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“How’s the KTM?” Adrik asks Jasper.
“Something’s rattling when I accelerate too hard.”
“Chief look at it?”
“Yeah—he can’t figure it out either.”
“You gonna take it in?”
“I guess.”
Adrik glances at me.
I could offer to fix it. But I don’t know if I want to extend a favor to Jasper just yet. I stay silent, and Adrik doesn’t suggest it for me.
The club is filling up, all the tables stuffed now, as well as every seat along the bar. I’ve been keeping an eye on Neve Markov’s party in case Ilsa happens to join them. I haven’t told Ilsa that I’m in Moscow—I haven’t told anyone yet, besides my parents.
A cluster of girls are dancing, slow and lazy, in the small space without tables that functions as a dance floor. I would guess they’re escorts, judging from the skin-tight mini-dresses barely covering their asscheeks. They’re all so young and pretty that if I saw them in a club in LA, I would think they were models or actresses. But that’s how it is here, as far as I can tell—too many stunning women everywhere you look, a common commodity, cheap as vodka.
Vlad watches the girls furtively.
The second round arrives. Vlad groans, but we bully him into chugging it down. By the time he’s wiping the foam off his lip, he’s tipsy enough to argue that the Chili Peppers just might be the greatest rock band of all time.
“When you count up … all the years they’ve been going … and all the hits they’ve had … not to mention … how fuckin’ rad Anthony Kiedis is … it’s indisputable …”
“Why’d you get him going on that?” Jasper says. “Now he’ll never shut up.”
Even Jasper is showing the effects of two boilermakers. The faintest tinge of pink has come into his pale cheeks, and he sounds amused instead of irritated as he tells Vlad that Anthony Kiedis doesn’t hold a candle to Freddie Mercury, “Or Billie Joe Armstrong, for that matter …”
Sensing his moment, Adrik says to Jasper, “Sabrina had an idea for a new product.”
Jasper hesitates. “Is that right?”
Under the table I hear asnickas he flicks his zippo open.
“Yeah,” Adrik says. “A party pill.”
“Molly already exists,” Vlad says.
“Leave it to a Russian to drink vodka out of a bottle and call it a cocktail,” I say. “This will be a hybrid drug—already mixed for you. One pill, with a time-delay release.”
Jasper’s eyes sweep over my face. Under the table, the zippo snaps shut again.
“One pill?” Vlad scoffs. “Why sell one when you can sell a whole bottle?”
“Because,” I say, speaking clear and direct across the table, “everybody sells the same coke, the same molly, the same weed. This will be a custom experience. Exclusive to us.”
Jasper’s jaw shifts as if he’s biting the inside of his mouth. He doesn’t like that I’m already saying “us.” He doesn’t want there to be anus.
“Who’s gonna make it?”
“Me,” I say. “And maybe Hakim.”
Jasper perceives in a glance that Adrik is already on board with the idea, enthusiastic even. So he doesn’t argue, though I’m sure he’d like to.
He shrugs, saying, “We can try it. We can sell it in the strip clubs.”
“No.” I shake my head. “It’s a premium offering. We need to sell it in the Soho Rooms, in all the fanciest clubs. We brand it and stamp it—sell it to the models and the trust fund babies. If they want it, then everyone will want it.”
