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else will? Nicky fucking Harris?”
    I sat staring into the filmy disc of my last margarita—the one Lou had bought and poured for me. Lou was very generous. I returned the favour as often as I could, but seven times out of ten it was Lou who got the round. Made sure I was topped off.
    I didn’t have to drink them, though, did I? I knotted my fingers together. I heard myself say, quiet and polite as if we had been strangers, “Okay. I’m gonna go now, all right? You stay here.”
    “Oh Christ. You stay, you fucking loser. You’ll be lucky if you can still walk.”
    Was he gone? I supposed so. The lights from the dance floor were no longer beating out his shadow on the table. Just at the moment, I did not want to lift my head and look.
    I did not want to lift my head. The stone in my throat had become a boulder, a scald. I thought about what Lou had said. Rationally, I knew he’d been sitting on something—jealousy, resentment, whatever—and for whatever reasons, it had all just come clawing out. I was astonished—Lou, for God’s sake!—but I shouldn’t give his outburst too much mind.
    But I had started thinking about Joe. I’d never been that much to write home about, had I? I’d thought so once—not in any particularly arrogant way, just aware that I was reasonably intelligent, decent looking, capable of loving. Oh yeah, certainly capable of that. And I’d always assumed Joe’s defection had been just for the reasons he’d given me. He wanted a girl, and no matter how lovely a bloke I might be, I couldn’t answer that. Now I began to wonder. “You fucking loser…” I hadn’t been a loser or a drunk back then, but maybe I was lacking things other than tits and a womb that Joe couldn’t live without. Maybe I’d been bristling with things he couldn’t live with , and he’d never been able to tell me.
    I jerked up one hand to my mouth, pressed my palm tight. For a second I thought I was going to be sick. Then my vision blurred, and I knew it was worse. God no, I prayed silently to whatever deity might look after feckless drunks in nightclubs. I couldn’t cry here…
    The air changed. I squeezed my eyes shut tightly, and all I could see was a retinal jump, red to black, as the pulsating lights swept the room. I didn’t really care, but little hairs all down one side of my neck gave a prickle and lifted; olfactory cells fired. Sunlight. No, because that had no smell, but something I associated with sun, as if someone had picked up the Powerhouse from its city-dregs location, dropped it on sand dunes and lifted its roof. Salt. Warm grass. A breath of life from a different bloody world. And weirdest of all, I recognised it. Last time Aaron had stood close to me, I’d been too busy hitting on him to notice the way he smelled…
    It must have registered, though. I opened my eyes, and he was there, holding out a hand to me. In the shifting lights, the air which still managed to be smoky, despite the ban, he looked utterly solid and real. His eyes were unfathomable as ever, but their expression was somehow so kind it loosened my joints. He said, smiling faintly, “Do you want to dance?”
    Of course I didn’t bloody want to dance. If he wanted to talk to me, he could take the seat Lou had just vacated. I looked at his hand. Its palm was broad, the fingers long, eloquent of power. I could see them manipulating steel, vast machineries, hauling up oil from its ancient hiding places under the North Sea. I could see him drawing me to my feet against my will if I put out my hand in return to touch him. I did. I hadn’t realised I was cold. When his grip closed round mine, its warmth seemed to shoot up my arm and into my chest. He exerted a gentle tug. “I’d have come over sooner,” he said, “but you gave me a good demo the other night of what happens around here to men who move on other blokes’ boyfriends.”
    “Lou’s not my boyfriend,” I said unsteadily. I didn’t want to move. I wanted to hide