“Makes no difference to me what his name is.” Sydny had stopped drinking. “But go on.”

Julie sighed again. “The truth is … well…” Her faltering was entirely real. “I’m not so good in bed, and when I learned about you, I thought, Okay, maybe she’ll be able to help me.”

“Help you with him.”

“Yes.”

“In bed.”

“Right.”

Sydny shook her head. “I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.”

Julie gave her a shy smile. “I guess either would be appropriate.”

“Poor kitten.”

Sydny looked like she meant it, which helped Julie pluck up her courage for her next question. “About orgasms…”

Sydny cocked her head. “What about ’em?” Then she held up a hand. “No, for Christ’s sake, don’t tell me. You’ve never had one.”

“I don’t think so, no.”

“You don’t think so? Kitten, if you’d had one I one thousand percent guarantee you’d know it. Plus which, you wouldn’t want anything else when you fucked Adam or Greg or Whit, or whatever his name is.”

Julie felt flushed with shame. “Then I guess I haven’t.”

“Poor kitten.”

“What do I do? About Greg, I mean.”

“It’s you you have to work on, kitten, not Greg.” Sydny stood up. “Now I have to get back to work.”

Julie, heart thundering in her breast, stood up, too. “I just need a little more info—”

“About Greg, uh uh.” Sydny gave her an arched eyebrow. “Pay the man, kitten.”

Julie did as requested, then followed the pole dancer out the door. The street was cold and dark, inhospitable after the café and the club. Julie gave an involuntary shiver.

Sydny smiled a foxlike smile as she stood in front of her. “Okay, you’re not a reporter, you’re not a PI, and if you’ve never had an orgasm you sure aren’t Greg’s new squeeze, so now what’s the deal?”

“I walked out, you know. I stood on the street outside the club for five or ten minutes before I went back inside.”

As if she were a mesmerist, Sydny’s eyes locked with hers. “You really are a poor kitten. We’ll have to cure you of that.”

“How d’you mean?”

The two women, face to face, were standing close enough to inhale each other’s breath. Julie, terrified, had an urge to turn and run. At the same time, she felt magnetized to this spot, unable either to retreat or to advance. What on earth is happening to me? she asked herself. Her heart was fluttering in her chest like a frightened bird.

“I mean,” Sydny said now, “I see more in you than you see in yourself.” Her eyes seemed as big as lanterns, and as bright. “Someone told you to come here, to ask questions about Adam or Greg or Whit. Someone’s interested in him.”

Julie seemed to be in a kind of trance. “Wha—” She had to clear her throat of an unknown emotion. “What?”

“Who sent you here, Julie?”

“A man.”

“Of course, a man. And you obeyed.”