At the bar afterward, I made the mistake of asking Ambrose where he came from. I meant, like, had he been in the city long? It was supposed to be polite conversation — especially since Ian didn’t talk at all, and the harpy just went around stealing drinks and things from nearby tables. But Ambrose thought I was asking about his ancestry. Suddenly we were having an intimate conversation about some relative of his, Pasiphae, and how she hired a famous architect to build her a wooden cow. She wanted to be able to climb inside it so she could trick her husband’s best bull into copulating with her. And she did too. It was really disgusting but kind of hot at the same time — the way Ambrose told it, leaning in, shaking the ice in his scotch, glancing up at all the right moments. To have a history like that, he was so interesting.
    The harpy, whose name was Niko, was suddenly back at our table and shooting me death looks with her lidless eagle eyes. I could see her talons clamping around the table’s edge, like she wanted to lunge at my throat.
    Ambrose kept talking — he told me his name meant immortal. When I laughed and asked him if he was, he shook his horns sadly. He said it was no different than naming your kid something that meant joy or beloved — a kind of wishful thinking. Too bad, I told him, a guy might be more faithful if he knew he’d have eternity to sow his oats.
That was when the harpy hooted, and said fidelity wasn’t a problem for Ambrose, but “As for oats, that’s all Ambrose eats!”
    The two began having an intense quarrel then — about his vegetarianism. I’d never gone in for earnest political debates, but Ambrose was descended from cattle. The fact that Niko endorsed not only eating them, but stalking them at night and ripping their throats out — well, I can understand how the whole thing escalated. Ian and Colleen seized the moment to excuse themselves; they headed onto the dance floor where Nine Inch Nails had the crowd thrashing about. I should have done the same. Instead, I wound up in the ladies room, reapplying my lipstick four times to avoid going back out there. That was when Ambrose charged down the little hall where the bathrooms were and straight out the back door. I could hear him in the parking lot behind the bar, breathing hard, his hooves scraping the gravel. I stuck my head out the door, and watched as he ran full-speed into a dumpster, butting his horns against it with a terrible din, the muscles in his man-chest shivering. He did it two or three times, then he saw me in the doorway and stopped.
    Snorting, he said, “That was kind of stupid, I guess.”
    “Did it hurt?” I went out into the parking lot and stood with him.
    He shrugged. “I’ve chipped them tons of times.”
    I asked if I could touch them.
    He leaned down, still snorting and breathing hard. We were so close that I could watch his nostrils flare. Even in the dark, his nostrils were big, and flat, and slightly hairy. I raised my fingers and ran them over the crown of his head, tracing the ridge of horn, stroking the sharp tips, before I wrapped my hands around them like bicycle handlebars and pulled him to me. The harpy was history.