced down the hall in a tight cluster.

Rose talked fast.

"The guys just wrapped things up a few minutes ago. I'm not exactly known for my business acumen or anything, but I think it went really well. They shook hands a lot, and a few dotted lines were prepped for signing. Of course, Adrian kept fidgeting like a little boy in that damn suit he insisted on wearing, but he had all of his stuff in order for the proposal."

She lowered her voice even though there wasn't much chance of anyone else listening in. Dimitri and Mickey were having trouble catching everything she said and the former was still basically on top of her.

"My eyes nearly liquified in my skull when I heard some of the numbers they were tossing around. You could probably buy the Miami Dolphins for what this place is going to cost. The investors he met with are from Sweden. They are very rich, they are very interested in partying, they are very enamored with all of the tackier aspects of American culture, and they are strange. Just - well you tell me what you think, because I'm at a total loss."

Rose had never set foot outside of the continental US. She couldn't dismiss the fact that it was possible Adrian's new business partners were just regular guys from Western Europe, and she was too myopically American to comprehend the cultural differences.

Possible, but not bloody likely.

She needed a second opinion. Growing up in New York City and living in New Jersey had definitely exposed her to more than her fair share of weirdos, but these guys were different. They were… blonde weirdos.

"Remind me again why Adrian needs additional investors so badly that he'd go through all this hassle?" Mickey asked. "I always thought he had more money than the Pope."

"Adrian is insanely wealthy, but he's got almost no liquidity. Daniella holds on real tight to the family purse strings. He can't do a whole lot on his own without an official meeting of some board of directors somewhere, and even then they can deny his request." Rose made no attempt at masking her derision.

Dimitri gave her arm a gentle squeeze. She was shamelessly spinning this part of the story in Adrian's favor by omitting key details, and he wanted her to know the bias wasn't going unnoticed. Even when she was angry with the man she still led his cheering squad with gusto - loyal till the end, his girl.

Now that they were no longer making out, Rose could take a hint on the first go. "They've had good reason in the past for laying on the formalities before granting him access to the deep pockets. Adrian's got a bit of a spending problem." She admitted reluctantly.

"You shock me."

"I mean beyond the typical 'you can't take it with you' kind of spending. He tried buying a dinosaur skeleton recently because it was, I dunno, there? I can't really blame anyone for telling him that no private citizen needs to own dinosaur bones for any reason. There was also the time he wanted to place a bid on an enormous parcel of land in the middle of nowhere in Montana so he could open a special school. We were all a little unclear on what the school was actually for, but his projected costs budgeted for an absurd amount of security that the place would have apparently required - staff and state of the art equipment. Stuff I've never even heard of before."

Sharing that last part didn't feel great. Adrian's school plan had strong enough paranoid overtones, and his behavior was so erratic at the time, that Rose actually turned to Olena and Loretta for their help. She was worried about him, and she was out of her depth. The three women ended up having to mother Adrian through nearly two weeks of monitored sobering up at a hotel downtown, followed by another few days of "fattening up", all done in accordance to the unofficial recommendations given to them by a retired RN who taught Rose's Phlebotomy course at the city college. She doubted Mickey was aware of any of this - Dimitri was only given a brief synopsis.

"This time, though, he's the real deal. Tonight was all about Adrian trying to be his own man, and refusing to beg for another exorbitant handout from Mumsy and the Board. It's grading on a curve considering the context, but I'm really proud of him."

Her voice returned to a normal volume now that the dirt was dished. The rest of what she had to share was just garnish. "Christian's still here. He usually leaves after a couple lines and a drink, but the 'L' word was mentioned. I doubt his pasty pathetic butt is leaving anytime soon. Bleh."

That "bleh" caused Dimitri to smother a somewhat meanspirited laugh into Rose's freshly straightened beret. He was no stranger to her ongoing bicker wars with Adrian's exclusive cocaine dealer. Their personalities were just too different and too similar to not eventually lead to bloodshed. He also knew of Dr. Christian Ozera DDS's unrequited romantic interest in Lissa Dragomir, one of the Aura's most popular cage dancers.

The man in question was hopeless with the ladies. It was truly painful to witness.

"He brought twice as much contraband along with him as he usually does, so tonight is probably going to get out of hand pretty fast. I suggest you prepare yourselves for the last days of Rome."

A twinge in Rose's voice had Dimitri craning his neck sideways a bit to see her face. He started some when he found she was already staring straight back at him, waiting. Rose beamed, but the usual brilliant toothiness was seasoned with an unmistakable edge of warning. Things were strained between her and Adrian at the moment, mostly due to his current state of "creative impotence", and she needed Dimitri to play nice with others. He had to get onboard the damn party bus, and he needed to stay in his fuckin' party seat without giving her any unyielding boyfriend crap. Nothing less would do. Adrian wanted to celebrate beginning a new chapter in his life with his cousin, and Mickey wanted to immerse himself in the full Aura Club experience, of which pregaming or night capping at Adrian's was an integral part.

For what was a hotdog without mustard?

He saw her treacherous smile, and he raised her a cocky glint in his eyes. If she wanted Party Dimitri, she could have Party Dimitri. But later on, there'd be a whole lot of quid pro quo-in' goin' down.

Tits for tat, my loveliest Roza.

Mickey cleared his throat for a third time, and picked up his pace. The pair of them were somehow even worse to be alone with right now when they were keeping their mouths shut and their hands to themselves. If Dimitri wasn't currently walking, he'd probably be swiping his foot at the ground like a rutting bull moose.

It's my own fault for knowing them. That was my first mistake.

"Hey, Mickster, a word of warning from me to you -"

"Don't take any wooden nickels? Neither a borrower nor a lender be? Keep your pecker up?"

"No. Borrow all the woodpeckers you want. I was just going to tell you to remember that expensive gin and water are not actually the same thing even though they look the same, and gin tastes better. One night a while back I made that mistake. At the time I thought was a genius. I was not."

"Gin isn't water. That's a toughie, Rose, but I think I can remember it."

"Laugh all you want now, but people have been known to go a little feral after a night of twistin' the night away with Adrian. At some point tonight, you will get thirsty. You might see a glass of clear liquid, feel that it's cold, and say 'meh, close enough'. But two out of three isn't good enough, Mickey. Mark my words, kid - it's three out of three, or bust."

The final hallway was now in their rearview.

The Apartment

Mickey had no idea what to expect from the third floor "Studio Level" of the enormous complex, but just as he had been with The Aura and Sal's, he was ready to be wowed once more. As he would soon discover, 'wow' was a word with many possible meanings. It was a supreme catch-all.

"Wow…"

The structure itself was beautiful. A staggering expanse of square footage with no expense spared upon preserving the original integrity of the building, it consisted of endless wide-open converted warehouse space that was almost entirely unencumbered by partitions of any kind. The perimeter walls were the original factory exposed brick, painted a brilliant white. The vaulted ceilings featured a framework of mighty oak beams that were supported by tall steel columns rather than internal load-bearing walls. The flooring was also the original heavy plank wood covering, but it had clearly been refurbished and refinished to a charming glossy deep patina. The entire south wall was a floor to ceiling grid of faintly-tinted windows.

"Wow…"

A miasma of darkish smoke wafted about the apartment, choking and blinding everyone in its path. It was beyond disorienting.

Wow.

Other words escaped Mickey as he took in his surroundings. The right descriptors he simply did not have, this scene was out of his realm of experience. It was the size of a blimp hangar.

Adrian Ivashkov's art studio/apartment was every bit as confounding as the man himself. It was a stunning architectural manifestation of the philosophical concept of Dualism - a true marriage of the magnificent and the… pretty crappy.

Wow.

The man's private domain was the perfect answer to a question Mickey never thought to ask: What would a tailgating party look like at The Metropolitan Opera?

Or perhaps the décor fell more inline with the theme of, "The Swiss Family Robinson found a large buried treasure chest full of cocaine, and then slowly gave up on building more coconut and rope amenities for their house."

Exquisite bones aside, there was almost nothing inside that apartment, and what little there was baffled the mind.

Mickey's vision blurred a bit with tears from the smoke. He wiped them away, but didn't attempt to leave his spot by the door.

Door was safe.

Superior to wall in nearly every way.

The enormous single room was divvied up into generally implied zones by the arrangement of what scant furniture Adrian owned. A hefty Tennessee Williams-esq brass bed piled high with rumpled white linens established the boudoir quadrant. The North side featured an open-concept kitchen with the minimum requisite appliances and several utilitarian metal barstools pushed up to a massive stone island. The East end was decidedly Art Studio territory - supplies abound and aplenty. A large clear glass coffee table situated in front of a sumptuously upholstered royal blue velvet Louis XIV sofa and a bunch of cheap white plastic event chairs signified the existence of a quasi living room floating around dead center.

But that was it for furnishings.

The rest of the place was empty aside from the presence of about a dozen bargain basement folding metal lawn chairs scattered about, a few portable card tables, various empty wooden crates used in place of whatever the Sam Hill they could be used in place of, and a boatload of cloying smoke.

Mickey had just located the source of the smoke when Rose spoke up.

"Watch out for Adrian's dad's tiny penis. It's right there."

"What!?"

His initial reaction was to jerk around in every direction and swat at the air around his ears as if a "dad's tiny penis" could be preparing to dive bomb his head at any moment like a hummingbird.

"Where is it?! Where?!"

Dimitri's face shot up toward the vaulted ceiling and he squeezed his eyes closed in a valiant effort not to unfairly mock Mickey's natural reaction to a strange non sequitur with too much laughter. Rose pointed to the wall on Mickey's right, her mouth likewise sewn up tight against a wave of spiteful hilarity.

A large mural of lines and unfocused blue, black, and mauve squiggles covered the white brick. It didn't look like anything in particular from his current peripheral, so Mickey turned around and backed up enough to get a better view.

And there it was - massive in scale, but pathetically small in size, a penis depicted from head on covered the entire wall by the elevator hallway entrance.

"This is really Adrian's dad's penis?"

It was without a doubt the saddest cock Mickey had ever seen in his life. Egg-shaped and small, it curved a little to the left and was nearly swallowed up by the scrotum beneath it.

"Yep. And honestly, couldn't have happened to a worse guy. He's pure shit. This portrait is an Adrian Ivashkov original titled: Daddy, Daddy, You Bastard, I'm Through. (At Least I Have a Bigger Prick Than You Do.)"

As Mickey stared at the man's mean little wiener, he silently thanked God for the blessing of his cock - his own beautifully average and perfectly sufficient cock. The grass was always greener, but apparently a man's dick could always be smaller. Or crooked-er.

Dicks were a theme for the night.

"...Good title?"

Rose sighed.

Sighs we're another theme for the night.

Dicks and sighs.

"No it isn't."

"It's better than the title for his piece in the guest room." Dimitri interjected, greening a little around the gills.

"Which is?"

"Daniella's Winter Solstice Abortion or: How I Learned to Stop Asking Santa For a Baby Brother."

"It's a cubist painting on six panels." Rose added. "It's not my favorite. Daniella wasn't partial to it, either."

Mickey had barely set foot in Adrian's apartment, and already he felt like a month had passed. He was living in dog years.

"Huh. Well… I do have another question for you guys, but now my concern is that the answer will be more terrible than the information is worth."

"The Q&A portion of the evening is short, so it's now or never, Mickster. I'm going off duty in three…two…one…"

"Why exactly is Adrian dressed like Bruce Lee and sitting over there next to a guy who looks sorta like Dracula in front of a fire in a barrel like a hobo at a trainyard inside his apartment? Is this all just normal Saturday stuff for him? You seem," he chose his next words carefully, "unimpressed."

Mickey tilted his head in the direction of the smoke cloud they all smelled from the moment Hans opened the elevator doors. They were good questions - pertinent questions - and more importantly, they most likely had answers that didn't require him to look at the cock mural anymore. He'd rather gag on suffocating clouds of smoke than on the image of Nathan Ivashkov's sad penis.

At least the other painting is in a room I don't know how to find.

"Because he's not housebroken yet." Rose ground out between clenched teeth. She refused to even look Adrian's way. "And I'm tired of playing zookeeper." Now that she'd confirmed her suspicions that he was lighting ceremonial fires indoors, yet again, another drink was required. Her wrath needed dilution. "Dimitri, baby?"

Dimitri swallowed a groan and dragged his palm over his face. "Baby" was not a word that bode well for him unless they were being intimate.

Goddamnit, Adrian. Why?

He'd remained silent since he saw the fire, and emphatically waved his hands at Mickey while shaking his head from behind Rose's back in an effort to stop his friend from making any inquiries. Rose was prone to eviscerating the messenger during times of stress.

"Mhrmm, Roza?"

The endearment was intended to serve as a teensy little reminder to her that he was still dancing to her tune as of now, and her sour feelings were none of his doing. His trick was to really work the "R" in R-R-R-oza. He gave it an absolute thrashing with his tongue.

Thinly veiled innuendo - a third recurring theme.

It was a well played move. Rose's following words were markedly softened by the unbidden smile on her lips. "Let's head over there to the kitchen so I can introduce you to The Twins. Adrian isn't going to do the honors, and I'm not going to be capable of rising to the occasion for very much longer once I begin to drink all of the expensive wine he owns. Every last drop of it, and I'm not sharing. Mickey, you're welcome to join us if you want, but you're a big enough boy to go your own way."

Not right now he wasn't.

"The Twins it is." He confirmed before he tore his eyes away from the fire, and gave the kitchen area another preview. He saw three tall blonde men in matching pale hued suits and Stetson hats. "There are three guys in the kitchen right now, Rose."

"Those would be The Twins."

"What?!"

Adrian & Rose

"Hey, Rose, guess what happened!?"

"Hans was only gone for ten minutes and you managed to start a fire?"

"Nope. Guess again."

"Oh, so that's not a trash fire I see right there burning in the middle of your apartment?"

"That wasn't a guess."

"Never said I was playing."

"Party pooper," Adrian lamented. "This is a fire you see before you, but I didn't start it. Hans was only gone for ten minutes, and Christian started a fire!"

Adrian Ivashkov was seated in a yellow lawn chair in the middle of his apartment's living room region, a few feet away from its newest decorative feature, a large rusted red metal barrel, about waist high, and full of crackling orange flames. He was clad in the eggshell white kung fu uniform jacket and coordinating loose black trousers his mother sent him as part of a sartorial gag gift from her extended business trip to Hong Kong - a joke which backfired when Adrian discovered the fine quality natural fiber cloth was the most breathable he'd ever encountered and immediately requested she send him many more of the same pieces in an array of colors - the boyish glee in his voice was hard to miss as he pointed the finger at another for the destruction he undoubtedly wreaked. His proclivity for wearing the kung fu jackets open, exposing his naturally hairless chest and stomach, only accentuated his youthful appearance.

Mickey's previous summation of Adrian's attire had been accurate, but on the whole, he much more closely resembled an inebriated fifteen-year-old who'd been raised by wolves but still retained the human capacity for making fire than he did a depression era tramp riding the rails.

Drunk child. Drunk, motherless child.

"I ignited the fire, but not by choice. Rose, he started it!" Christian Ozera protested. He was seated in another folding chair immediately to Adrian's right.

Rose fixed Christian with the double stink-eye after giving him a long once over. The young dark hair and blue eyed dentist was dressed head to toe in black, his trademark look. As ever, his shirt and slacks were well tailored and fit nicely, but the color did nothing for his pale complexion.

He looks like the ghost of a giant butthead.

"We can circle back in a moment to you explaining how that could possibly be the case, Dr. Ozera, but for now, suffice to say that's the lamest excuse I've ever heard." She returned her attention to her employer-slash-friend-slash-cross to bear. "Adrian. I distinctly remember saying something about fires to you earlier this evening."

"Yes. Yes you did. And we are all very disappointed in Christian for starting this fire. Why do you think Hans is so mad right now?"

He made a sweeping gesture with his arm in Hans' direction. Adrian's Head of Security was back to his usual post by the hallway entrance, and back to his usual stance of leaning, crocheting, and ignoring. He didn't look mad. He didn't look anything. There was a fire extinguisher on the floor by his feet, though.

"Hans said he expected foolishness like this from me, but Christian should know better."

"It wasn't my fault!"

Christian really did start the fire, but only because Adrian planned it that way. All it took was a conveniently placed tinderbox disguised as a supplementary garbage receptacle and the match they shared to light their clove cigarettes. The poor guy nearly shat himself when the can erupted in flames.

"So, Adrian… What's in Christian's fire?"

As if I don't already know.

"It's not my fire!" Christian really hit each word hard before taking the last gulp of what looked like scotch on the rocks.

"About a whole bottle of lighter fluid," Adrian began, "a matchstick, four clove cigarette butts…"

"And?"

"Some urine."

For a minute back there, he became concerned the fire was burning too hot for the metal can. Urinating on it seemed a logical solution.

"And?"

"Urine from two other people."

He recruited backup firemen when his own stream proved insufficient.

"And?"

"My suit."

Mo-ther.

Fucker.

"I told you not to burn that suit! Even if you don't take into consideration the issue with the sprinkler system - which I really think you SHOULD - that was a $2,000 suit that you wore for all of twenty minutes. You could have donated it to a thrift shop, or to the clothing drive they are always promoting at the church down the street. Some poor bastard's year would have been made with a find like that! Adrian, why do you do the things that you do?!"

"Oh, sprinklers-schminklers. And it was a $3000 suit if you include the shirt and the shoes that are in there with it."

Christian leaned over in his folding chair to whisper loudly, "Are you trying to make her mad?"

Adrian dismissed the question with a flick of his wrist. He and Rose had been skating around a major blowout for weeks, and tonight he could feel it brewing in the smoky air.

Chaos magic was taking the wheel.

"I'll admit, I might have made a bad call by tossing the brogues in there because I think it's the tanning and polish on the shoes that's creating most of the smoke, but I swear to you, the rest of it couldn't be helped. A symbolic sacrifice was required after the bloodletting, otherwise the ritual would be meaningless. I had to burn my own effigy to wipe clean my slate, and I made sure Christian started the fire because he's a virgin."

Christian abruptly turned on him, "...I'm not a virgin."

Adrian studied the man.

"Are you sure about that?"

"Yes!"

Dreadlock Holiday was spinning on the turntable for the hundredth time that night. The obnoxious song accentuated the obnoxious situation.

"I'm in my mid twenties. I drive a Jaguar convertible! Why would you think I'm still a virgin?"

Adrian had several reasons he could list, he also had a couple of excuses he could make, but he kept quiet. He was preoccupied by the fast increasing fear that his first attempt at a wicker man offering would now be rejected by the spiritual realm because he didn't have an authentic virgin to help it along. If such was the case, then his requests for the creative muse to return to him and for his business endeavors to flourish would be lost to the ether.

Christian Ozera just had the energy of someone who'd never known the sensual touch of a woman or a man, that wasn't going to pass muster!

How could he be so foolish?

"Adrian." Rose ended the expanding silence before a tumbleweed had the chance to form, and blow across the floor in front of them. "You made them sign the papers in blood, didn't you?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly..."

They were now having a different conversation - an impossibly stupider one in Rose's opinion. This wasn't just about him hating his suit enough to burn it. She could get over that level of dumbassery with a drink and some complaining to Eddie or Dimitri. No, this was about the other stuff.

Adrian's recently developed obsession with the occult was a point of contention between them of late. It surfaced right around the same time as his latest bout of painter's block, and it just kept growing. His hyper enthusiasm for all things esoteric had really begun to seep into his day-to-day life, and as far as Rose was concerned, he was just making up witchy-sounding bullshit as he went along to up his game as a wealthy eccentric. Blood, candles, crystals, fires in barrels, full moons, wax sealed jars of toenails soaking in grain alcohol, bone powders mixed with mustard and lizard scales, land in Montana, texts on the practices of real religions like Palo Mayombe and Haitian Vodou - he was beginning to incorporate all of it into his daily life in an interchangeable mishmash based on his moods, and it was pissing her off. He was constantly acquiring new, often gross, artifacts to add to his collection. Yeva in particular was fleecing him hard for backgammon money in exchange for charms and incantations from the Old Country.

"I went first in a gesture of good faith." He held up his writing hand, palm out, to show her the white bandage on his index finger. It was sloppily tied, and blood was beginning to seep through the gauzy tape. Rose figured he must have been sitting on it before so she wouldn't see it. "I'm sensing you're angry with me."

"Whyever would you think that, Adrian dear?"

"Body language." He squinted and began to loosely trace her outline in the air with his bloody finger. "Your nostrils are flared. You just put your hands on your hips, and now your tiny fingers are really digging into the meat of them. Your delicate little chin is jutting out, and your jaw looks like it might snap off. You're pugnacious. I kinda dig it."

"Unwise to artistically render me when I'm riled up, Adrian. Hans is all the way over there by the door. There's plenty of time for me to take my best shot at neutering you with my high heel before he could stop me." She lifted her right foot to illustrate her point - it was at the tip of her stiletto. "Is your left testicle a valuable enough sacrifice to ratify this bloodletting ritual?"

"So I was right!" He exclaimed, sidestepping her empty threat. "You are angry with me. It's uncanny this ability of mine."

"How many times do I have to tell you to shut up tonight?"

He shrugged. "Beats me. You also keep saying my name a lot. The disappointment in your delivery reminds me of my father."

"Shut up, Adrian."

She wasn't disappointed. Disappointment only occurred when one's expectations went unfulfilled. She absolutely expected this to happen. She saw this coming from a mile away.

Mo-ther.

Fucker.

(Earlier That Night)

"Rose, could please grab my casual jacket out of the guest room for me?"

Rose stood up and closed the refrigerator door, a can of soda in hand. Adrian had just been addressing her protruding hindquarters. "Which casual jacket?" She popped open the top of her beverage, and stood back from the small geyser of bubbles that followed.

Until recently, the "guest room" in Adrian's apartment had served as his personal dressing room. It was chock full of "casual jackets", shoes, suits, hats, sports wear, vacation attire, expensive luggage, and whatever the hell you call the male version of sexy lingerie. Rose found it strange that a man who preferred to go around in various stages of undress most of the time had to have an entire room solely devoted to housing a bunch of garments he never felt like wearing, especially since it was the only separate room in the place that didn't have a toilet in it, but she'd kept it to herself.

One had to choose one's battles with Adrian, or one would age prematurely.

Things changed, though, when Tatiana moved in with him, and claimed his clothing's room for her own. He couldn't just flit in and out of his dressing space whenever he felt like it anymore. New rules were harder to swallow than horse pills for a bachelor of his breed. Now he had to knock before entering, and lights out for her meant no change of pants or fresh undies for him until late the next morning when her beauty rest was through - should he actually want them, that is.

"Doesn't matter which jacket. Dealer's choice. You know where they are."

He was rushing her, which was unusual for him. He was also pretending to be blasé rather than actually being it. This made her wary.

"Okay, who the fuck are you, and where is Adrian Ivashkov?"

"Pardon?"

"I've never heard you say that you didn't care what you wore." She took a swig of her soda, and made sure they had the kitchen area to themselves before beginning her inquest. Interruptions were not to be tolerated. "Even when you're running around with your private parts hanging out, you still have a lot of reasons for your aesthetic choice."

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean."

"I'm not wearing pants because they've simply been done before, darling," Rose's voice bloomed for effect, "and I can't wear a shirt without pants because it's after labor day and that's such a faux pas - oh, here are my bare balls and butt, by the by. Do you like them? I'd tell you they're new, but we both know that's a lie. Mmmmm, hah-hah-ha!"

"...That was a terrible impression of me."

"That was my Katherine Hepburn," she deadpanned. No longer feeling wary, she was downright contrary on his ass.

They silently eyeballed one another for a few more seconds.

"Why must you always be a soaking wet blanket, Hathaway? It was a simple request, and I even said 'please'!"

"I stick to my strengths and I try not to waver."

"Fine. You win!" He threw his hands up in pantomime surrender, and then busied them further by running them through his chestnut hair. Adrian never knew what to do with his hands when he wasn't holding a smoke, a drink, a paintbrush, or all three. Empty hands were for the birds.

"I just can't go back to that room right now, okay? Tatiana has been in one of her moods since she woke up, and if I go back there she'll never let me leave. Please bring me a jacket? And some real pants? This tie feels like a hangman's noose. I'm suffocating!" Adrian tugged the ever-loosening Pratt knot in his silk tie. It was now a scarf.

She let slide the hyperbole and instead focused on the crow she wanted to make him eat. "You were the one who insisted on wearing a suit for this meeting. I told you it was a bad idea, and now you want me to act as a human shield with Tatiana to undo the fashion don't you committed?"

She wanted to hear him say it.

"I know, but -"

"I was the one Hans dragged up here to watch you ripping through your wardrobe like a teenage girl about to go on her first date, remember? I said no suit! It makes you look like you're trying too hard, and Adrian Ivashkov does not try, he just does. He just is. Then you said I - "

Adrian cut her off. "I know what I said! But now -"

"You said David Bowie told you in a vision -"

"A Spiritual Dream," he corrected. He'd just invented the term, and quite liked the ring to it.

"David Bowie came to you in a 'Spiritual Dream', and told you to wear a suit to your big meeting to please the gods, who are all a different part of him, and then the two of you fucked."

"We made love! He float-danced in through one of the open windows across from my bed, and spoke unto me to wear a sharp looking suit tonight. He said it was of the utmost importance, and I wasn't to question his command. Then suddenly, we were making passionate love on the back of an enchanted stag…" Adrian's eyes hazed over, and his voice trailed off for a moment. The next words he spoke were to no one in particular. "Deep in the Black Forest of Germany…underneath a night sky filled with Diamond Dog stars that shimmered with all the promises of forever. Just David Bowie and me."

"You had sex on a deer in a chocolate cake forest?"

Adrian didn't hear her question, or maybe he just ignored it. "It was the best dream I've ever had in my life, and I was sober when I had it. No - no, that's not true. I drank some magic mushroom tea one of Shane's friends visiting from California brought with him. Everything was a little paisley before I nodded off, but I hadn't touched a drop of liquor."

"Well, sober is a relative term." She huffed, and tapped her fingers on the countertop. "This whole 'I told you so' session really fell apart on me. We can be done here. Whatever else went on at that imaginary stag party is between you and your many new Bowie's. You'll be wanting the white jacket, right?"

He smiled. "Or the off white. Or the ecru. Whatever Queen Bitch will allow you to escape with while retaining your head."

"Got it. You want 'real' pants and the white jacket, the other white jacket, or the other-other white jacket."

Adrian made a tart remark about the importance of color nuance, and Rose stuck her tongue out at him before asking her next question.

"Has she eaten dinner yet? I've noticed Tatiana can be a real bitch when she's hungry. It's one of the few things we have in common."

"She ate enough to fell a horse. She's just being regular-difficult not hungry-difficult. And I can think of another thing you have in common with the old broad."

"Oh yeah, what's that?" She crossed her arms over her chest, waiting for the topper.

It was a softball. "You're both my best gals."

"You mean after Daniella, Oleana, and Loretta Tanner? Fourth - no, fifth in line for your best gal? I'm touched."

"You're number one with a bullet, and you know it, Sweetheart." He winked and then immediately shuddered. It was an unexpected combination to witness. "Arrggh! I'm going to burn this suit once it's off my body. The Thin White Duke must have been testing my devotion when he bade me wear this hairshirt! Maybe he's punishing me in advance for my various shortcomings." He clawed at his lapels. "It must be sent straight to hell where it belongs, or I will never be free!"

"Just make sure you do your burning outside. The sprinkler system in this place is a big fat mess, remember? No more wearing suits, and no more fires indoors - I don't care what Ziggy Stardust tells you. Or don't burn it at all because it's extremely wasteful."

Adrian nodded in agreement, but he had his fingers crossed behind his back like a naughty schoolboy. Outside was all the way outside, and inside was right here. How could he be expected to uphold a promise like that when he was tired? Or when he didn't want to!?

"If I'm not back soon, send for Dimitri. Tatiana is just like every other heterosexual female in the world - he gets her motor running."

Rose made to leave, but she didn't get far. Adrian lazily tossed out a final joke that stopped her in her tracks. "Why do you think I invited him tonight? He and Mickey are offerings to the she-creature."

And there's the topper.

The ensuing silence was loaded, and Adrian kicked himself for it. He'd just succeeded in snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. He and Rose were so much a part of one another's daily lives now that even a small exchange about clothing could be weighed down by a myriad of suppressed grievances. She was irked, and he'd irked her.

"Let me get all this straight before I go off fetching garments. I'm here under the guise of being eye candy for the three Swedish pusshounds you desperately needed to impress in order to secure their funds, men who have barely even looked at me tonight, and now Dimitri and Mickey are soon to be here to fulfill similar roles distracting your flat mate? Do you ever just invite people over because you like them?"

She was too good at keeping him honest. Sometimes all it took was a level stare from those damnable feline eyes of hers for him to buckle. He moaned, and longed for a world with takesies backsies.

"You misled me, Adrian - lied even. Those guys are your fucking party buddies from way back. Why did you tell me you needed me here to help you charm some hardass business sharks when it really seems like all you had to do was get them drunk, give them drugs, and regale them with your newest stories about hurling on foreign dignitaries. They are eating out of your hand!"

"I know."

"You know what?"

"I know I lied to you. Well, fibbed. It was more of a fib than a lie. I don't know exactly why I did it, either. I'm sorry, I just - I haven't been myself lately. My moods have been all over the shop, and it can't just be my painter's block. Maybe I'm going crazy again."

They both silently hoped that wasn't the case.

Adrian closed the gap between them, and circled around her so he could embrace her from behind. He rested his chin on her shoulder. She allowed it, but didn't return the affection.

"Tonight was important to me, and I needed you to be here. Begging for money from men I generally think of as useless shits, who followed me around in high school like I was all four of The Beatles is completely demoralizing. I shouldn't have to be reduced to white collar panhandling - it's grubby. I needed moral support. You are my moral support. And now that all the particulars are hammered out, it's time to celebrate and move forward. I wanted all three of you here for that. Happy now, Hathaway? I'm only mostly perfect. I have feet of clay."

"...Tickled pink, Ivashkov. I don't demand daily heart-to-hearts or incessant spilling of home truths, you know, but your moods affect me too. When you act like an asshole, I have to deal with you acting like an asshole. I've grown accustomed to your usual disposition of sweetness with a side helping of crazy, and this weirdo businessman-cum-shaman persona you've been test driving around for the better part of a month is really chapping my hide." Rose kissed his cheek, and freed herself from his grasp. "I know all about your creative struggles, your money problems, and your soft underbelly. There's no need for fibs. Or fires." She wiped her mouth. "Your skin is clammy."

"It's the tie's fault. All of it. Fuck this tie."

"Pass."

"The last time you decided to sign a stack of papers in blood you passed out in the bathroom, hit your head on the sink, and I had to take you to the hospital in a taxi cab to be treated for a grade two concussion! Pens exist for a reason!"

"You really need to learn how to drive, Rose. I could have died in the time it took to wait for that cab," Adrian admonished.

"Are you fucking kidding me right now?"

"No. You're an adult. Every adult in 1978 can drive except for you. It's absurd."

"THAT! That is EXACTLY why I'm so mad! You don't listen when I speak! I said no suit, you wear a suit anyway. I say no fires indoors, just not indoors because the sprinklers in the club downstairs can be activated by the ones up here, and you started a fucking fire the second my back was turned. I request that you use ink instead of blood so you don't keel over and nearly die AGAIN, and you mock my inability to drive a car!"

"You know," she continued, "you never once thanked me for taking you to the hospital that night? Oh, unless you count spilling hot and sour soup all over my tan suede skirt as a 'thank you'. For future reference, I prefer the actual words. Or cash. Right now I can't tell who's annoying me more, you or If Alice Cooper Was a Dentist over there, and that sure is saying a helluva lot about the way you've been behaving lately!"

Her last remark was accompanied by a particularly forceful thumb jab in Christian's direction. He'd never admit it, but it sort of hurt his feelings a little. "Hey! All I did was throw away a match rather than litter, and suddenly my arm hair was singed off! Why am I catching flack here?"

"Collateral damage!" Rose snapped, her eyes still adhered to Adrian.

Ask a stupid question…

They plunged straight back into squabbling like an old married couple, Christian's valid complaint already completely forgotten. Rose towered over Adrian, who was still sitting in his ridiculous lawn chair. The fact that he wouldn't stand up when she was yelling at him pissed Rose off royally, and she told him so using several choice words.

His reply pissed her off even more.

"You don't appreciate my dedication to being comfortable at all times, even when defending myself against the tyranny of women? Well tough titty said the kitty, but the milk tastes just fine!"

"What the fuck does that mean?!"

"It means I refuse to be persecuted for my beliefs. This is now a matter of religious freedom, a founding principle of the country in which we live. Adrian Ivashkov burns his sacrifices where he wants to, and he only signs in blood. The decision is made, so shall it ever be. And while we're at it, that skirt was ghastly. It made your ass look flat as a pancake. I did you a favor."

"And which religion would that be, Adrian? Stevie Nicks-ianity? David Bowie-ism?! What omnipotent candle god of dumpster fires are you trying to appease with all of your nonsense!?"

"YOU LEAVE DAVID BOWIE OUT OF THIS!"

Now Adrian was yelling. He was still sitting in the lawn chair, but he was yelling.

"I'll talk about David Bowie whenever the fuck I damn well please! You don't have exclusive David Bowie privileges!"

"YOU WILL NOT!"

"I WILL SO! And as for the other thing…" Rose silently counted to ten, and forced her voice into a purr, "...just go ahead."

"Go ahead and what?"

Adrian burrowed deeper into his seat trying to further antagonize her. He was now half-chair, and practically laying on the floor.

She continued in that menacingly sweet, measured tone, and began advancing upon him one slow step at a time. "Go ahead and keep on signing things in blood if you must, because I'm buying you a helmet. I'm buying you a great big helmet. I'll charge it to your Woolworths account, and then I'll make sure to have it delivered here." Her volume began to increase. "That way, you can sign for the package in all the fucking blood you want -" She leaned over and placed a hand on each of his armrests. "- once you've put the helmet on your stupid head! I'll staple the goddamn thing to your thick skull, so you can GO AHEAD and get as WOOZY as you DARE!"

Adrian's disgruntled crescendo mirrored hers so precisely it was almost as if they'd rehearsed it.

"Great! I love the idea. Buy me a helmet. Buy me the ugliest helmet you can find, and use my money to do it. I'll wear it all the time. I'll wear it in the bath. I'll wear it to your graduation ceremony from nursing school! I'll wear it to your fucking wedding, and then I'll sign the guestbook IN MY OWN BLOOD!"

And that was that.

Their mutual indignation had finally reached its apogee.

Unable to move, they stared at one another, huffing air and puffing smoke. Any fight left in them just slowly eked out into the night like a bad fart as Christian Ozera watched from the sidelines in his folding metal lawn chair looking every ounce the slack-jawed dope.

Oh oh oh oh oh…

Oh oh oh oh oh…

Rose heard it first.

Oh oh oh oh oh…

Adrian wasn't far behind.

The piano lead-in to TVC15 began the timing so perfect it was scary.

"This… wasn't on while we were fighting just now… was it?" Rose asked, searching the smoky air surrounding them for quick answers, and finding none. "The album I mean. This album." She was pretty sure half the reason she was mad before was because she had been forced to listen to Dreadlock Holiday so many times in one night.

"No. No it wasn't." Adrian's voice sounded strange, ominous.

Rose turned in the direction of the record player, expecting to see Mickey standing in front of it futzing around with the tonearm or the levels like he was always doing.

He wasn't there.

Nobody was there.

David Bowie's voice boogie-woogied into the room and immediately took over.

"Well, if Mickey didn't put this on, then who did?" An icy chill trickled down her spine. She couldn't account for the sudden bout of uneasiness, but she sure felt it.

"The vessel he's chosen to carry out his will is irrelevant."

"Huh?"

"This is a sign. David Bowie is trying to contact me again. He came once by dream, and now he's reaching out to me through the power of song."

"Oh."

Rose was torn.

She didn't know if the burden of proof was on her to disprove the song was a direct message from David Bowie himself, or if it was upon Adrian to prove that it was.

…Maybe it's true?

"You seem really certain about this."

"I've never been more sure about anything in my entire life. I'm far more sure about this than I was about Christian being a virgin." He looked her dead in the eye. "He saw my fire sacrifice."

"I already told you, I'm not a virgi -"

Rose cut him off.

"Does he…want us to do something for him, or is he just saying hi?"

She could actually see herself coming around on the idea. They were discussing David Bowie, after all. He certainly didn't look to be from this world. If anyone had the potential to be a benevolent interventionist space God, it was him. Or Paul Williams.

Maybe it's true. Anything's better than fighting like this.

"Shhh… just listen… the song will tell us, and then we will know."

They focused intently on the track, willing it to send them a clear message of some sort. By the breakdown, Rose was sitting on Adrian's lap and taking a sip of his cocktail. The lawn chair buckled under the additional weight, but they were too busy listening to notice.

The fire in the trashcan was nearly out.

Mickey & The Tunes

When Mickey finally managed to tear his eyes from the trio of giant Swedish "twins" it wasn't because he felt badly for how incredibly rude and off-putting his blatant staring was, it was because he had a boatload of questions about what he'd just been looking at so intensely, and he needed some answers.

Three twins?

Rose was standing just near his left shoulder, with Dimitri on her other side. He'd tried to catch Dimitri's eye a few times, seeking commiseration with a buddy and reassurance that he wasn't hallucinating, but his best friend appeared to be stuck in a similar warp hole to his own.

Three twins?

He could try asking Adrian?

Three tall twins.

Asking Adrian probably wasn't his best bet, though. Even if Adrian was of a cooperating-type disposition, his insights would most likely come in the form of a Sphinx riddle.

Mickey was too drunk and too high to effectively decipher anything.

No. Rose was his only option.

From what he could see, Rose was on her game tonight. She'd been politely tuned into the conversation going on around them, a feat which he and Dimitri were clearly failing at, and throwing out appropriately timed bon mots here and there. She'd established a steady rhythm of quipping, checking in with a quieter-than-ever-before Dimitri, and turning around to covertly shoot daggers at her employer who hadn't budged from his fireside lawn chair.

She was the smashed hostess with the mostess, and Mickey was going to make her job that much harder by going a little bit nuts himself.

His timing was admittedly bad. One of The Twins was in the middle of a sentence, something to do with commercial real estate prices in Miami. "Sorry to interrupt!" Mickey reached out and gently grabbed hold of the back of Rose's neck, as an animal would its young by the scruff. His intention was to quickly, but suavely, pull her away from the rest of the group for an emergency tête-à-tête.

It did not go down like that.

"If you'll excuse us for just a moment, gentleman. I need to discuss something with Rose that is private and completely unrelated to anything going on in this room right now. It's a sensitive matter… urgent, really, but you also needn't concern yourselves. It's not about… a dead person… or a toilet issue… or anything like that. I certainly didn't shit in my pants, I can tell you that much!"

Silence.

Dimitri finally snapped out of it enough to turn and look at him, his dark brows up to the rafters. Mickey couldn't tell if his expression was the result of witnessing the insane thing he'd just said to three perfect strangers, or if it was because he just realized they were momentarily leaving him to his own devices with The Twins.

His devices were fucking broken.

More silence.

Mickey tossed out the most charming grin he could manage before dragging Rose away. He stopped where the kitchen area officially began, and flipped their bodies around so their backs were to Dimitri and the men in front of whom he'd just so profoundly embarrassed himself.

"Do you need me to find you new pants?" Rose whispered, trying not to sniff him.

"No, of course not! I didn't shit my pants! I needed to talk to you alone, and I panicked, okay?" Mickey wiped a few fat beads of sweat from his forehead. "A woman I was talking to downstairs in the club said something about using diarrhea as an excuse for things, and now it's in my head. I meant to say I needed you to show me where the restroom was because I actually really do need to take a piss, but then it all went to shit. To actual shit."

"How high are you right now?"

"Not high enough, apparently, and let's not stray too far from the Swedish elephant in the room. Three twins!?" Mickey whisper-shouted, spittle flying.

"Yeah. I know."

Part of Rose appreciated the modicum of distraction from her building rage toward Adrian that Mickey's inquest offered. Her attention was now a 7/10 split between Adrian's literal dumpster fire and Mickey's veritable shitshow.

The night was progressing swimmingly for everyone.

"How much do you know? Do you know the reason, or do you just know that it's strange. A simple yes or no? None of your Rose logic."

"No," she answered slowly.

"No you don't know?"

"Yes. Does there have to be a reason?

"Yes!"

"Why? It's a party! Leave your working middle class American bourgeois baggage at the door, and cut loose, man." She'd already given up on what she was saying. Her brain compensated by filling in the holes with whatever it could dig up. "We're all just people, Mickey. We're all sensitive people with so much to give."

Her brain dug up Marvin Gaye lyrics.

His eyes narrowed.

That wasn't a Rose Hathaway kind of thing to say at all. That was a Mickey thing to say! Those were just accidental words that spilled out of her face hole, and did nothing to improve the silence. This time he grabbed her by the elbows when he dragged her further away to the nearest corner.

"They're freaking you out too! Admit it!"

"Of course they're freaking me out! And I've been around them for hours. I'm telling you now, they won't start making any more sense if they haven't already!" The floodgates were open, and out poured the gossipy deluge. "It's not just that there's three of them when there should only be two, or that they are in matching suits and cowboy hats - it's everything! They ate all those McDonald's hamburgers with forks and knives! Fucking Adrian's expensive steak knives and his mother's good silver! It was horrible."

The heaping pile of McDonald's remnants spilling over the top of one of the apartment's trash cans that wasn't currently engulfed in flames hadn't escaped Mickey and Dimitri's attention. They'd apparently not arrived in time for the Big Mac massacre of '78, but the resulting carnage was brutal. The idea of that sort of damage being methodically inflicted by sterling silver forks and specialty German steel knives at an even pace and not by gnashing burly man jaws and sodium puckered bare hands was somehow an unsettling one. Mickey was just glad it was Rose who'd witnessed the unnatural act and not him - he wouldn't have made it out of there with his sanity intact.

"Why were they eating McDonald's? Out of everything in the world? I don't even know where the nearest one is!"

Rose hung her head in defeat. "They had it delivered here by a man in a chauffeur's uniform, and there was so much of it. The only good thing about that fire Adrian started is that it helped snuff out some of the smell of beef tallow." She checked behind her for eavesdroppers before adding, "One of them also threw away a fifty dollar bill in the guest bathroom wastebasket earlier because it had ripped in half."

"...What did you do?"

"The only thing I could do, Mickey. I fished it out of the can when they weren't looking, and I taped it back together like a teenage reprobate. That's my bus fare for months!"

"You did the right thing. Which one of them was it?" He asked, as if he was going to go "do something about it".

"The blonde one."

He quickly glanced over Rose's shoulder at the Magnusson brothers just to verify what he already knew to be true.

"They're all blonde!"

"I know. I still can't tell them apart. They're wearing matching outfits, for crying out loud! Maybe it's a rich people thing? I can never understand rich people, except for Adrian, and that shit has taken nearly two years of constant exposure. And it's still hit-or-miss! Like right now, I have to go over there and rip him a gaping new one for lighting that fire. Oh, I know why he did it, but the fact that he did it proves he believes his actions don't have any real consequences! Those three twins could be totally normal by rich standards. We're probably only confused because we're both of peasant stock, and we'll never be able to see clearly beyond our station."

"...Three twins."

"Three fucking twins."

Mickey and Rose leaned into one another until their heads were almost touching, and turned as a package deal to observe The Twins. The three Nordic blondes were still standing in a loose bunch in the nebulous expanse between the kitchen and the hallway that led to the bathrooms, and seemed to be having a pleasant chat with Dimitri.

Well, near Dimitri. They were having a pleasant chat near Dimitri.

"They're not the worst guys in the world, if I'm being honest. They're never not smiling, and they are alarmingly polite. Before the meeting, one of them pulled out my lawn chair for me to sit down in even though it wasn't actually pushed up to a table. I nearly died from holding in a joke about 'pulling out' when he did it. I don't think he was the fifty bucks offender. But three twins? I just…"

Rose was bewildered.

"It's not that odd, but it's odd." Mickey's eyes widened. He wanted to ask her what her pulling out joke was, but he decided he would ask later.

"Exactly! And do they have to be so tall? You know how Dimitri gets when he isn't the tallest guy in the room - he acts all pissy like the other person is invading his tall turf. I think he thinks people can grow on purpose just to challenge him. Look at him over there." She pointed. "He's stiff as a board from trying so hard not to stare at them or be jealous of their bitchin' cowboy hats."

Mickey increased his volume but lowered his pitch to imitate his best friend. "How dare you be tall in this room? I'm already tall in this room. You better not have sexy accents, too." His drink spilled a little as he pretended to snatch three matching cowboy hats off of three imaginary identical heads.

Rose collapsed into a fit of giggles, and Mickey came tumbling down right after.

They each groped around for something to lean against, the refrigerator for Rose, a cabinet for Mickey, as they melted into their laughter at Dimitri's expense.

Nobody was getting off scot-free tonight.

"Okay, okay… okay… Quit making me laugh!" She stabilized herself with an enormous breath. "I'm pissed at Adrian, and I gotta keep it that way or I'll cave." She stood up straight, and leaned forward in Mickey's direction. "Hey!" She slapped his arm a couple times. "Quit staring at them. It's creepy."

"I can't help it! They're like giant golden retrievers - ones who smoke Marlboro Reds."

"Care for a diversion, then?"

His eyes lit up. He yearned to be normal again. "I'm listening."

"Adrian's massive record collection is over there by the windows." She pointed toward the south wall of the apartment. "You completely ignoring people to salivate over a fatly stacked music library is better than you staring at them like they're a bunch of lepers, so go forth and dork out to your heart's content. And for the love of all that is good in the world, pick something to put on that isn't Dreadlock Holiday by 10cc. One of The Twins is crazy for that song, and if I hear it again I'm chucking the LP out the window like a fucking frisbee."

Rose didn't wait to hear Mickey's reply. He was already seeing the back of her before he could ask, "What the hell is a Dreadlock Holiday?"

On his way to the stereo, he set down his empty beer on a clear cube structure that might have been a table, but also might have been an… art? It was hard to know with Adrian. He examined it and poked at it a few times before finally declaring it "table" as there was already an unopened beer on it.

The thought occurred to him that the beer could have also been part of the… art, but he dismissed the notion quickly on the grounds that the beer was not firmly adhered to the cube and it was still cold.

He scooped that bad boy right up and continued on his way. "Finders keepers."

Rose was not fooling him about Adrian's record collection - it was a thing of beauty. Initially, the setup looked a little strange, a turntable on top of a large receiver on top of a cheap collapsible card table, flanked by two of the largest free-standing speakers Mickey had ever seen. The overall aesthetic was an uncommon blend of the outrageously expensive and the painfully cheap. Nearly all of Adrian's furniture could be folded up and jammed into the backseat of a car - it was the damnedest thing.

Behind the table, under the enormous grid of windows that covered the south wall of the apartment, were about ten industrial metal shelves stuffed to bursting with albums. When he approached them, he realized there were also a fair number of wooden crates scattered around the floor serving as an auxiliary library for niche genres.

Mikhail Tanner had officially died and gone to Rock and Roll Heaven.

And he had a full beer in his hand!

He took his sweet time browsing, appreciating the fact that the entire collection was alphabetized with labeled tabs. He could spend days looking through everything. Many of the albums were still in cellophane.

He's just moved from the F's to the G's in his preliminary perusal when his attention was caught by the sound of Rose shouting at someone over by the fire.

She was yelling at Adrian.

She never yelled at Adrian even when he was really asking for it.

He couldn't make out much of what she was saying as Dreadlock Holiday was yet again blasting directly in his ear from the speakers behind him. One of The Twins must have snuck over and restarted the track while he was busy looking through Adrian's Bob Dylan selection.

David Bowie.

They kept repeating his name.

First Adrian shouted "David Bowie," and then Rose shouted "David Bowie."

Why were they so mad about David Bowie?

Mickey loved David Bowie.

Maybe I should play some David Bowie?

The decision was made. He went back to the B's, located Station To Station, and took it over to the turntable. He went through the proper steps of lifting and parking the tonearm before hitting stop. He didn't particularly care about not scratching the shit out of the Dreadlock Holiday LP, but he certainly didn't want to damage the stylus immediately before putting on David Bowie.

Mickey switched out the albums.

They'll quit fighting now. Who can argue when David Bowie is working his magic? No one - that's who.

It was a shame, really, to finally put on some quality tunes and then walk away without being able to bask in the positive change of vibes, but he still really had to take that piss. He'd been in such a constant state of needing to pee all night that he forgot what relief felt like.

Mickey made a quick stop at the nearest open window, and flung Dreadlock Holiday out into the night. "Losers weepers!" He hoped Rose would be pleased the offending LP was no more, and not upset that she wasn't the one to do the actual flinging.

He drained his beer, and headed back toward the kitchen.

Where the hell is the bathroom in this madhouse?

Dimitri & The Twins

"Adrian was kicked out of St. Sebastian's in 1972 for his academic performance, and the three of us were expelled the following year for operating a… somewhat less than legal gambling operation after hours in one of the dorm basements."

"Administration looked the other way for nearly three full semesters when it was just cards and dice amongst a select group of the student body because we weren't providing any alcohol or drugs at the gatherings, but Nils crossed their line in the sand when he arranged a cockfight with some of the locals in one of the groundskeeper's outbuildings."

Dimitri didn't know what to say to The Twins after his girlfriend and best friend turned fink and left him stranded there, staring at the blonde wall of men with his thumb up his ass. Rose had been steering the conversation up to that point, picking up all the slack, but now he was on his own.

Best practice in this situation was for him to deploy his tactics of remaining wholly impassive while others talked around him. Polite silence was how he survived being raised by a community of dominant women. He was a Viking when it came to blinking at regular intervals and limiting his replies to the monosyllabic and non-committal. He could be sociably antisocial in his sleep, even if he was currently dealing with actual Vikings.

Vikings in the most heartbreakingly beautiful cowboy hats he'd ever seen.

A man has to earn a hat like that. He's gotta live by a code, and carry the wild west around with him in the marrow of his bones.

Like I do.

Fortunately, not much was required of him in the way of conversation with The Twins. They were three extremely loquacious individuals operating in tandem with one another, so silences were few and far between. They spoke in English to include Dimitri in their conversation, a courtesy he acknowledged but didn't really appreciate. He'd be happy for them to carry on in Swedish.

Dimitri's lone contribution to the chatter was asking The Twins, "So, how do you know Adrian?"

They took it from there.

After that he just had to stay conscious enough to not faceplant on the floor at their feet.

Time was passing slowly.

It wasn't passing.

"I didn't arrange the cockfighting, it was Gustav!"

Dimitri thought that it was Gustav who just spoke. They needed to stop moving around so he could figure out who was who. Every fresh cigarette lit and every butt discarded led to another shuffle of bodies.

In all fairness, he was barely trying to tell them apart. A sizable chunk of him thought it just didn't fucking matter. He already wasn't big on their company, they were spoiled and cavalier which were two qualities he didn't think a person could easily grin away with anecdotes - especially when it took three of them to tell a single story.

He couldn't account for the bandages they all had on their right index fingers. That story hadn't been told yet. Or maybe it had, and he missed it.

Adrian probably made them sign something in blood.

His eyes wandered about the room as one of The Twins continued chewing out another one of The Twins for misremembering his own childhood. Dimitri checked out Adrian's trashcan fire, the bright sapphire blue velvet sofa he hadn't seen in there before, the gilded edged mirrors piled high with white powder sitting on the granite kitchen island awaiting nasal ingestion, and the bulky object covered by a white sheet in the middle of Adrian's art studio.

He blinked.

He inhaled and exhaled.

He took a sip of his beer, and then he blinked again.

"It was not! The cockfighting ring was the idea of one of the night custodians. The one who got us the master key to the building, remember? What was his name? It was something - a nickname? This will bother me all night! Do either of you remember his name? He was missing two whole fingers from training fighting birds. He had silver bridgework on half his teeth, and they clicked when he smoked. He looked like a fat James Cagney, but he had a heavy French accent?"

After some deliberation they reached the conclusion the man's name wasn't necessary for him to continue the story. Long arms clad in expensive light blueish fabric went flying with each expression of discontent, so much so that Dimitri began to reimagine The Twins as a single organism with tentacles - a Stockholm Cthulhu.

The thing that should not be… annoying him quite so much as it was.

Mickey was wild for horror fiction, and he typically shared his hobbies with Dimitri.

"We hadn't seen Adrian since our school days, though we've been kept abreast of his goings on through mutual acquaintances. Adrian has always had quite the reputation amongst those in our circle. We ran into him entirely by chance this past spring in Barcelona. It seems we have similar taste in hotel accommodations."

Two of the three identical men laughed at that last part, and the third rolled his eyes.

Dimitri blinked. He threw in a slight nod, signifying nothing.

"What he means to say is he went crazy on the concierge of the Grand Central for not being able to extend our stay in the Presidential Suit for three additional nights as it was booked by another important patron - who turned out to be Adrian."

"I didn't go crazy on the woman, that was Nils! First he shouted at her, and then he tried to make a pass at her."

Dimitri thought it was Nils who just spoke.

Goddamnit.

"What are you saying? I didn't make a pass at her."

"You asked her to marry you!"

"I meant for that to be a threat, not a proposition!" Twin number three laughed. "The worst thing I could think of saying to her at the time was, 'I WILL MARRY YOU!' because she clearly thought I was a disgusting piece of shit. I shouted it at the top of my lungs in broken Spanish, and then took my shoe off and slammed it down on her desk repeatedly. It was hardly moonlight and roses."

"You insulted the entire hotel management staff saying you'd rather sleep out in the street like a dog than spend a single night in one of their festering pubic lice ridden slum holes, and then you ended up passing out on the floor of Adrian's balcony. Outside! The woman was right, you are a piece of shit."

"I agree. I am an enormous piece of shit, and she was lucky to escape being stuck with me for the rest of her life. In my defense, I was smoking a lot of hash on that trip, and I made sure to leave a very generous tip for every individual whom I berated."

They shared the story evenly, but the one standing in the middle seemed to be the most effective at telling. He was keeping them on track as best he could, but drunk stories tended to drag no matter what.

Or they exploded in a person's face all at once.

"We met up with Adrian in Barcelona by accident, and began talking about his future business plans in light of his success with The Aura. Florida has been on our radar for some time. The climate is appealing after so many Stockholm winters, and Miami in particular is on the verge of a real boom. Most of our prospects there have to do with real estate - something called timeshare resorts, condominiums, and retirement communities with on site golf courses. Tedious fucking fortunes to be made."

There was a handoff to the next Twin - their tale had become a fugue.

"It's all projected to be wildly profitable in the long run, but not particularly glamorous." He stifled a belch. "It is our belief that getting into bed with Adrian on his next club will give us at least one project to work on that isn't dull or horribly depressing. If I was only in the business of raisin ranches and storage facilities for the rest of my life I'd take a flying leap right here off the roof of this fucking bowling alley in New Jersey." He lit a cigarette, and looked to the kitchen for the dozenth time in as many minutes. "Also we'd be helping out an old friend in the process."

All three of them were extremely preoccupied with the vista of Adrian's drug cache in the kitchen, and their constant glances in that direction strongly undercut any mention of friendship regarding their host. These men were clearly of a singular frame of mind.

"We're flying down there next month to begin searching for suitable locations." Said the one on the left. "I for one am very excited to go to Key West and visit the Hemingway Museum - though my philistine brothers do not share in my excitement."

"Hup-bup-bup-bup!" One of them held up both hands in the air. "Dimitri, before you allow yourself to believe his claim adds another facet to his character, that he's a great lover of Earnest Hemingway and American literature, I promise you he only wants to go there to drink daiquiris and to see all of the six-toed cats. We don't have them in Sweden - the cats, that is. Daiquiris we can manage."

The rest of the conversation revolved entirely around the subject of cats. The Magnusson Twins were decidedly cat people, the one on the left - who was now on the right after stubbing out another cigarette - being the most enthusiastic.

Dimitri blinked.

He drained the last of his beer.

They're not that tall.

I'm tall.

I'm so tall.

Lawyers, Guns & Money

It didn't take Adrian long to bounce back from his argument with Rose, albeit with a little boost from the Lord God on high, David Bowie. They hadn't ended things on perfect terms, but there was a tacit agreement between the pair of them not to yell anymore. If they could stick to that, he figured by about 2 AM they'd be in tears, hugging one another and annoying the hell out of Dimitri.

2:30 AM at the latest.

With domestic discord temporarily shelved, he was free to refocus his attention on the nights' second order of business: the business of revelry and merriment.

A quick survey of his smoky apartment informed him that, right now at least, business wasn't good. His party was no party at all, it was a goddamn nothing parade! He'd blinked and everyone scattered like crows. Rose and Dimitri were off in their own little world snuggled up on his recently acquired blue velvet couch - the freshly reupholstered priceless antique he purchased to ruin in a few days time for an orgiastic photoshoot that would hopefully put an end to his crippling creativity block.

Mickey was over by the records, flipping his way through the M's section like a man possessed.

The Twins were in the kitchen trying hard to pay attention to whatever it was Christian was saying to them. No doubt they were hoping to ingratiate him into offering them his services for fulfilling their own pharmaceutical requirements by suffering through one of his boring theories about Area 51 or Paul McCartney secretly dying in a fiery car wreck in 1966.

"Hans, give it a rest with the knitting, will you? We are in crisis here! I need you to please point that steely Pennsylvania Dutch gray eye of yours thisaway, and listen but good."

Adrian waited for Hans to put down his handicrafts, noting that the man completed two additional rows of fastidiously neat work before he set aside the skein and hooks. If Hans was trying to ignore him long enough to make him go away it wasn't going to work.

Ignoring Adrian Ivashkov was an exercise in futility.

"Mr. Ivashkov?"

"You know the only reason I tolerate you calling me that is the fact that you manage to make it sound so formal and so disdainful at the same time, right? Your ambivalence is transcendent."

Silence.

"Rose did a real whammy on my first name earlier, and now you're working it from the back end. You people really know how to make a guy feel cheap. This place is a fucking morgue!"

He switched trains of thought without taking a breath. Hans was used to it. His ear was sharper by the day at separating Adrian's verbal wheat from the chaff.

"I need you to send for Castile." Adrian turned, then stopped short. "No, wait! Go down there, get him yourself, and bring him up here. It'll be faster that way. The energy in here is all wrong now, and I need him to help jumpstart it with his boyish laughter and his pecs." Adrian turned, then stopped short again. "No, wait! Before you go, how long would it take for you to give a basic lesson in gun safety to a room full of drunk people? Very basic. Spartan."

Hans considered the question. It was inherently nonsensical as no one should ever operate a firearm of any sort while intoxicated, especially when speaking in terms of "safety".

Not that it ever stopped anyone before.

"Two and a half minutes. Maybe three - "

"Perfect! Also, you'll need to show them how to hold and fire a gun… maybe not Belikov, but definitely the rest of them. And do you know how to operate a manual trap thrower well enough to show someone else how to use it? I have no idea what I'm looking at with that thing. It's a metal chair with a bunch of springs and a lever, and for a while there I thought it might be another one of those disturbingly titillating animal husbandry devices I accidentally own too many of now."

Tracking down a large number of antique lockers for the renovation of the shoe rental area in Sal's had proved to be an unexpectedly massive undertaking. Those big hunks of metal weren't easy to come by in the quantity Adrian required, and he'd been forced to devote a lot of his free time to scouring architectural salvage yards and attending property auctions at some pretty odd places to reach his quota. Oftentimes deals could be found in placing bids on whole lots in one go, rather than entering into heated bidding wars over individual pieces with other auction attendees who were in search of the same unlikely treasures. In one such instance, Adrian ended up purchasing the entire catalog of items formerly belonging to a now defunct community 4-H program in a tiny little nothing town in western Delaware for a song. With that single purchase, he came into the possession of two dozen floor length metal lockers, several decrepit firearms in dire need of refurbishing, a heavy steel seated trap thrower and countless boxes of clay targets, paint markers for cattle and trees which resembled guns themselves, a complementary jar of homemade peach preserves from the auctioneers fat wife, and a whole lot of equipment for inseminating barnyard animals.

It was a weird day, even for him.

"...Five minutes, then, but -" Hans began.

"Perfect!" Adrian was too aflutter with excitement now to listen to another person's complete sentences. "Let me round 'em up, and you can crank it out before you go and secure the boy toy. This is gonna be -"

"Five minutes provided all persons present are made aware up front that I am in no way responsible for anyone's physical well-being aside from yours, and I am not concerned at all about what happens to them after I'm through giving instructions - death and dismemberment included."

"Uhhhh…" Adrian tried Hans' warning on for size, but something didn't quite check out, "well, that's not entirely true, though, is it? You're responsible for Hathaway's safety, too."

Silence.

"It was an addendum to your contract renewal, remember?"

Silence.

"After all that covert drama with her Italian stalker? Until we leave for Florida, you're officially her shadow and shield just as much as you are mine, and when she comes down for visits, she's back on your roster for the duration of her stay."

Silence.

"Gotta read that fine print, my man, it's where lawyers like to hide away all of the good stuff." Adrian slapped his hands together and rubbed them vigorously. "Pitter patter!"

Hans breathed, counted ten, and lightly pinched the bridge of his nose in irritation. He remembered. Now. And when he was annoyed - properly annoyed - his missing eye itched. Phantom pains, they called them around the VA. Phantom pains in his socket to match the pain in his ass.

"Very well. But Hathaway doesn't touch the 12-gauge. I've seen that girl stick herself with a fork while eating a Cobb salad. She has no business operating a curling iron, much less a shotgun."

"It was a Salade Niçoise." Adrian corrected him with a smile, remembering the exact luncheon conversation which led to Rose nearly impaling her own cheek with disposable tableware. "Fair enough, but I'm not breaking the news to her - your rules, your problem, your funeral. I suggest you prepare yourself for a feminist rebuttal worthy of Gloria Steinem."

Silence.

"I want a raise."

"Why, Hans, I do believe you just made your first ever joke. I hope it didn't hurt."

With that, Adrian exited stage left to go rally the troops for a fantastically irresponsible, and extremely ill-advised spot of Saturday night target practice.

"Pull!"

Christian Ozera operated the spring loaded mechanism on Adrian's seated manual trap thrower, and sent a small orange clay disc flying into the air.

Dimitri quickly took aim and fired the heavy old Beretta he held in the crock of his arm with near-perfect form. The shot was a direct hit - his fifth shot, and his first really satisfying result.

"Pull!"

Dimitri's voice sounded once more over the noise. Another orange disk went flying, another shot, and another hit.

"Pull!"

Hit.

"Pull!"

Hit.

"Holy shit! Check out the deadeye on Belikov!" Adrian was genuinely impressed with his cousin's newly discovered marksmanship skills.

"Pull!"

Hit.

"My boyfriend is a rootin', tootin', sharpshootin' man, giddy-up and God-DAMN!"

One thing Rose especially loved about Dimitri was that he was just so fucking capable. It seemed that whatever it was he attempted to do, he was always at least okay at it, and if the task at hand was a traditionally masculine endeavor, he usually excelled at it. She wasn't a bit surprised that he was a fantastic shot right from the start.

Showoff.

Contrary to Adrian's earlier assumption, Dimitri had never fired a gun before. Guns were heavily sanctioned in Russia when he was growing up, owning one without a permit was punishable by a lengthy jail sentence - if a person could even get their hands on one in the first place.

As a boy, he'd done a decent amount of small game hunting with snares and a homemade slingshot, he knew his aim was solid and his hands were steady. In suburban New Jersey, he didn't have much cause for hunting, and his Mama would never permit a gun in the home for security purposes. She did keep a Louisville Slugger on hand for emergencies, though. Olena could absolutely wail on a guy with a bat if the event called for it, and his sisters were no shrinking violets, either.

There was a singular incident in his past where he had been forced to hold a .38 Special up to a man's temple and pull the trigger, but mercifully, that gun was unloaded - a fact he was unaware of at the time.

This piece of information he did not share with the room.

"DIMKA! Quit hogging the heavy Italian artillery."

Dimitri jerked around, and pulled out the wadded up paper napkin bits he'd shoved in his ears to muffle the sound of a bunch of shotgun blasts and all the other blaring sounds hovering about in the night's too close air. Adrian's apartment was huge, but their small party had somehow managed to fill the entire space up with body heat and loudness. It was great for fun, but not so much for concentration.

"What!?"

He had no idea how long Mickey had been standing right there, or how many times he likely shouted "Dimka" before he actually heard it.

"I said quit bogarting my birthright, and let me have a turn with the big gun, yuh Russian jerk." Mickey grabbed hold of the shotgun, and switched places with his friend.

"Christ… this is exactly like my zio Carl's magic gun." The Beretta had some real heft to it, the stock smelled strongly of linseed oil polish. He couldn't help but stop and admire the craftsmanship that went into making such a handsome object. She was a real beaut. "Family legend has it that my Ma's grandfather on her mother's side snuck a gun almost identical to this one through Ellis Island by hiding it in his wife's skirts, and that very same gun has been mounted pride of place over my zio Carl's mantle since before I could walk. All of us cousin's were basically forced to stare directly at it from the same kid's table during holiday meals every year. Christmas. Easter. We were never allowed to touch it, though. I couldn't even breathe on the thing without my zia Charmaine slapping my knuckles and accusing me of having Sunday gravy fingers."

"Why was it magic?" Dimitri asked, his equilibrium finally returned. He thought he'd heard all of Mickey's family stories from his mother's side, but this one was new.

Mickey didn't talk much about his father's people.

"Lots of reasons, all of them total bullshit." He grinned. "Zio Carl didn't buy a television set until 1967 because he refused to admit he'd been wrong when he told everybody in the free world to 'mark his words' about tv being just a 'fad' that would pass once the novelty wore off, and we weren't allowed to play outside in our church clothes. Once we were old enough, we'd take turns stealing table wine, get tipsy on the front stoop or in the bathroom, and do mean impressions of him. 'Did I ever tell yuh little bastards the story about that gun? Yuh kids today, yuh little pukes don't know shit about Shanghai! That gun once almost belonged to Al Capone…'

"What a coincidence, Mickster." Rose interrupted. "I'm not allowed to touch this shotgun, and you weren't allowed to touch that one." She was bordering on drunk, and was well past indignant. She'd wobbled her way over to them during Mickey's story, and leaned against Dimitri for balance. "I don't care what Hans says, I'm not a loose cannon. My cannon is fucking TIGHT! I'm a tight cannon!"

Hans gave them all a gun safety tutorial that was every bit as informative and brief as he'd promised it would be. As predicted, Rose was less than satisfied with the previously agreed upon stipulation that she wouldn't be allowed access to the only "real" gun in Adrian's collection.

"What?! Why? That's not fair! What kind of toxically-masculine, patriarchal, get back in the kitchen, grapefruit and cottage cheese diet… Henry Kissinger-ass backdoor dealing bullshit is this?!" Granted, it wasn't her best argument in terms of sense-making, but the passion was there.

Drunk, illogical passion - the tentpole of all responsible gun procedure.

"Rose, this isn't one of your feminist causes. I'm not sure what Kissinger has to do with anything, but you're not wearing your glasses right now - most likely due to reasons of vanity. No corrective lenses means no shotgun."

"Those hideous things are reading glasses, not shooting glasses. I don't have to read something to shoot at it, do I?!" She stamped her foot and huffed.

Hans met her passion with equal amounts of bland indifference - the end result was about the same as tossing something basic onto something acidic and awaiting neutralization.

She glared hard, he merely looked.

"...Fine."

"The opposite of a loose cannon isn't a tight one." Dimitri smiled indulgently at his girlfriend, and gave her a bum a little pat. "C'mon, beautiful. I'm going to take over trap launching duty from Christian. His reaction times are getting slower. Mickey, hold up a sec."

Mickey watched Dimitri guide a somewhat diagonal Rose along the several yard journey to relieving Christian of his post.

"So I'm a VERY SECURELY TETHERED CANNON, then! I'm gonna punch him!"

Christian appeared earnestly grateful of the break they offered him, he flexed his wrists a few times in an apparent attempt to relieve cramping. The mechanism on that contraption must have been tougher to work than he'd assumed. Christian was seated there through Hans' demonstration, Adrian's maiden voyage, all three of The Twins turns, and finally Dimitri's lengthy go-around. The guy was certainly a little annoying in a homeschooled kid with too little socialization in his formative years kinda way, but his obvious enjoyment of repetitive menial tasks had really come in handy for them in this specific situation.

Mickey made a mental note to offer to take the next shift of clay throwing once he'd had his fill of shooting. Not offering felt like a low rent maneuver.

"Mickster! We're locked and loaded on this tricky old bitch! Say when!"

"Will you stop calling me Mickster, Rosie Posie Pudding and Pie!"

"Never! Unless you really have pie! Then maybe!"

"Pull!"

Rose and/or Dimitri sent a clay flying. It was impossible to tell the two of them apart when they were sharing a seat, no matter how awkwardly.

Miss.

"Pull!"

Miss.

And on it went…

As they would all soon find out, if they didn't already know, Adrian Ivashkov was a dude who liked to keep more than one ace in his hole. After trap shooting had begun to lose a bit of its shiny new feel, he called their attention to another favorite country pastime he was raring to simulate for them - shooting tin cans with pellet guns.

"I don't know about you all," he announced, "but I think it's high time things got a little more uncouth around here."

He proceeded to dole out three recently spruced up Smith & Wesson .22 caliber pellet pistols to Rose, Nils, and Christian and pointed their gaze in the direction of what he'd been doing for the last half hour or so while they were all busy dancing around like Grace Jones, swilling bottles of 1961 Taittinger Comtes de Champagne Blanc de Blancs Brut from his private reserves like Liza Minnelli, railing lines of cocaine off gold mirrors like Bianca Jagger, and missing three times as many clays as they hit.

"Who wants to get downright rude?"

Adrian had set up a bunch of wooden crates in various positions, and covered them with brightly labeled tin cans and small canvases with large red bullseyes smeared on them in fresh wet red paint.

Rose walked her gun up closer to the setup for further inspection. Not bringing her glasses tonight had been a mistake, but now she'd rather kiss Christian Ozera with tongue than admit that fact out loud. Wrinkles and a headache from squinting were a price she was willing to pay.

"Man, people must've really liked their syrup back in the day." She mused. There were four different brand labels of non-specific syrup distributed around the crates. There was a can that once contained something called "Breakfast Roll". She was very curious to know if the roll was meat-based or bready in nature. She started to hold up the funny ones to show Dimitri.

"This can just says Casserole! Ooohhh, and this one looks like it would be food, but it's actually caustic lye! I think that's the black widow special right there. Husband sleeps around, the wife dumps a can of lye all over his Breakfast Roll and keeps his pension for herself. Ivashkov, where did you get all these tin cans from? They're ancient."

"Don't worry about it, Hathaway. I got a guy."

"You have an old rusty can guy?

"I've got a guy for everything."

"Your coke dealer is your dentist, who's your can guy? Your Podiatrist?" She really was fascinated by the old can labels, and kept inspecting them as she teased. Folgers coffee cans hadn't changed much at all over the century. "Sugar Corn! I don't know what it is, but it sounds like it would go excellently with Walrus Brand Extra Red Creamed Salmon!"

"No, smartass, he's not my Podiatrist. He's my manicurist's landlord. Now less talking and more shooting." Adrian raised his voice so the others would hear. "This is not a comedy of manners I'm hosting, people, it's a party - or rather, it's supposed to be a pre-party! That's a pre-party and not a post mortem so let's all do our best to look alive, damnit!"

The next twenty minutes were a symphony of plink-plonks and "Whoops!" and "Ohhhhh, fuck you!"s and "Awwwww, yeah, buddy!"s.

Rose was a terrible shot.

Mickey and Christian both loved that Rose was such a terrible shot. Teasing her was almost better than shooting guns at tin cans.

The Twins weren't bad - they weren't good, but they were not bad.

Dimitri was so accurate with the little pistols it just wasn't fair. Once again, everyone slowly halted their own horseplay to watch him work. With seemingly no effort at all, he took out nine cans in a row, one after the other.

Plink-plink-plink…

Mickey never actually got around to taking a shift operating the trap thrower, so the task of hunting down the now holey cans and setting them back up became his to fulfill due to guilt. On his fourth trip down to the crate pile something behind the stacks caught his eye.

"Hey! Look what I found!" He held the items up skyward. "Uhhh...what exactly did I find?!"

"Paint markers." Adrian answered succinctly.

"You mean they're not guns? They look like guns."

"They are guns, but they shoot little balls filled with oil based paint. Apparently cows don't care much about getting shot in the ass with ovules of pigment on a regular basis just so long as you feed them while you do it." Adrian lit a cigarette. "I've got a cousin like that, actually. Not you, Dimitri."

Dimitri rolled his eyes. "I can't be certain, but I'm pretty sure if someone shot me in the ass, I'd mind. Thank you for the clarification, though."

"So, can I try one of them out? I won't shoot anyone in the ass. At least no one here."

"Knock yourself out, Tanner."

"What can I shoot it at? Those cans are starting to look a little sad."

Adrian shrugged. "Just not my bed."

"But everything else is fair game?"

"Best try not to hurt the booze or the drugs, either."

Mickey did a full 360 spin, scanning the giant room until his sights landed on the cube. That damn table/art(?) cube. He still didn't know what the hell it was really supposed to be, but he really fucking hated it for some reason.

He readied, he aimed, and then he fired.

Splat!

The clear cube was now sporting a massive blue polka dot, and he was grinning ear-to-ear.

Splat-splat-splat!

The cube was now almost entirely blue from where he stood.

"Mickey! Hold your fire!" Rose shouted. "Adrian, do you really mean we are allowed to shoot anything in this apartment so long as it's not your bed or your illicit substances?"

"Yeah."

"Anything? Like, say… even your dad's dick?"

Adrian glanced briefly at his artwork, and replied, "Go ape, Hathaway. It's open season."

Rose and Mickey were positively alite with glee. They were both a couple of dyed in the wool dirt babies growing up, always rolling around in grime and splashing through puddles. Express permission to "go ape" with loaded weapons full of paint was Christmas in July!

"Hey, Twins. You guys! I still can't tell yuh a'fuckin-part, and for that I am sorry." Mickey's Jersey was starting to show. "Doesn't matter right now, though, because you're all sofuking tall!" He heaved one of the paint markers in their direction, and didn't stop to see if someone caught it. He and Rose were already taking off in the direction of Adrian's mural before he even uttered the word "tall".

His next words were shouted over his shoulder. "One of yuh's gotta take up high, Rosie Posie and I will take down low, Belikov and Ozera, you're too damn slow!"

Rose dodged two lawn chairs and stopped just a few feet away from the offending wall art. Somehow she could miraculously move in a straight line again. Mickey dodged one chair, leapt over another and slammed into the painting with his shoulder, laughing like an idiot.

"Someone please bring the drugs with them when they come, we didn't plan ahead!" Rose hollered.

It wasn't time for planning ahead, it was time to do a little redecorating.

Bye bye Nathan Ivashkov's unfortunate tater tot with half a grape on top, and hello Jackson Pollock!

Notes

PART 2 is done, it just needs to be copied, pasted, and formatted.

I don't really have anyone to help me with editing anymore, so I'm sorry if there are a billion mistakes in this chapter.

Soundtrack Part 1

Dreadlock Holiday - 10cc (Stop Playing that Damn Song!)

TVC15 - David Bowie (Adrian's Burning Suit)

Sweet City Woman - Stampeders (Shooting Guns)

The first song is a little problematic. It was a #1 hit for one week in the UK in 1978, and I can easily see a bunch of dummies getting drunk/high and playing it on repeat. I can also see Rose finding it a little annoying back then, offensive now as it is a band of white nerds from England doing fake Jamaican accents (a whole subgenre of the 70's, really - lookin' at you The Clash), and wanting to throw Adrian's LP out the window. It is very, very, very catchy, though. My husband is a 10cc fan, and has used this exact track on repeat to torment me in the past, hence its presence on this list. PART 2 has over twice as many songs to go along with it.