Chapter 34 House of Vice — Side A
// the vinyl starts spinning //
The night House of Vice opened, no one knew.
One minute it wasn’t there. Next minute, it had a line down the block.
The way New York makes legends: by accident, then all at once.
There was no press release, or promo, or launch party with a guest list. There was only a purple neon sign, House of Vice—cursive, crooked, half-lit, buzzing above a black basement door. And when it cracked open, music spilled out, and the city started vibrating.
House of Vice wasn’t built for the spotlight.
It doesn’t give a shit about fame.
It doesn’t chase headlines. It chases hunger.
It only has one purpose: turn sinners into stars, and stars into ghosts.
If you play at Vice and we don’t remember you? You’ll still wake up with music in your veins, hickeys wrapped around your neck, and someone else’s number etched across your arm. But if we do remember you? You’re gonna make it.
But most nights, Vice isn’t about remembering. It’s about forgetting.
It lives for us—lonely girls, late-night fucks, and losing control.
You can’t walk through Vice without stepping into our stories.
And most of our stories start or end with Andrew Harding.
Not just the man on stage. But the man behind it, against the wall, by the soundboard, in the hall, in the fucking bathroom, behind the girl who swore she’d never hook up with a musician. His fingerprints scatter across Vice like confessions.
We whisper it—
“Harding? They say he can get a girl off in under sixty seconds.”
“They say he never undresses.
“They say he only fucks you from behind—Swear to God.”
“They say he ate her out for six hours straight.
“Came so many times, she smiled for a month.”
“They say he went down on a whole bridal party.
“Including the bride. Seven girls. One night. One room.”
“They say not one girl’s seen his dick. Not one.”
But no one believes it.
Because Harding’s always alone.
You never catch him with a girl sitting on his lap or holding his hand.
He doesn’t flirt or chase or ask for numbers, let alone names.
We’ve never seen him walking into a room with someone.
Never seen him leaving with someone either.
Every woman we know who’s had him barely talks about it. They keep it quiet, keep it theirs, as if a part of them still belongs to him. This is how we know it’s true. The ones he touched hardly talk. The ones who do? He never touched.
The myth of Andrew Harding doesn’t become real until it happens to you. And nights at Vice always ends the same: thighs shaking, breath’s missing, the name sweetheart rolling off his tongue.
Nights at Vice always start the same, too. A brick building that doesn’t stand so much as broods. Piss-wet alley stinking of cheap weed and perfume, rain hammering against the dumpster, someone’s Newport burnin’.
Then there’s the bouncer, Kenny, gruff as ever, flashlight in one hand, the other out for cover. He calls Andrew Sinatra ‘cause the guy doesn’t beg.
All Andrew Harding has to do is walk into a room, and we melt.
And he always comes alone, descending the twelve concrete steps straight into the gut of the night, stairs wet with beer or blood.
Under his boots, the bass rattles, finding his ankles first, then his ribcage, then throat.
It doesn’t come from the speakers. It comes from the fuckin’ floor, House of Vice breathing under him, the place alive, starving, and waiting.
His hair’s always perfectly unbrushed—just-woke-up, just-fucked waves we’d kill to tangle our hands in. And those heavy eyes, always half-lidded, already gone by the time he walks in, gold chain tucked under a black shirt, dark jeans hanging low on his hips.
We watch him slip through doorways. Out one, in the next, never looking back as he drifts through smoke and sweat and neon, slipping past bodies, past tables, past the desperate stares from us, movin’ as if he doesn’t need anyone.
Past the purple lights glowing from the bar.
Across black tile soaked in spilled drinks.
And then he’s ours—on stage, sweating before the second song, neck and back both slick, shirt clinging to his chest, his eyes everywhere.
On me.
And me.
And me.
And we’re already gone.
So is Matt, who’s tipping, slipping, drunk as hell.
Matt doesn’t need the spotlight, he needs a stretcher—swaying back, sweat dotting his forehead, shirt half-tucked, eyes glassy. He’s three songs deep, slurring vowels, stumblin’ back just before the lyric we all wait for:
I’m so fuckin’ obsessed with you.
The one we scream, prayer turned profane.
But right when it’s supposed to land, Matt trips over nothing.
And Andrew leans into his mic, steals the lyric, grinning and singing with a half-cocked brow— “He’s so fuckin’ drunk on you.”
The crowd loses it, the sound bouncing off the ceiling, wrapping around the rafters, sinking into our skin. Every drunk bitch and broken boy in the pit echoes—“HE’S SO FUCKIN’ DRUNK ON YOU.”
And for one second, it’s not a band playing.
It’s a brotherhood breaking into laughter under the lights.
Then Andrew takes over lead, guitar slung against his hip, voice all rasp and ruin. We’ve seen boys with guitars before. But Andrew doesn’t play, he possesses.
His fingers crawl up the frets, voice dragging behind the beat, pulled it out from under his tongue to tease it. And when he hits the chorus, he doesn’t sing it. He moans it, drawn out, dangerous, ‘til every pussy’s dripping.
Then he turns, mid-strum and flashes a smile, aimed somewhere in the blur of bodies. That fucking smile—lazy, sexy, sinful.
We all swear it’s mine—
no, mine—
no, mine.
He damns us all at once.
Right before the bridge, he always chooses one girl.
He sinks into her for eight bars, vanishing from the crowd to give her everything. Then he pulls back, singing her open and leaving her there.
And tonight, he looks off to his right, through the smoke and lights, to the girl white-knuckling the rail, eyes begging the music to split her open and make it hurt. And he breaks the lyric at the seam for her.
Abigail don’t realize she’s holdin’ her breath ‘til it’s gone.
For those long seconds staring into his eyes, she forgets where she is.
All she feels is Andrew, slidin’ through her, pourin’ his voice into her bloodstream.
Makes her want to open somethin’. Maybe her arms. Maybe her legs.
She ain’t proud of the thought. But it’s there. And she knows she’s blushin’.
The song’s about to end, and she ain’t waitin’.
The second Andrew’s eyes slide off her, she’s movin’ down the ramp as if she’s outrunnin’ the side of her that said don’t and you’re a bad, bad girl, Abigail.
The same way she got in—stolen ID and a mouth full’a lies.
She slides past the rope, blows past a guy foggin’ a dark corner with grape vape clouds.
She don’t stop. Not ‘til she hits the hallway no girl’s supposed to be in.
No one sees her. They never do, even when she’s the biggest thing in the room.
So she keeps walkin’ 'til she reaches the private bathroom, door shuttin' behind her, lock turned, her heart hammerin’.
It stinks in here, mold and piss and beer vomit, like her daddy’s trailer back in Alabama in the summers, when she'd sweat all night on the pull-out couch.
To her right, a red thong sittin’ in the sink.
Below her, a roach lays on its back under the towel dispenser.
To her left, the toilet’s murky with God-knows-what.
In front of her, Abigail checks the mirror and hates her reflection.
Strawberry-blonde frizz, freckles runnin’ wild over her cheeks and nose and places no one asked ‘em to be. Eyes too round. Shoulders too square. Five-seven and too much. Big, soft, and wide everywhere—face, arms, chest, belly, hips, thighs.
She don’t need a stranger to call her fat. She’s been callin’ herself that since fifth grade. It never mattered how nice or well behaved she was. She still had to say sorry for takin’ up space. Sorry for bein’ loud. Sorry for bein’ the tagalong.
It’s why she stole her sister’s license six months back, slipped it into her wallet and prayed no one’d notice, then used it to slide past the bouncer out front, just to get into Vice three months before her twenty-first birthday.
Worst thing she’s ever done, but not somethin’ she’d undo.
Because the first night she walked through Vice’s basement door, her eyes landed on Andrew Harding, playin’ guitar like he’d fingered a siren first—sex and sin drippin’ from his fingertips.
She kept comin’ every damn night Sons of No One were on the lineup.
Now all the waitin’ had to be for this moment. ‘Cause the way he looked at her? It touched and struck her all at once.
She’s heard the whispers: Andrew don’t make the first move, if you want him, you better not ask. You better just do. And you do it when nobody’s lookin’.
She used to think it was a load of crap.
But tonight she’s desperate enough to try.
She wipes the sweat from between her thighs with a brown paper towel, then her pits, behind her neck, between her boobs. Every inch of her’s sweatin’ from heat, nerves, and a whole lotta what the hell am I doin’?
She checks her reflection one more time.
Lord, she should’ve worn black. Or somethin’ looser.
She hikes her boobs higher with one hand, lettin’ ‘em spill out, thinkin’ he’ll stare there instead of anywhere else. And her shorts are ridin’ up no matter what she does. She tugs ‘em down, then up again.
She ain’t used to this. She’s used to hoodies in July and jeans in church. She’s used to layers and hidin’ and prayin’ it’s still a phase her body’s goin’ through. But she swore after high school she was gonna be different. No more hidin’, and she’s stickin’ to it.
She exhales slow, countin’ down in her head.
One… Two… Three…
She cracks the bathroom door and slips into the dark.
The back hall’s empty, the curtain just ahead.
He’ll come from those stairs, she knows it in her chest.
She stands right there against the wall, knees jelly, hopin’ she catches him before some bouncer catches her and kicks her out.