Bloodsucking fiends: a love story

Nineteen Seventeen, went fifty-one fifty and got eighty-sixed." Normally, that many numbers in succession would have had Kurt diving for his PC to establish trend lines and resistance levels. Jody glazed over at the mention of numbers, which would have made living with the broker a bit of an ordeal even if he hadn't been an asshole.
    She thought, I wonder if Kurt will be here. I hope so. I hope he's here with the little well-bred, breastless wonder. Oh, she won't care, but he'll die a thousand jealous deaths.
    Then she heard the alarm sounding down the street and thought, Maybe I should learn to channel some of this hostility.
    "You, in the LED!" said the doorman.
    Jody looked up from her paper.
    "Go on in," the doorman said.
    As she walked past the other people on line she was careful to avoid eye contact. One single guy reached out and grabbed her arm.
    "Say I'm your date," he begged. "I've been waiting for two hours."
    "Hi, Kurt," Jody said. "I didn't see you."
    Kurt stepped back. "Oh. Oh my God. Jody?"
    She smiled. "How's your head?"
    He was trying to catch his breath. "Fine. It's fine. You look…"
    "Thanks, Kurt. Good to see you again. I'd better get inside."
    He clawed the air after her. "Could you say I'm your date?"
    She turned and looked at him as if she had found him in the back of the refrigerator with green growing on him.
    "I have been chosen, Kurt. You, on the other hand, are an untouchable. I don't think you'd be appropriate for the image I'm trying to project."
    As she walked into the club she heard Kurt say to the next guy in line, "She's a lesbian, you know."
    Jody thought, Yep, I've got to work on controlling my hostility.
    The theme of 753 was Old San Francisco; actually, Old San Francisco burning down, which is largely what Old San Francisco used to do. There was an antique hand-pump fire engine in the middle of the dance floor. Cellophane flames leaped from pseudowindows driven by turbine fans. Nozzles in the ceiling drizzled dry-ice smoke over a crowd of young professionals ar-rhythmically sweating in layers of casual cotton and wool. A flannel-clad grunge rocker here; a tie-dyed and dreadlocked Rastafarian there; some neo-hippies; a sprinkling of black-eyed, white-faced New Wave holdovers – looking alienated – contemplating the next body part to have pierced; a few harmless suburban homeboys – here to bust a move, def and phat, in three-hundred-dollar giant gel-filled, glow-in-the-dark, pneumatic, NBA-endorsed sneakers. The doorman had tried to make a mix, but with fashionable micro-brewery beer going for seven bucks a bottle, the crowd was bound to overbalance to the side of privilege and form a thick yuppie scum. Cocktail waitresses in fireman helmets served reservoirs of imported water and thanked people for not smoking.
    Jody slinked onto a barstool and opened her paper to avoid eye contact with a droopy-eyed drunk on the next stool. It didn't work.
    " 'Scuse me, I couldn't help noticing that you were sitting down. I'm sitting down too. Small world, huh?"
    Jody looked up briefly and smiled. Mistake.
    "Can I buy you a drink?" the drunk asked.
    "Thanks, I don't drink," she said, thinking, Why did I come here? What did I hope to accomplish?
    "It's my hair, isn't it?"
    Jody looked at the guy. He was about her age and balding, not quite finished with what looked like a bad hair-transplant job. His scalp looked as if it had been strafed with a machine gun full of plugs. She felt bad for him.
    "No, I really don't drink."
    "How about a mineral water?"
    "Thanks. I don't drink anything."
    From the stool behind her a man's voice. "She'll drink this."
    She turned to see a glass filled with a thick, red-black liquid being pushed in front of her by a bone-white hand. The index and middle finger seemed a little too short.
    "They're still growing back," the vampire said.
    Jody recoiled from him so hard she nearly went over backward on her barstool. The vampire caught her arm and steadied her.
    "Hey, buddy," said Hair Plugs, "hands off."
    The vampire let go of Jody's arm, reached across to put his hand on Hair Plugs's shoulder, and held him fast to his seat. The drunk's eyes went wide. The vampire smiled.
    "She'll rip out your throat and drink your blood as you die. Is that what you want?"
    Hair Plugs shook his head violently. "No, I already have an ex-wife."
    The vampire released him. "Go away."
    Hair Plugs slid off the stool and ran off into the crowd on the dance floor. Jody leaped to her feet