Even for hardened night life decathletes, walking into the new now place -- Pastiche, Bobo, Canard, whatever -- induces a fight-or-flight response.
A few in-game seasons spent toiling at the helm of Vauxhall Motors on their long march into the upper echelons of the game is enough to make even the most hardened night owl begin entering their name as "Tyler Durden" on the manager set-up screen.
The one exception is a crime that gave even the battle-hardened Agent Bepler night sweats: once, on a sweltering day, he found a cargo of boa constrictors melted into a mess of hot blood and cocaine that had been sewn into their anuses.
I push through an impressive early-morning crowd towards the Red Stage; the baseball diamonds that were, just a few short hours ago, mini-lagoons, appear nearly baked and hardened from the morning's relentless, stale heat.
The center of the Upper East Side is beginning to resemble a hardened hooker of the night, flaunting her dingy petticoats for all to see.
Some scenes, though, like Harry's confrontation with the ghost of Ravenclaw tower, or the foetus-like manifestation of Voldemort's dying soul, are frightening enough to keep hardened horror fans awake at night.
He describes the look of exposed utility pipes in the early morning snow, and the thickened, hardened hands of the streetcar conductor.
A few feet farther up the alley, there is another strange space: Mmuseumm's annex, or Mmuseumm 2. The padlock on the door reads "HARDENED": Kalman removes it one afternoon to let me look at the artwork now called Future Aleppo.
"It's like the Saturday night poker game for hardened criminals," said one of the undercover agents, Sgt. C. T. Manning, describing the tense atmosphere at the fights.
After a bitter campaign for president in El Salvador, a conservative pro-American businessman claimed victory Sunday night over a battle-hardened former Communist guerrilla.
On television last night, his hair looking freshly hardened and with a creepy attempt at a friendly grin that looked more like a knife wound, he began insulting, almost demonising, the Bloc Quebecois.
