The arcology’s skyscrapers trace the grey clouds of semi-radioactive hazard. You are Above, on the second level of the two-story, compact metropolis that juts out from the former Imperial capital planet of Tiangong. You follow, with slight interest, the two tails bouncing towards the restaurant.
Hundreds of years ago, you read on the brochure on the flight over, the place was flattened. The whole planet. Glassed from orbit, for months on end. As a show of force, an extension of the raw human need to make a statement no matter how unwise.
After the war, subjugated, the irradiated planet was sliced, divided into several strips. Legally, a single Settlement, an eternal condominium administrated by and for the victors: the galactic gang of rabble that destroyed galactic order and ushered in the current age of political chaos. After a few years, however, a bean counter did the math and found that it was more cost effective to just build on top of rubble, forming archipelagos of cities Above the wastes, rather than decontaminate the entire planet’s surface.
So here, Above, on Arcology I-4, the stilted Xanadu entertains the sector’s denizens. The local governments that were once installed to siphon tax from the former Imperial homeworld have oxidized, enriching themselves into a petrified corruption. Now, the arcologies exist as nominally independent states, all thanks to hundreds of years of intergalactic payoffs and organized criminal violence.
But, better to be Above than Below.
The Above’s kleptocratic anarchy is safer than the actual anarchy Below, where life is de jure controlled by what remains of a hundred-year-vassalized empire, now reduced to slums hidden beneath the shadows from Above. As you watch the two tails rhythmically wag and bounce ahead of you, colorful plastic charms wrapped at their bases, skin beneath no doubt perforated with dozens of narcotic jabs within cropped fur, you wonder if your hostesses are living in more luxury than those former Imperials, wherever they hide Below.
Before long, past the throngs of salarymen and girlies on the town, the boxing dojos and gambling parlors installed at the feet of fifty-story organized crime hideouts, you’re in front of the bar. It’s emblazoned with its always-lit neon sign in the early afternoon. The sign proudly proclaims Bloom!, the typography of two flowers lasciviously covering the female silhouette at chest level. Gangsters and tourists flow from every orifice.
Well-dressed or flat-broke, it doesn’t matter.
Bloom!’s purple windows, tinted, are cold to the touch. If they were see-through, one could see the heavy layer of moisture from the debauchery inside. Instead, they vibrate slightly, reverberating to internal musical beats.
A trio of gangsters, all in over-tailored light grey pinstripe suit jackets, collude near the doorway. One, the tallest, leopardine anthropomorph with black tattoos criss-crossed around his face, nose freshly slashed and bandaged poorly, takes notice behind his aviators. The leopard chuffs to his fellow gangsters, baring his teeth in a smile-cum-grimace, showing off a gold-plated, sharpened canine. Another, a portly, blonde human with slick-backed hair, elbows their dozing, intoxicated third, the tenghuang, horselike, white nasal fur sporting the telltale red residue of spezie. His tired equine eyes are nonplussed by your imminent arrival.
A voice from Slick-Back rises, oily and thick.
“Well look who it is!” he hollers. “Y’all’re back early, eh? Won’t be another few hours ‘til it gets dark.”
“I’m not complaining,” the leopard laughs, his silky body contorting to block your entry to the door. A single paw rests on his groin, where a snub-nose peeks from above his waistline, his snakeskin ba’she-leather belt keeping his stained off-white wifebeater in place beneath a periwinkle Hawaiian shirt, the gun’s plasticwood hilt carved with his own talons and studded with pictographs of chrysanthemums. “But, the Bossman told us you girls have to stay with your own kind for a bit. Told us there was some kinda commotion last night, and we don’t want a part of it.”
“Relax, Hsien,” Huhu hisses, keeping her voice to a salacious minimum as Kathi stares blankly, kindly at Slick-Back on your approach. “We’re here with friends, see? Not working, we just want something to eat.”
“Yeah, yeah, you’re always hungry for something,” he smiles. “And these friends,” prusten rolling from his hooked tongue with aloof investigation, “they’re not your boys?”
“Nope, just friends,” Kathi chirps.
“How friendly are we talking?” The tenghuang interjects with out-turned teeth, forcing vocalization through a mouth of heavy saliva. His ambling gait and dilated pupils on full display, his pseudo-equid snout biting the air at nothing, he looks towards Ø as the others size up the courtesans.
“Not friendly at all,” she growls. You feel her consider plunging her thumbs into his trachea, turning it into a shakuhachi, and forcing his boys to play him like a flute.
“Come on, Hsien,” Huhu yowls, “you gonna let us in or what? Suddenly we’re not good for it? Huh?”
“Relax kitten, it’s my job,” he snarls. “Your unfriendly friends, they buyin’ or sellin’?”
“Buying.”
“Buyin’ what?”
“Don’t worry about it,” she pouts. “You know I’ll get ‘em to buy something. What’s the matter with you? Don’t want me and Kathi to come around, all of a sudden?”
The leopard glares at you both. From his slitted eyes, he notices the bump of your 415 beneath your puresilk suit jacket, snug in its shoulder holster. He studies the Star that hangs at Ø’s hip, the antique firearm recently polished and glistening. Hsien traces from her hooves back up to her impatient snout, topped with her d’Valay aviators, pausing at the space between her Kalkaska sanforized jeans and plain, ultralight rayon white t-shirt, lingering at her v-cut chestline’s cream diamond barcode.
He lingers too long, to where she flashes her teeth in irritation, snarling form behind her sunglasses.
“Ah say we let ‘em in,” the portly one chuckles, smirking at Kathi, who has not broken eye contact with Slick-Back since your arrival, her dull grin shining. The leopard throws his paws in the air, his unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt dangling in the still humidity. He laughs with a forced levity before snaking an arm around Huhu for a squeeze.
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“Alright, the ladies have it. Just don’t cause us any trouble. And let us know if you need anything, alright?”
“Oh, Hsien, you’re the best. Give me a few, okay? I’ll set it all up.”
“Yeah, you do that.”
With a knowing smirk, the felid slinks out of the way, allowing the four of you entrance, Slick-Back happily opening the door for Kathi. All gentleman-like.
Inside, Bloom! is a Chinese puzzle.
Under the dimly lit neon facades, labyrinthine hallways birth from the single entryway. Entirely a prison of pleasure, stinking of artificial persimmon citrus, the black chalkboard next to the topless hostess lists this cycle’s offerings, ones which Kathi whispers under her own breath as she reads them for herself, unconsciously sounding out the words, consonants whistling from her jowls. “Billiards, karaoke, nervelinking, duckpin bowling, cho-han, bridge, ‘more’…”
The hostess’s unfamiliar human face nods along with a smile, front-teeth polished and jutting, recognizing the entry of two of her peers from an opposite family. The three commiserate, exchanging plastic faces and forced expressions, chittering in the trade language of Settlement whores, exchanging arm gestures and dainty handshakes. With a last nod, negotiations complete, you are led away to your room with an expressive, exhaustive hostess’s, “Okay!”
As you pass the cells, some doors bolted shut, some open with a single bead curtain, you’re delighted to the sounds and stenches of the bawdyhouse. Twenty-person bathing pools of rosewater, vinegar, or red wine, packed to bursting with smoking Johns. Salarymen belting into feedback-riddled handheld microphones, singing along with the three-dimensional apparitions of poorly rendered, deceased celebrities. All over are Bacchanalian demons that exist independent of the afternoon suns outside.
Your room is cramped, silent. Inside is a single round plastic table, chairs for six, an empty Lazy Susan, and a simple king-size bed jammed from wall to wall, as if the room had been installed around it. The smell is sterile, saline, and yet a dull heat permeates from the padded walls, adorned with cheap faux-bamboo and childish-looking stickers of cartoonish hydrangea flowers.
Before long, fine, over-salted cuisine adorns the table.
Freshly unfrozen grayling salmon, whole, dressed in Timut peppercorns. Wood-ear mushroom salad, drizzled in black rice vinegar, served lukewarm. Small concoctions of conch, dried figs, with added bok choy, for health. In the center, atop its own sacred podium, a semi-brass cauldron of piping kimchi soup in which raw unidentified meat over-boils, robbing ingredients of taste, turning their textures to used gum and heating the enclave to an uncomfortably warm temperature that assaults your sinuses with spice.
You sniffle before sneezing.
---
Ø grabs another can of Hankow pilsner from the waitress with one hand, the other nursing another round of fried, brown-sugar-glazed frog feet. Next to her, Hsien growls, talking to you across the table from the corners of his full mouth, where a bok choy stalk drips.
“Your girl can drink, you know that? Huhu,” he mewls, “tell your girlie friend to save some for the rest of us.”
“You’re so harsh! Let our friends have their fun,” Huhu shoots you a knowing look, dragging a bound foot across your ankle beneath the table. It’s bony, misshapen in the specially-made flats she wears, no doubt leaking pus beneath its fake silk insulation as improperly healed bone leans against tortured muscle. She nods her head towards Kathi, the jindo’s black mouth agape, actively being fed still-wriggling ikizukuri tentacles by Slick-Back, the two of them wide-eyed and giggling.
Slick-Back sighs, alcohol turning his greasy white face a beet red.
“I’m real glad you ladies came by, especially with all’a the commotion last night.”
“Yeah,” the jindo responds blankly, mouth wide open and salivating.
“But, hey, you gotta understand why the bosses want things hush-hush for a bit,” Hsien continues, finally clutching another freezing Hankow. “You girlies should’ve seen it. Or, it’s a good thing you girlies didn’t see it.”
“Oh?” Huhu bats her eyes, snapping her fingers to a passing shiroi-plastered waitress, placing an order for another round of savory bokssam cabbage with extra garlic.
“Yeah, it was terrible,” Hsien brags. “You saw Ch’eng out there, zonked. Colt didn’t sleep a wink. Real ma-cah-burr stuff.”
“Hsien, y’need another hundred-credit word? Just say the kid’s sad.”
“He’s sad?” The jindo paws another handful of freezing nigiri into her maw.
“You bet, all bent outta shape,” Hsien mulls, “now, didn’t hear it from us, but he was playin’ guard all night. Said some bandit—gangster type, local—showed up, paid him extra to stuff both him and a friend through this place’s backdoor. Didn’t give him a reason, but he had the dough. Neh,” he scoffs through his Hankow, “it’s a dumb mistake from a dumb kid, that’s for sure. If the Families think he was in on it, he’ll be smoking with one hand less, if they don’t space him outright,” the leopard sighs, picking stringy meat from his teeth with a single chipped claw, scraping down to his cigarette-discolored gums, blood beginning to appear. “But, what’re gonna do?”
Huhu shoots you a final, knowing glance, lips pursed, glistening red in the low-light. Ø brings a drink to her lips, you the same, guzzling what’s left in a single go. Or, you get close to finishing, at least.
“Hey, Hsien,” Slick-Back brays. “Let’s bring the boy in here. He needs some cheerin’ up.”
“Oh, nonsense,” Huhu giggles, “doesn’t someone need to watch the door around here? We could be in danger, and it’s just so scary out there…”
In your synchronicity, you and Ø stand, kicking your legs from the alcoholic stupor. The mare reaches across the table, grabbing a final Hankow for the road and readjusting her waistline. She’s bloated. You feel your gun at your chest, beneath your floral-printed button-up, just to be sure.
“Hey, Unfriendly, where you two goin’? Too good for our hospitality?” Hsien hisses. “We’ve got another case comin’ for your piece to polish off. Maybe it’ll change her attitude. Get her to smile, maybe, seein’ you can’t get her to.”
“No thanks,” you reply for your partner. “We’ll just be a minute. Don’t wait up on our account.”
“Why would we?” he hollers in return, reaching beneath the table as Huhu jumps with surprise, her high-pitch laughter like erhu, “it’s not your place, is it?”
“Come on Hsien, act hospitable like. They’re’re guests, after all. Go on, you two. Tell the hostess, the one with the twin-tails,” he nods, smiling, “she’ll hook y’all up with whatever you’re lookin’ for. And if she doesn’t, come back and tell us, we’d be more than happy to help, and I mean it,” Slick-Back says with a sly grin, bringing his grimy digits to the jindo’s ears, scraping back fur, loose hairs bursting into the air. “And don’t you two worry, we’ll hold down the fort for now.”
The two courtesans, complete in their duties, give you both understanding smiles and quick waves as Ø shuts the door, dragging grease across the handle, pulling it closed as the fresh Hankow greets her lips.
You’re thankful its soundproof.
“You know, the girlies were right,” Ø laughs. “Place has great eats.” She unholsters her Star as you return to the entrance, passing the lavish parties of those retiring from work for the day, entering alongside topless broads, palanquins of eight course meals upon which the mare discards her half-empty can, and gauche gangsters, ones who shoot you nods of respect.
They’re respectful nods that arise naturally from seeing another party brandishing firearms.
Once outside, you’re assaulted with the afternoon suns, partially blocked by the Settlement’s skyscrapers, distorted and hazy from the air pollution, spotty from the silhouettes of the far-off defense platforms that rotate above. At the foot of the staircase, Ch’eng the tenghuang stands, talking to yet another gangster. One with white suit pants, his oversized purple stripe button-up awash in the sunset, perfectly mixing with the horizon’s palette.
The two argue in hushed tones, the one in the Whitesuit bringing a finger to Ch’eng’s thin chest, emphasizing a point that’s lost in the commotion of early bird crowds, chittering and swarming in the streets. Ch’eng blinks, mouth ajar, bloodshot eyes unable to return the severity of his conversationalist’s tirade. The unknown gangster turns his aviators to you, his swollen, bruised lips cradling a third of a cigarette and scowling. He squints.
“Hey pal,” Ø barks, “don’t know what you want with the kid, but I bet I want him more.”
With a ferocity regularly seen at the Bloom!, Whitesuit reaches beneath his waistband, whips something out, and discharges.