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the drain had clogged and he’d reached down like he was about to do now and had come up with a dead rat.
    He shuddered with just the memory of it. A monster Brooklyn brown rat. Big, tough mother that could’ve easily held its own with the ones down on the docks. Didn’t know how it had got in this drain, but the grate had been pushed aside, and when he’d reached down, there it was, wedged into the pipe. So soft, at first he’d thought it was a plastic bag or something. Then he’d felt the tail. And the feet. He’d worked it loose and pulled it free.
    Just about blew lunch when he’d looked at it, all soft, puffy, pulpy, and drippy, the eyes milk white, the sharp yellow buck teeth bared, the matted hair falling off in clumps. And God, it stunk. He’d dumped it in his plastic bucket, scooped up enough of the rapidly draining water to cover it, then run like hell for the Dumpster.
    “Whatta y’got for me this week, you sonuvabitch?” he said aloud.
    He didn’t usually talk to floor drains, but his skin was crawling with the thought of what might’ve got stuck down there this time. And if he ever grabbed something that was still moving…forget about it.
    He pulled the heavy rubber gloves up to his elbows, took a deep breath, and plunged his right hand into the water.
    “What the hell?”
    The grate was still in place. So what was blocking it?
    Underwater, he poked his fingers through the slots and pulled the grate free, then worked his hand down the funnel and into the pipe.
    “What now, you mother? What now ?”
    Nothing. The water felt kind of thick down there, almost like Jell-O, but the pipe was empty as far as his fingers could reach. Probably something caught in the trap. Which meant he’d have to use the snake. And dammit to hell, he’d left it upstairs.
    Maybe if he squeezed his fingers down just a little farther he’d find something. Just a little—
    Doug reached down too far. Water sloshed over the top of his glove and ran down the inside to his fingers. It had a strange, warm, thick feel to it.
    “Damn it all!”
    But when he went to pull back, his hand wouldn’t come. It was stuck in the hole and all his twisting and pulling only served to let more of the cloudy water run into his glove.
    And then Doug noticed that the water was no longer running down his arm—it was running up.
    He stared, sick dread twisting in his gut, as the thick, warm fluid moved up past his elbow— crawled was more like it. After a frozen moment he attacked it with his free hand, batting at it, wiping it off. But it wouldn’t wipe. It seemed to be traveling in his skin, becoming part of it, seeping up his arm like water spreading through blotter paper.
    And it was hot where it moved. The heat spread up under the half sleeve of his work shirt. He tore at the buttons but before he could get them undone the heat had spread across his chest and up his shoulder to his neck.
    Doug lost it then. He began whimpering and crying, clawing at himself as he splashed and scrambled and flopped about like an animal caught in a trap, trying to yank his right hand free. He felt the heat on his face now, moving toward his mouth. He clamped his lips shut but it ran into his nostrils and through his nose to his throat. He opened his mouth to scream, but no sound would come. A film covered his eyes, and against his will his muscles began to relax, lowering him into the water, letting it soak into him, all through him. He felt as if he were melting, dissolving into the puddle…
     
    Marc hopped out of the cab in front of the Graf Spee’s entrance, paid the driver with his patented flourish, and strolled past the velvet cords that roped off the waiting dorks.
    Bruno was on the door tonight. A burly lump of muscle with feet; at thirty-five he was maybe ten years older than Marc; his hair was a similar brown but there the resemblance stopped. As Marc approached the canopied entrance he wondered what Bruno had looked like as an infant, or if