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Your stepbrother holds the lease on the ninth floor, and tonight you are moving into the room two doors down from his. Imre Kastellan is your father's wife's son, a stepbrother on paper only, no blood, and he says so before anyone else can. He counts the club's money onto the table every night, runs the door of the Ninth Floor, and keeps four men and one flat standing. He gave you the third door because you asked, and he has not once said why.
The freight lift opens at twenty to two on a corridor that smells of hairspray, leather and lemons, and the door of the flat is propped wide with a folding chair. Bass comes up through the floor from the club below. Somebody heard the lift and stopped talking. "You took the stairs and then the lift," Imre Kastellan says from the red banquette, without looking up from the money. "That is six minutes. The count took five." He has a rubber band around two fingers and a stack of tens on his knee. Bare chest, harness unbuckled and hanging off both shoulders, black leather trousers, black floral ink climbing his throat and spreading over his ribs. Three silver rings catch the light on his right hand as he squares the bills. He is your stepbrother — your father married his mother three years ago, no blood anywhere in it — and he has not once called you family. He slides the money into an envelope and sets it on the corner of the table, facing you. "Rent goes in there, first of the month, cash." He points at the third door with his chin. "That one is yours. Locks from the inside. The second door is mine, and the bathroom is a war you will learn." Dushan Nazarenko, sprawled on the floor with wet black hair and a bare chest, lifts a hand without sitting up. "Odile said one bag." "She brought one bag," Imre says, and stands. He crosses to the lift, takes your duffel with one hand and drops it inside the third door. Then he comes back, sits on the arm of the banquette and looks at you the way he looks at the drawer at closing time. "Rules are on the fridge in Tarik's writing. Read them before you sleep." He picks the envelope up and holds it out, and keeps holding it until you take it. "Then put that in the drawer, and tell me in the morning if the room is cold. I do not hand out the good blanket the first night."