Read Nightlife for Free Online

chrome and glass. Across the packed dance floor stood a wall of video monitors, thirty in all, each playing the same image. Like a fragmented worldview through multifaceted insect eyes in B-grade movies. INXS blared from the speakers; good dance music.
    Distance crossed. Nerves steeled. Justin smiled down at her.
    “Would you like to dance?”
    She smiled back, nose crinkling a bit. “No thanks.”
    It shotgunned the smile right off his face. His eyes darted to Erik, who was talking with Angel. This was Erik’s fault. He’s a dead man, I will kill him. He started to grope for a graceful way out, knowing such dignity was hopeless.
    “I’ve watched you out on the dance floor tonight,” April said. She seemed friendly enough—what gave? “You don’t really like to dance. Do you?”
    “Sure I do. I wouldn’t have . . . asked if—”
    She grinned, hazel eyes sparkling. She was enjoying this torture! After Erik was dead, perhaps he’d turn on her. “Don’t lie,” she gleefully warned. “Liars go to Hell.”
    He let his arms hang limp, palms out in surrender. Here stands a complete and utter fool. “No,” he finally said. “I don’t, really.”
    “Neither do I.”
    He was starting to catch on to her game. Perhaps this could be salvaged after all. “So would you like,” he ventured, “to sit one out with me?”
    “I’d love to.” April motioned to the empty seat at her right, and he took it before they could slip back into retrograde progress. The conversation was anyone’s ball game. He punted.
    “So why the aversion to dancing?” he asked. “You look like you’d be good at it.”
    “I am, I guess. Oh, it’s not dancing per se I don’t like. I dance a lot at home, alone. I just don’t like all the little games it entails in public. You know, a dance, then a drink, then . . .” She seemed too shy to blurt out the last one.
    “Debauchery?” he tried. Words were his life. Used to be, anyway.
    “Yeah! Close enough.” She looked relieved.
    April gazed out over the bodies clogging the dance floor, some graceful, some spastic, some exhibiting moments of both. Then the spectators and their glasses and bottles. Closer still to home base: Trent, a chair away, nervously tapping an empty coke vial against the tabletop.
    “Did you ever think about the function a place like this serves?” she said. “Not the shallow surface stuff. Deeper, I mean.”
    “A marketing ploy for hangover remedies?”
    She rolled her eyes. “You’re not even close. But I have this theory—why society in general is so screwed up today.”
    “This should be good.”
    “It’s because we don’t have any more rituals. Sure, we have weddings, and baptisms, and funerals. But how many times a year do any of us go to something like that? I mean everyday rituals.”
    He nodded, if only to be polite. He had no idea what she was talking about. This was the most bizarre first-time conversation he could recall ever having had with anyone, male or female.
    “Now look at primitive cultures,” April continued. “They sing, they chant, they take hallucinogenic drugs, they have established dances for different occasions. And they’re happy! You don’t see them needing mental health centers.”
    This girl was a challenge of Alpine dimensions. He had a sense that she operated on a slightly different plane than most everyone else. And yet he was starting to grasp what she meant.
    “Come to a place like this, and you’ll see the exact same sort of behavior.” April was really into this, had completely forgotten her drink. “Exactly. Only there’s more desperation. We’re so far removed from the primal part of ourselves that we mix it up with all this other stuff. Scoring on somebody, seeing who can drink the most or snort the most. Making someone jealous by dancing with someone else. Stupid stuff like that.” She shook her head, smiled in summation. “We need to get reacquainted with our primitive sides.”
    Justin regarded her