Of course, gay guys got some of the bad stuff, too. Sneakiness, game playing, compulsive grooming, vanity, and shopping. Maybe it had nothing to do with gender, after all, West considered. Maybe there was no such thing as gender. Maybe biological people were just vehicles, like cars. She’d heard that overseas the steering wheels were on one side, while here they were on the other. Different genders? Maybe not. Maybe just different cars, the behavior of all determined by the spirit in the driver’s seat.

“I’ve had enough,” West hissed at Raines.

She drained her Sierra Nevada and started on another one. She might just tie one on tonight. Raines was driving.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” He took another deep breath and was spent. “You look like you don’t feel too good,” he said with one of his concerned expressions. “It is a little hot in here.”

West mopped her face again, her clothes getting damp but not in the way Raines might have hoped. She was feeling the heaviness in her lower nature, the goddess of fertility reminding West with more volatility every month that time was running out. West’s gynecologist had warned her gravely and repeatedly that troubles would begin about her age. She, Dr. Alice Bourgeois, spoke of punishment when there were no children and none on the way. Never underestimate biology, Dr. Bourgeois always said.

West and Raines placed an order for cheeseburgers, fries, and another round of drinks. She wiped her face again and was getting cold. She wasn’t sure she could eat anything else, not another fried pickle. She watched the band setting up, her attention wandering to people at other tables. She was quiet for a long time, overhearing a couple not so far away speaking a foreign language, maybe German. West was getting maudlin.

“You seem preoccupied,” said Raines the intuitive.

“Remember when those German tourists got whacked in Miami? What it did to the tourist industry?” she said.

Raines, as a man, took this personally. He had seen the bodies in the Black Widow slayings, or at least several of them. It was unthinkable to have a gun shoved against your head, your brains blown out. There was no telling what indignities those guys had been subjected to before the fact, and how did anyone really know that their pants hadn’t been pulled down first, that maybe they hadn’t been raped and then spray-painted? If the killer had been wearing a condom, who was going to know? West had said just the right thing to put Raines in a mood. Now he was totally pissed, too.

“So this is about the tourist industry,” he said, leaning across the table and gesturing. “Forget guys being jerked out of their cars, brains blown all over, balls spray-painted with graffiti!”

West wiped her face again and dug Advil out of her butt pack. “It’s not graffiti. It’s a symbol.”

Raines crossed his legs, feeling endangered. The waitress set down their dinner. He grabbed the ketchup bottle as he folded a french fry between his lips.