We stopped in at the Strip, Mama Gouches, and Curly's. Only one place left. The Liberty Ballroom. Appropriately named. If you didn't have balls, you didn't want to go there. I figured I had balls when I needed them, so there was no problem.

I drove past the State Complex, which always felt weirdly deserted at night. Acres of unoccupied parking spaces, eerily lit by halogen light. Empty buildings with black glass windows, looking like the death star.

The Ballroom was on the next block, next to the high-rise seniors' housing known to one and all as the Warehouse.

All night long Sally had been telling people we'd end up at the Ballroom. And now that we were here my skin was crawling and all my little hairs were standing on end. It was fear and dread premonition, plain and simple. I knew Sugar was in there. I knew he was waiting for us. I parked and looked around for Ranger. No Ranger in sight. That's because he's in the wind, I told myself. You can't see the wind. Or maybe the wind went home to watch Tuesday night fights.

Sally was cracking his knuckles next to me. He felt it, too. We looked at each other and grimaced.

"Let's do it," I said.

15

SALLY AND I stood inside the door and looked around. Bar and cocktail tables in the front. Small dance floor to the rear. Very dark. Very crowded. Very noisy. My understanding was that the Ballroom was a gay place, but clearly not everyone here was gay.

"What are all these ungay people doing here?" I asked Sally.

"Tourists. The guy who owns this place was going bust. It was a gay bar, but there weren't enough gay men in Trenton to make a go of it. So Wally got this great idea . . . he hired some guys to come in and dance and get all smoochy with each other, so the place would look really gay. Word got out, and the place started filling up. Like you could come here to see homos and be fucking politically correct." Sally smiled. "Now it's trendy."

"Like you."

"Yeah. I'm fucking trendy."

Sally waved to someone. "See that guy in the red shirt? That's Wally, the owner. He's a genius. The other thing he does is give the first drink free to daytrippers."

"Day-trippers?"

"Yuppies who want to be gay-for-a-day. Like suppose you're a guy, and you think it'd be a kick to get dressed up in your wife's clothes and go out to a bar. This is the place! You get a free drink. And on top of that, you're trendy, so it's all okay. You can even bring your wife, and she can try out being dyke-for-a-day."

The woman standing next to me was dressed in a black leather vest and black leather hot pants. She had an expensive perm that gave her perfect red curls all over her head, and she was wearing brown lipstick.