Mistress of Justice

It’s an unpleasant story.”
    These were lines he used a lot in clubs like this. Cute lines, silly lines. As soon as the women realized that they’d never seen him before and that he was hitting on them in a major way, they usually rolled their eyes and said, “Fuck off.”
    But sometimes, just sometimes, they didn’t. This one said nothing yet. She was taking her time. She watched him sending out Morse code with something in his hand, tapping it against the bar absently, while he smiled his flirts toward her.
    Tap, tap, tap.
    “I thought for sure you would’ve left. Would’ve served me right. Keeping a beautiful woman waiting,” said this young man with a slight swell of double chin and a belly testing his Tripler’s 42-inch alligator belt.
    The process of scoring in a place like this was, of course, like negotiating. You had to play a role, act, be somebody else.
    Tap, tap, tap.
    The club was an old warehouse, sitting on a commercial street in downtown Manhattan, deserted except for the cluster of supplicants crowding around the ponytailed, baggy-jacketed doorman, who selected Those Who Might Enter with a grudging flick of a finger.
    Thom Sebastian was never denied entrance.
    Tap, tap, tap.
    True, mostly the women roll their eyes and tell him to fuck off. But sometimes they did what she was doing now: looking down at the telegraph key—a large vial of coke—and saying, “Hi, I’m Veronica.”
    He reacted to the gift of her name like a shark tasting blood in the water. He moved in fast, sitting next to her, shaking her hand for a lengthy moment.
    “Thom,” he said.
    The sound system’s speakers, as tall as the six-foot-six, blue-gowned transvestite dancing in front of them, sent fluttering bass waves into their faces and chests. The smell was a pungent mix of cigarette smoke and a gassy, ozonelike scent—from the fake fog.
    Tap, tap, tap.
    He offered his boyish grin while she rambled on about careers—she sold something in some store somewhere but wanted to get into something else. Sebastian nodded and murmured single-word encouragements and mentally tumbled forward, caught in the soft avalanche of anticipation. He saw the evening unfold before him: They’d hit the john, duck into a stall and do a fast line or two of coke. No nookie yet, nor would he expect any. After that they’d leave and goover to Meg’s, where he was a regular. Then out for pasta. After that, when it was pushing 3 A.M ., he’d ask her with mock trepidation if she ever went north of Fourteenth Street.
    A car-service Lincoln up to his apartment.
    Your condom or mine …
    And later, after a Val or ’lude to come down, they’d sleep. Up at eight-thirty the next morning, share the shower, take turns with the hair dryer, give her a kiss. She’d cab it home. He’d down some speed and head to Hubbard, White & Willis for another day of lawyering.
    Tap, tap, tap …
    “Hey,” Thom said, interrupting her as she was saying
something
, “how about—”
    But there was a disturbance. Another incarnation of Veronica appeared: a young woman walking toward them. Different clothes but the same high cheeks, pale flesh, laces, silks, a flea market’s worth of costume jewelry. Floral perfume. They were interchangeable, these two women. Clones. They bussed cheeks. Behind Veronica II stood a pair of quiet, preoccupied young Japanese men dressed in black, hair greased and spiked high like porcupine quills. One wore a medal studded with rhinestones.
    Sebastian suddenly detested them—not because of the impending kidnapping of his new love but for no reason he could figure out. He wanted to lean forward and ask the young man if he’d won the medal at Iwo Jima. Veronica nodded to her other half, lifted her eyebrows at Sebastian with regret and a smile that belied it and disappeared into the mist.
    Tap, tap, tap.
    “Quo vadis
, Veronica?” Sebastian whispered, pronouncing the v’s like w’s the way his Latin professor had instructed. He turned back to the bar and noticed that somebody had taken Veronica’s space. Someone who was the exact opposite of her: homey, pretty, dressed conservatively but stylishly in black. She was vaguely familiar; hemust’ve seen her here before. The woman ordered a rum and Coke, gave a laugh to herself.
    She was hardly his type but Sebastian couldn’t help raise an eyebrow at the laugh. She noticed and said in response, “That woman over there? She’s decided I’m her soul mate. I don’t know what