First, pick a fight – a loud one, loud enough to attract the attention of the guards. Next, have a fight, the more real, the better. (And trust me, Eve can throw a punch when she feels like it. Girl knows how to power out from the shoulder.) Last, score yourself a bloody head wound, self-inflicted and minor, to sell the show as you flop down defeated, beaten and – in this case – preferably looking really dead. Have your friends sell it with lots of distress and screams for help while getting their hands very bloody. Eve was maybe a little too over the top, but Pete sold the whole package – he looked grim, scared, and smeared blood around like I’d sprung an arterial leak and was pumping out the last pint. In all probability, our new friends didn’t really care, but like all employees, they would be expected to explain inventory breakage, and nobody wanted to have to say that they’d let me bleed out on the floor without some kind of due diligence. They opened the door, came in, and I passed Pete the rusty piece of metal I’d used to cut my head open as he bent over me, hands pressed to my neck.
