Alone by choice at his back booth where the careful arrangement of tables still allows him an unobstructed view of the stage, Darius watches the dancers' fake breasts, worn-out expressions of seductive lust and calculatedly hydraulic moves with growing ennui, sorry he chose The Cage to start his evening. It's all too predictable and foregone, and the X he downed an hour ago is mainly making him jumpy and thirsty, so he swills down the Stoli tonics Dimitri keeps sending too-familiar girls over with, and maintains a stony expression and silence which blow him a bubble of isolation that his reputation here ensures no one will prick.<br/><br/><div class="floatright">(http://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/5/5c/KitanaMK2011.JPG)</div>Maybe the X achieves some synergy with the liquor, or maybe its the promise of some new kick, but he finds his interest suddenly piqued when the new dancer, 'Lily,' takes the stage in her scarlet plastic sheath with her two fans. Darius just won a record-speed victory over the four-armed monster Goro on the pirated version of  Mortal Combat:Deception he loaded into the Xbox in the limo – a meaty, flawless X-ray Fatality based on alliance with the Kitana character, who wields razor-sharp<em>tessen</em>war fans – and he sees Lily's accessories as a portentous omen. But unlike Kitana, whose inflated physiognomy, designed to inflame adolescent ignorance, is a montage of weightlifter's and cosmetic-surgery attributes, Lily seems at home in her own compact body, with its small, shapely breasts and lubricious, even-toned caramel skin, suggestive of that quality Darius attaches to certain Asian women of an airy, pneumatic underlayer to their flesh, so it's incomparably soft to the touch and excites in him twin desires to inflame and corrupt.<br/><br/>A slight inclination of Darius' head in the club owner's direction brings Dimitri scurrying in a servile crouch, to which Darius responds with a negligent uncurling of two fingers toward the stage, and forestalls any verbal obsequies on Dimitri's part with a curt directive: "Sen' me tha' lady over when she done and dressed again, an' make sure she plenty respec'ful but not atall scared, you feel me?" Darius keeps his eyes on the stage -- where the object of his attention has undulated herself bare but for the shifting concealment of her fans and the immodest ornament of her pearl g-string – and his mien sends the proprietor off in obedient, purposeful silence, nodding his fervent intent wholly ignored.<br/><br/>While he waits, Darius opens his pinky ring and measuredly inhales a line of blended cocaine and crank to cut through the vodka's down and re-assert the X, so that by the time 'Lily' arrives with her offering of champagne, he feels suffused with easy charm and so accepts her offered libation with a cordial smile, and responds to her inane question with pleasantly modulated baritone encouragement: "Truth, it was lookin gloomy as graveyards till I seen you dancin' up there, but now I can see it jus' gonna get better for both' us..." and after a click of flutes beneath a soulful look, he goes on, "Now why'nt we two climb outta this flesh pit an' seek us some more refined entertainments?" Then he stands without waiting for her reply, adds, "bring them bottle and glassware along," and, without a look back, leads the way up the switchback stairs and out into early autumn city midnight, where, with Ward at the wheel and Ernt riding shotgun, Darius' femur-inscribed, monogrammed Hummer limo idles at the curb.<br/>(http://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/2/20/Darius_Limo.jpg)<br/><br/>At their approach, the rear door swings wide on hidden servomotors and Darius ushers the girl inside, follows her, and, as she gawks at the vehicle's interior opulence, toggles the lighting from soft-white fluorescent to deep violet UV blacklight, to suit his burgeoning mood, then sits close beside her on the wide fluid-cushioned bench seat, runs a long, tapering finger up her inner arm, tracing lines of veins from wrist to top of her bicep, and demands in an intimate murmur, "So, tell me, beautiful thing, what's your real name and your drug of choice?<br/><br/><div class="floatleft">(http://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/6/62/Limo_interiors.jpg) </div>Imperceptibly from within the vast, blacked-out passenger compartment, the limo swings away from the curb and accelerates smoothly out into the rain-slicked, reflective maze of city and night.