In the swampy, sunken yard of Toby's grandparents' house in Baton Rouge had hung a tire swing, suspended from a towering bald cypress. Inside the sturdy tire there were always wasps nesting, and as a child Toby had learned from some rather negative experiences always to kick the tire good and hard and run fast as the wasp nest fell out - before climbing aboard to soar above the cypress knees, sting-free. It was a lesson he tried to apply in his adult life to people: first do a quick check for emotional toxins and loudly buzzing flaws before getting involved and risking getting stung.

But with Blade there had been no time. The guy with the bat had shown up too quickly at the door, and Toby had thrown his lot in with the porn star - naked and wet and down the fire escape to the sidewalk below, where he had hastily slipped on his jeans while stooping in between two piles of blue recycling bags.

"What now?" asked Blade, barely clad in leather in the light from a streetlamp like some Tom of Finland pin-up.

Toby only lived a block away, but his bag and keys were upstairs with Jack and the crackhead vacuum fetishist. His neighbors the retards might buzz them in, but they would want to know things. And if Toby couldn't explain this situation to himself, how was he ever going to get it across to the mentally challenged?

A shriek from Jack's window up above sent Toby dashing across the street with Blade in tow, to a destination that seemed at once unthinkable and inevitable, right in through the door of the only establishment open after eight within a four-block radius. A place Toby had never set foot in, a place he imagined he and Blade might be the first white people ever to penetrate. A windowless spot with a faded blue door and a hand-scrawled sign tacked to it announcing - if only in a stage whisper - the singular location of the Y2K Clubb.

(to be continued)