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won’t have it any other way.”

    IN THE ZONE/YES

    Like Times Square neon, the amber LED tracks across the upper limits of Sarah’s vision, just where the shadow of her brows would be.
    PRINCESS MOVING PRINCESS MOVING PRINCESS MOVING...
    The Aujourd’Oui is Princess’s favorite spot, but there are others. Sarah should be ready to move at need.
    The washroom at the Aujourd’Oui is a conglomeration of mirrors and soft white lights, red flock on the gold wallpaper, bronze waterspouts above the sinks, chromed tissue dispensers. Sarah shoulders through the door, and a pair of dirtgirls standing in front of the mirrors glance at her. There is envy in their glance, and a kind of desperate awe, and then the eyes turn self-consciously back to the mirrors. The satin jacket represents something they want and will most likely never have, the freedom of the white crane to climb into the sky amid the silver glitter of stars. Sarah is suddenly aware of the sound of sobbing, magnified by the low ceiling, the hard edges of the room. The dirtgirl’s eyes stay fixed in their own reflections as she passes and steps into a stall.
    It is the girl in the next stall who is weeping, pausing only to draw massive shuddering breaths before bringing the air out again through the tortured muscles of the throat. It hurts to cry that hard, Sarah knows. The ribs feel as if they are breaking. The stall shudders to the impact as the girl drives her head against its wall, and Sarah knows that it is pain the girl is seeking, perhaps to drive out pain of another kind.
    Sarah makes it a policy not to get between people and what they need.
    To the sound of the impacts Sarah takes her inhaler from her belt, puts it to her nose, and triggers it. There is a brief hiss of compressed gas. Sarah throws her head back, feeling the rush of hardfire racing along her nerve paths. The stall quakes. Sarah inhales again, using the other nostril, and she feels her body go warm and then cold, the hair on her forearms prickling. Her lips peel back from her teeth, and she feels at once abnormally sensitive and abnormally hard, as if her skin is made of razor blades that can feel every mote of dust. She needs the bite of the drug, needs it to give herself that extra piece of conviction. She hadn’t mentioned it to Cunningham. The hell with him-she’ll play it her own way...
    PRINCESS MOVING PRINCESS MOVING...
    The other girl’s weeping is a whining, grating sound, like a saw on bone, syncopated with the hysterical crashing as she smashes again and again into the divider. Sarah can see flecks of blood daubing the floor of the next stall. She opens her door and sweeps through the room, past the dirtgirls, whose eyes stand out pale amid their rimming of kohl as they gaze at each other and wonder what to do about the sobbing casualty.
    PRINCESS AUJOURD’OUI REPEAT AUJOURD’OUI
    AM SWITCHING POLICE TRANSMISSIONS
    GOOD HUNTING CUNNINGHAM.
    Sarah blinks as she steps into the darkness of the club, feeling the hardfire impelling her limbs to motion, and she rides the drug like a jock on the flaming roman candle of a booster, climbing for the edge of the sky and still in control. The corners of the room, the dancers and fixtures, flare like liquid-crystal kaleidoscopes.
    And then Princess comes, and Sarah’s motion freezes. Princess is surrounded by dirtboy muscle, but she stands out clearly in the dark---there is an aura about her, a glow. She has the Look as none of them have, a soft radiance that speaks of luxury, soft and carefree joys, freedom even from gravity. A life even the jocks can’t share. It seems as if there is a pause in the music, as the room inhales in mutual awe. Two hundred eyes can see the glow and a hundred mouths, hungry for it, begin to salivate. Sarah feels her body tingle, flares of nerve warmth at her fingertips. She is ready.
    Sarah gives a soft private laugh, as if her triumph were already a fact, and walks long-legged across the darkened bar as