Elijah laments the changes, but Antonia couldn’t care less. Nostalgia’s a weakness as far as she’s concerned. When something’s gone, it’s gone. Cut it loose and move on. She’s lost so much in her two hundred years, she’d drown in tears if she mourned it all.

They’re cruising the same streets for the third time. It’s close to midnight, and nobody’s out. Elijah taps his horn to get Antonia’s attention and points to the Torch, a bar they know. They circle the block and park in front of the place.

“Let’s grab a quick one,” Elijah says. “Might be our last chance.”

Antonia’s reluctant. Three years ago she fed off an old man she picked up here. “I don’t got a person who gives a shit about me,” he told her. “Everyone I know is dead.” She lured him to an abandoned produce warehouse on the promise of a hand job, drained him, and got rid of the corpse in the desert.

“Nobody’ll remember you,” Elijah says. “They won’t even remember him.”

They step over a kid passed out on the sidewalk to enter the bar. His girlfriend is messed up, too, sitting on the curb and chanting, “Greg! Greg! Greg!” The bar is bright as day inside. Four gargoyles are hunched over the stick, a few more in the booths. Something by the Doors wheezes out of the jukebox.

The bartender is a leathery redheaded woman wearing a cardboard red, white, and blue top hat. More star-spangled crap is hanging on the walls in anticipation of the Fourth. The woman takes Elijah’s order for two draft A-1s and says, “Those junkies still out front?”

“They are,” Elijah says.

“Call the fucking police, Sarah, will ya?” one of the gargoyles croaks.

“I don’t need Phoenix PD in here,” the bartender says.

“I should go out there and shoot them myself.”

“You ain’t gonna shoot nobody,” the bartender says, rolling her eyes at Antonia and Elijah. “He ain’t even got a gun,” she says out of the side of her mouth.

The junkies are still on the sidewalk when the Fiends leave. Elijah doesn’t feel like getting back on his bike yet. There’s a porno theater next to the bar. THREE TRIPLE X FEATURES.

“You want to see a movie?” he asks Antonia.

“If you need to get your ashes hauled, we’ll go to the motel,” she says.

“Come on. We’ll watch until the bars close.”