The moon had risen down the river, above the Bank. That would make it about nine o’clock. It was a furry squashed sphere, near full, veiled with converging clouds. The wind was cool, emphatic, and from the west. The Underbridge would soon be packed, then: we were going to get a storm.

Robert was doing the door, his dark curling hair loose over his thin shoulders and his antique T-shirt with the London subway symbol on it. He turned one corner of his mouth up and nodded at me.

“Didn’t know you were coming in tonight,” he said.

I had to clear my throat — how long since I last talked? I hated this — before I said, “Just lucky, I guess.”

“You or me?” he asked, perfectly serious.

I wasn’t prepared to answer that, so I didn’t. “Actually, I forgot what day it was.” I shrugged for de-emphasis.

“Oh,” said Robert.

I cursed him in my heart. “Um, what day is it?”

With the infinite patience of someone used to dealing with drunks, musicians, and techies, he replied, “Sunday.”

I’d lost a day and a half. It could have been worse. It could have been a lot better. But I relaxed some. “Who’s here?”

“Theo, so far. Spangler. There might be somebody else in later.”

And now me. Gracious. Hadn’t anyone been watching the weather? Robert on the door was a waste. The Underbridge was his creation, and if there’d been three of him, the place would have run best if he’d done it all himself; he was that much better than anyone but me — and I had unnatural advantages. For him, screwdrivers didn’t slip and solder went on like a liquid kiss. His fingers would brush patterns over the sound board’s faders, dab at the EQ, and one song would segue into the next out of the main speakers like pleats in a single piece of fabric. I knew I ought to offer to take over the door, but I didn’t want to be the first thing anyone coming to the Underbridge would see.

I looked past Robert into the main room, all three stories of it. The long windows showed me the Deeps across the river, a silhouette against the mounting clouds, speckled with lights in the towers. The reflected moon stuck to one of Ego’s faces like a dab of wet silver; then a tail of cloud stroked across it, like a finger drawn through the puddle. I’d once referred to the windows as the passive video system. People paid to come and dance under that view, and more of them paid to do it when the City cowered under lightning and thunder. A great show, and it didn’t cost us a thing to put on.

Over by the beer taps were a dozen or so clubbers, looking lost and embarrassed in all the empty space. Someone was tending bar, of course, but bartenders were not included in Robert’s or my tally. At the other end of the room up by the screens, a tall wooden ladder, spraddle-legged and spindly, stuck its head up into the confusing darkness of the rigging. A beam of light on the dance floor changed color and position. A monotonous stream of comment and obscenity rolled gently down from the ladder top.