Eye Candy

by Ryan Schneider

  Danny handed the valet a folded fifty-dollar bill.

  The young man looked at the fifty. His eyes widened for a moment and he smiled. Then he composed himself. Inflation was a reality of every nation’s economy, and the good ol’ U.S.A. had seen her fare share since the turn of the century, but not so much that a valet at a nightclub often received such a generous tip. “Thank you, sir. Sergio is the door man. He’ll take care of you. My name is Roderick, in case you need anything. Anything at all. Give me fifteen minutes, and I guarantee I can get it.”

  “Thank you, Roderick.”

  “My pleasure, sir. Enjoy your evening.” Rod’s eyes strayed to where Candy stood on the curb. Rod’s eyes perused Candy once up and down quickly, but without lingering longer than was polite. But his face was a picture of disbelief as he slid behind the wheel and coaxed Danny’s car around the corner and out of sight.

  Candy watched the car turn the corner. She turned back to Danny and saw him fiddling with something in his hands. It looked like money.

  “What are you doing?” She took his arm and together they walked toward the door. The first one hundred or so people in line who were in visual range could do nothing but watch while the tall, striking couple—particularly the blond with the sexy hair and long legs—proceeded to the door.

  “Watch this,” said Danny.

  He and Candy reached the door, where a large, muscular man even taller than Danny stood behind a glowing green-and-black fiber optic rope draped between two pylons that glittered with gold light. Sergio also wore a black vest, but was bare-chested and very muscular beneath it.

  Sergio dropped his chin and surveyed Danny above the upper rim of his black sunglasses. He then looked at Candy. Sergio’s eyes began at Candy’s blond hair and traveled all the way down her body, where they lingered on her black heels. “Those are some nice shoes.”

  “Thank you.” Candy accepted the compliment; no more, no less.

  Sergio turned back to Danny.

  Danny extended his hand. “You must be Sergio.”

  Sergio accepted Danny’s handshake. “And you must be the luckiest son of a bitch on earth.”

  “I hope we’re not too late to come in for a drink,” said Danny.

  Sergio glanced down at his hand and then eased it into his pocket. “No, sir, you’re right on time. Right this way. Please. . . .”

  Sergio unclipped the luminous green-and-black rope and spread his arm, beckoning Danny and Candy into the club.

  When they were out of earshot of Sergio, Candy turned to Danny. “What did you do?”

  “I slipped him a hundred.”

  “You gave him a hundred dollars?”

  “Like I said, we don’t wait in line. Besides, I’d have given him five hundred.”

  Candy smiled. “I didn’t see the money.”

  “That’s the whole idea. You take a bill and fold it into a square about the size of a postage stamp.”

  Candy watched as Danny folded a $100 bill several times into ever-smaller squares.

  “Make sure the number is clearly legible,” Danny instructed. “You then put it in your hand, face down, so you can’t see the number.” Danny extended his hand to Candy. “When you shake hands, you press the bill into his palm.”

  Candy shook Danny’s hand, feeling the corners of the folded bill in her palm.

  “Now look at your hand,” said Danny.

  Candy opened her hand. The little green 100 was plainly visible.

  “He slides the bill nice and easy into his pocket, and no one’s the wiser.” Danny smiled at Candy. “Shall we have a drink?”

  “Sure.” Candy slipped the little folded bill inside her bra, enjoying the moment as Danny’s eyes widened. She took him by the arm and led him to the bar.

  The thump of drums and melodic guitar filled the club. On stage, a band was performing. “These guys are really good,” said Candy. “They’re the Red Hot Cyborg Players.”

  “They’re robots?”

  “Cyborgs. Humans who had their bodies integrated with robotics, so they could keep on rocking. The singer is Blackie.”

  Blackie jumped and twirled around on the stage. His long black cords of hair streamed out behind him. He looked human in his black leather pants and black boots. His bare torso was lean and trim and sported a lot of tattoos. But when he stopped dancing and sang into the mic, his eyes glowed bright red.

  “That’s Whitey on the bass,” said Candy. She leaned close to Danny’s ear, speaking loudly over the rising chorus. “He and Blackie have been friends since they were kids.”

  Whitey thumped and slapped his bass, and wore only a pair of white cotton underpants. His eyes also glowed bright and red.

  “The drummer is Kong,” said Candy. “He moves more air than any drummer alive today. They say he eats drums for breakfast.”

  Kong was big. His arms were long and bulging with muscles, muscles larger even than those of Sergio the door man. When Kong hit his drums, the hair fluttered on the heads of the people dancing in front of the stage. Kong twirled a drum stick in the air, stared up at it with glowing red eyes, caught it, and resumed drumming.

  “The guitarist is VanCat,” said Candy. “At least, that’s what everyone calls him. But real fans know his name is actually Vingt-Quatre, which is French for ‘twenty-four.’ ”

  “Why do they call him that?”

  “See his guitar?”

  VanCat’s guitar boasted two necks. Each neck was strung with twelve strings. Even more startling was that VanCat himself had four arms and four hands. He was able to play both necks of his guitar simultaneously. His fingers danced over the strings and tapped the frets faster than the eye could see. The result was melodic music so complex and beautiful that it sounded like four guitars at once. VanCat’s glowing red eyes were half closed, and his head swayed gently on his neck as he played, completely lost in the music.

  “You know a lot about these guys,” said Danny.

  “They were my favorite band in high school. And their album Scarry Skies got me through a really bad break up when I was in college. I followed their transition when they decided to get their metal.”

  “How old are they?”

  “They were in their sixties when they metaled-up, and I was a teenager then. So I’d say they’re in their eighties now.”

  “They look like they’re in their thirties.”

  “And still rockin’.”

  As if to prove Candy’s point, Blackie, Whitey, and VanCat all began jumping into the air in unison and in perfect time with the music. The music made Danny want to bounce and sway, made him want to jump up and down too, as everyone on the dance floor—humans and robots alike—was doing.

  Candy tugged Danny toward the bar. “Let’s get a drink!”

  Four bartenders were working behind the bar – two humans and two robots, a male and female in each pair.

  The bartenders twirled bottles in the air, flipped glasses behind their backs and over their shoulders, and were constantly setting things on fire.

  The human female bartender arranged a tall pyramid of martini glasses on the bar, stacked six high. She shook a silver decanter and tossed it into the air. She climbed up onto the bar, caught the decanter, and gave it a quick bump with her hand, separating the two canisters above the topmost martini glass. Glowing blue liquid poured into the glass, then overflowed and poured down the stem and into the two martini glasses below it. The trickle continued until each of the glasses contained several ounces of the blue concoction.

  In unison, everyone around the bar shouted, “FIREBALL!”

  The female robot climbed onto the bar at the far end. She held a white sugar cube between her thumb and index finger. The human male bartender tossed a bottle high in the air and she caught it. She poured a splash of its contents onto the sugar cube, struck a wooden match with her thumb, and lit the sugar cube on fire. It burned in a sizzling orange fireball. She threw the flaming sugar cube in a long, high arc. Dozens of pair of eye
s watched it sail over their heads and splash neatly into the topmost martini glass.

  Everyone cheered.

  Red fire erupted from the glass and traveled down the pyramid in a flash of crimson combustion.

  The blue liquid in each glass soon began to bubble.

  With both hands moving with amazing speed and precision, the human female bartender distributed the flaming martini glasses to the crowd around the bar.

  She handed two of the glasses to Candy and Danny, smiling as she did so.

  Candy blew a puff of air on Danny’s glass, blew a second puff on her own, and the red fires were extinguished.

  “Drink it while it’s hot,” she shouted. Candy upended her glass, downing it in one gulp, so Danny quickly did the same.

  The liqueur tasted sweet and spicy at the same time. It seemed to fizzle on Danny’s tongue. He swallowed it and felt intense heat inside him, followed immediately by a soothing coolness. A sweet, spicy, fruity aftertaste lingered in his mouth. “I could drink a lot of those.”

  “Yeah, me too. Problem is, that liqueur she uses is fifteen hundred dollars a bottle. So she doesn’t do the pyramid thing more than once per night.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “Susannah and I come here quite a bit.”

  “What can I get you?” The female bartender was collecting the empty martini glasses. Her hair was cut ultra short and spiky. It accentuated her vibrant grey eyes and heavy lashes.

  The Red Hot Cyborg Players were deep into a melodic funk jam.

  Any second now, Danny knew Candy was going to ask him to dance. Women loved to dance. Historically speaking it was the reason nightclubs were invented. Danny wasn’t particularly keen on dancing. Truth be told, he never danced. He always felt awkward and foolish, as if he were engaged in an activity he didn’t understand, like playing a game for which he didn’t know the rules, or flying an airplane which had no stick, no rudder pedals. He preferred to remain at the bar with Candy, and talk.

  “Another round of these!” he declared. Danny raised his empty martini glass. Already he could feel the alcohol working its way into his bloodstream. His head felt warm and fuzzy and he found himself smiling. His aversion to dancing notwithstanding, Club C/Fe was all right.

  “I’ll get it,” said Candy. She reached into her bra and pulled out the folded hundred-dollar-bill. She held out her hand to the bartender. “Put ’er there!”

  The bartender shook Candy’s hand.

  Candy completed the handshake and winked at the bartender, pointing her index finger and thumb like a pistol.

  The bartender glanced at her palm, saw what was hidden there, and winked at Candy. She tossed the folded hundred into a big silver coffer behind the bar. She then jumped onto the bar in one graceful vertical leap and shouted, “Fireball!”

  Everyone cheered.

  Within seconds she had the pyramid rebuilt and the silver decanter twirling in the air. She poured the blue liqueur, the robot bartender tossed the flaming sugar cube, and everyone received their second flaming, sizzling sweet drink.

  Danny and Candy entwined their arms together in a classic lover’s toast, blew out each other’s red flame, and then downed the hot, delicious beverages.

  Danny’s vision wavered for a moment. He wondered if the second drink had been a good idea. But if Candy wanted to dance, he was going to need all the liquid courage he could find.

  He decided to face the dilemma head-on. “Do you . . . care to . . . want to . . . dance?”

  Candy smiled, took Danny’s face in her hands, and kissed him. “Are you drunk already?”

  “No.”

  “Who knew the great Daniel Olivaw was such a lightweight?”

  “Do you . . . want . . .” Danny finished by pointing at the dance floor.

  A blue robot was dancing in the center of the dance floor. It was surrounded by three women, all of whom it seemed to be dancing with at the same time. Danny almost envied the robot its ability not to feel fear or anxiety or embarrassment. It wanted to dance, and so it danced. It had no thoughts of feeling awkward, no fear of looking stupid. It merely danced. And the ladies danced with it.

  Candy smiled. “I don’t really like to dance.”

  “Oh thank God.”

  “I was afraid that you liked to dance.”

  “Is that why you suggested we come here?”

  Candy nodded. “And for the music. I never dance. Susannah does but I don’t.”

  Danny laughed.

  Candy laughed as well.

  Danny asked, “Would you rather sit here and talk?”

  “Yes.”

  “Shall we make a pact that we never have to dance?”

  “Okay.”

  Danny held out his hand and Candy shook it.

  The female bartender placed two bottles of beer on the bar.

  “Liquor before beer, never fear. My name’s Chloe. These are on me.” Chloe pointed her finger and thumb like a pistol, mimicking Candy’s earlier gesture, and then blew on the tip of her finger. She smiled and danced out of the way as a bottle flew through the air on its way to one of the other bartenders.

  Candy and Danny toasted the necks of their beer bottles and drank.

  Danny relished the cold beer in his mouth. “So you and Susannah come here all the time?”

  Candy nodded and sipped her beer. “Susannah does. I’ve only been here a few times, whenever Blackie and the guys are playing. But Susannah is husband hunting. She says her biological clock is ticking. Do you have any friends who are single? Preferably cute. And successful. And sexy. And not crazy or prone to irrational fits of rage?”

  “Irrational fits of rage?”

  “Her last boyfriend punched his fist through the front door of my office. Cost me thirteen-hundred bucks to have a new one installed. Asshole.”

  “You have one exciting office.”

  “Exciting is certainly one word for it. Which reminds me: do you have a job? You’ve been at my place the past three days. Is there a time clock someplace that’s expecting you? Not that I’m complaining, of course.” Candy patted Danny’s thigh and gave it a meaningful squeeze.

  “I work for myself. I do okay on book sales, but the bulk of my money comes in the form of residual income from a few patents I registered.”

  “What kind of patents?”

  “Artificial hearts for premature babies.”

  Candy raised her eyebrows, impressed.

  “See, a regular artificial heart is too big to implant into a baby, so a smaller one was needed. But there were certain volumetric parameters to consider. So I came up with a few solutions.”

  “How did you come to think of inventing such a thing?”

  “I work with an organization called Angel Wings. It’s a group of volunteer pilots who donate their time and the use of their airplanes to provide transportation to people in need of medical treatment. A couple years ago I flew down to Mexico City to pick up a man named Efren and his baby girl Alexa who needed a heart transplant.

  “When we got to L.A., I went with them to Cedars Sinai and the surgeon told me Alexa’s odds of survival weren’t very good because she was so young and small. I went home and worked three days straight trying to make a new heart. After Alexa’s body rejected the first heart, Doctor Raziel agreed to try mine. It worked. Efren and Alexa stayed in L.A. for about a month and then I flew them back home. Last I heard, she’s attending preschool, loves white chocolate, and is doing great.”

  Danny reached into his coat pocket and withdrew a gold lighter. Angel wings adorned the face of it.

  “Before I left Mexico, Efren gave me this.” He handed the lighter to Candy. She traced her fingers over the gold wings.

  “It’s beautiful.”

  “I carry it with me. As a reminder.”

  “He even saves the lives of babies. Is there anything you don’t do?”

  “Besides dance? I’m sure I could think of something.”

  “What about finding a guy fo
r Suze?” Candy was feeling those two flaming Fireballs. She found it difficult to pronounce Suze’s name.

  “We could introduce her to Floyd.”

  “Who’s Floyd?”

  “My roommate.”

  “Oh, that’s right, he owns Howard. Now I remember. So Floyd is single?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is he cute?”

  “Difficult for me to say. He has nice abs. And he does all right with the ladies when he wants to.”

  “What does he do?”

  “He’s a screenwriter.”

  “That’s perfect. Suze has always wanted to marry a leading man.”

  “Screenwriter and leading man are hardly the same thing. Although Floyd did write himself into the script.”

  “Sounds perfect. Besides, Suze is pushing thirty-five and doesn’t want to be sixty years old when her kids are graduating from high school. She’s afraid she’ll be an old woman by the time they’re ready to go off to college.”

  Chloe popped the caps off of two fresh bottles of beer. Her movements reflected the careless familiarity developed only through years of repetition. She placed the beers on the bar. “You two going to hit the dance floor?”

  Candy drained the dregs of her first beer and started on her second. “No, we’re going to sit here and get drunk.”

  Chloe turned to Danny, pointed at Candy, and said, “She’s a keeper.” Chloe tossed the empty beer bottle high over her shoulder. The human male bartender caught it with one hand without taking his eyes off the soda gun he was using to top off a trio of drinks, and put it into the recycler, where it was crushed, melted, frozen, and dispensed into a white plastic bucket full of similar small discs.

  “Well well, aren’t you a choice cut of robot meat.”

  Candy and Danny turned to see a man in a vest prowling toward them. He wore a denim shirt, and tight blue jeans hugged his legs, capped off with well-worn black cowboy boots. His boot heels clomped on the ground as he approached.

  Candy and Danny equally were preparing to be offended when the lanky cowboy sidled up to the bar and smiled at a woman seated beside Candy.