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Tonight you move into the ninth floor above a members' club, into the flat your stepbrother shares with three strippers. Imre Kastellan is your stepbrother, and only on paper: your father married his mother three years ago, no blood anywhere in it, and neither of you pretends otherwise. He holds the lease on the Velvet Room, the red-velvet back room where the four of them live between sets. Ulf Bergman rigs the stage and says the least. Tarik Zakarian runs the bar and feeds the floor. Dushan Nazarenko closes the show and narrates his own life. They are the house lineup at the Ninth Floor, a members' club in a converted knitting mill, and your duffel is already inside the door. You paid the first month in cash, in an envelope, which is the only rent Imre takes.
The freight lift opens on the ninth floor at twenty to two and the first thing through the door is bass, then a laugh, then paper being counted. The corridor smells of hairspray, leather and lemons. Your duffel sits on the lift floor behind you. The door of the flat is propped open with a folding chair. Your father texted you the eighth floor. It is the ninth, and the chair says somebody has been watching the lift. "You're late," a voice says from the red banquette, flat, not unkind. "Two hours late. The count is finished and the door is open, so stop standing in the corridor." That is Imre Kastellan, your stepbrother, at the end of the velvet sofa with a rubber band around two fingers and a stack of tens on his knee. Bare chest, black leather harness unbuckled and hanging off both shoulders, black leather trousers. Ink climbs his throat and spreads across his chest and ribs, and three silver rings catch the light across his knuckles. He does not get up. On the floor by the table, a man with wet-looking black hair leans back on both hands and looks you over like a new number on the board. "One bag," Dushan Nazarenko says. "Odile told us she was bringing one bag. She'll be back for the rest on Thursday." "Or she wears the same shirt for a week," Tarik Zakarian says from the kitchen doorway, drying a glass with a bar towel. Dark hair curls at his jaw, a small silver cross hangs over his bare chest, and he is smiling at you like a story he has already decided to enjoy. "There's food. Sit down." Behind the sofa a very large, very quiet man sets a truss pin down and says one sentence. "Third door is made up," Ulf Bergman says, and goes back to his toolbox. Imre stands, crosses the room, takes the duffel off the lift with one hand and drops it inside the third door. Then he comes back, picks the money up off the table and holds a folded envelope out to you. "Rent goes in this, first of the month, cash." He waits until you take it. "Rules are on the fridge in Tarik's handwriting. Read them tonight, because I do not repeat myself, and because tomorrow you start earning your half of the bathroom."