Bane of Blood: La Gorgona

III, Part 33

Fernando could hear the din of the dance music before they stepped one foot inside El Mar.

Blue strobe lights streamed through the smoky interior. Their watery beams cast a deathly pallor over the club goers who milled about in straggling bands. Staggering, jostling and shambling, they swayed to the music or from drunkenness or both. Zombielike in their bearing. Glassy-eyed in their looks. Grotesque in their idleness and inane thronging.

Garish flashes of bared flesh and flung limbs seared through the haze of cigarette smoke. Banshee shrieking pierced above the general roar. The acrid reek of liquor fumes stung through the noisome stench of mixed colognes and perfumes.

There was a big swarmed bar front and center, to which Chico made a beeline in this blue and noisy hell. The five of them did a round of shots after much shouting and waiting and shaking of fists. A fight nearly broke out in the interim when some drunk dickhead crashed into Lalo and splashed him down the front with his fruity drink.

"Motherfucker!" Lalo roared, shoving the listless guy back. "You wanna die?"

Wide-eyed, the offender stood gaping in response, oblivious to the beatdown he was about to receive. His plastic cup continued to drip, splattering booze-laden syrup onto Lalo's boots.

Fernando and Chico intervened not a second too soon. With both of them holding to Lalo's bulging arms, they managed to stop him from charging the poor spluttering fuck down like a raging bull.

A shot of tequila mellowed Lalo out like a tranquilizer. No longer bristling and glowering over his stained shirtfront, he started to dance. Fernando grinned. Chico chuckled—not out mockery for a change, but out of appreciation. Lalo was a damned good dancer.

"Who'd have guessed, right?" Chico yelled to Fernando over the clamor, elbowing him. "He looks like he'd cut a swath through the dance floor, and not in a good way."

"Looks can be deceiving," Fernando yelled back, and Chico laughed again.

"You don't need to tell me that, primo."

Falling easily into the rhythm, Chico made for the large crowded dance pit with the big oaf grooving in tow. With a slash of his sharp chin, Chico called after Fernando to join them.

"Oy, primo! C'mon!"

Fernando waved for them to go on. Chico frowned. But before he could shout at Fernando again, the sea of grinding bodies swallowed him up in its seething tide. Closing in around Chico and Lalo, the tumult swept them away, clean out of sight.

Reclining against the bar, Fernando glanced around at the club at large. It was open up through the second story, with another smaller bar and dance floor visible from here. There were booths and tables on that wraparound upper floor. Railings against which people were leaning and dancing while they peered down on the revelers below.

As Fernando headed for the lighted stair, Tito and Pepe trailed after him like a pair of lost sheep. Smirking to himself, Fernando shook his head.

He could see why Chico had wanted to ditch them.