“Are you looking at all the bottles?” Esperanza asked.

“Um, close.”

Esperanza nodded, smiled at a particularly well-endowed hostess in a black corset. “Hmm… Could do with a little bottle service myself, if you know what I’m saying.”

Myron thought about it. Then: “Actually, I don’t. You’re both women, right? So I’m not sure I get the bottle reference.”

“God, you’re literal.”

“You asked if I was looking at all the bottles. Why?”

“Because they’re serving Cristal champagne,” Esperanza said.

“So?”

“How many bottles do you see?”

Myron glanced around. “I don’t know, nine, maybe ten.”

“They go for eight grand a pop here, plus tip.”

Myron put his hand to his chest, feigning heart palpitations. He spotted Lex Ryder sprawled on a couch with a colorful assortment of lovelies. The other men in the room all shouted aging musician/ roadie-long hair weaves, bandanas, facial hair, wiry arms, soft guts. Myron made his way through them.

“Hello, Lex.”

Lex’s head lolled to the side. He looked up and shouted with too much gusto, “Myron!”

Lex tried to get up, couldn’t, so Myron offered him a hand. Lex used it, managed to get to his feet, and hugged Myron with the slobbering enthusiasm men save for too much drink. “Oh man, it’s so good to see you.”

HorsePower had started off as a house band in Lex and Gabriel’s hometown of Melbourne, Australia. The name had come from Lex’s last name Ryder (Horse-Ryder) and Gabriel’s last name Wire (Power-Wire), but from the moment they started together, it was all about Gabriel. Gabriel Wire had a wonderful voice, sure, and he was ridiculously handsome with nearly supernatural charisma-but he also had that elusive, intangible, the “you know it when you see it” quality that raises the greats to the status of legendary.