At the bar, two women were waiting for them. One was obviously Pari’s mother: the same light brown skin, the same dark eyes, although her glistening hair was cut into a neat bob. The other woman was a blonde, the sides of her head shaved, the top long and spilling pink tips into her eyes. Shaw was starting to have an idea of what Pari looked for in a woman.

“I’m Daksha,” Pari’s mother said, shaking hands with them. “This is Bud.”

“Like your shirt,” Shaw whispered.

North elbowed him so hard that Shaw thought he might have cracked a rib, and Bud must have overheard—or noticed the nametag—because she crushed Shaw’s hand when she pumped it.

“They started coming in here about ten days ago,” Daksha said, wiping her hands on a towel; she smelled like fresh-cut limes when she put a Coke in front of Shaw. “They just showed up. Twelve of them. Fifteen.”

“Fifteen the last time they came in,” Bud said. “Twelve the first time.”

“The bros are multiplying,” North said, his thumb gliding up and down the neck of his Schlafly. “Do they cause trouble?”

“They’re a bunch of douchey white guys in a lesbian bar,” Bud said. “That is the trouble.”

Daksha sighed. “They take up a few booths right near the east bar. They’re loud. They laugh. They’re obviously laughing at us. But they never do anything that would be a legitimate reason to kick them out. They don’t say anything offensive, not to our faces. But they’ll go out on the dance floor and try to get women to dance with them, and then they go back and explode laughing.”

“It’s fucking up the whole vibe.”

“So kick them out,” North said. “You don’t have to have a good reason.”

“We tried that,” Daksha said. “They threatened to sue us. They’re in law school, and they say it won’t cost them anything. Wouldn’t matter even if it did. These kids, they’ve got tons of money—you can tell that just looking at them. I don’t have any idea if I can legally kick them out of the bar, but I don’t think it matters.”

“Of course it matters,” Shaw said.

“This place,” Daksha gestured to the bar, and another whiff of fresh lime carried in the air. “Lesbian bars aren’t exactly overwhelmed with customers, and we skate by on a slim margin. It wouldn’t matter if we won or lost a civil suit; they could put us out of business just with the lawyer’s fees.”

North looked at Shaw. Shaw nodded.

“Let’s get rid of some douchey bros,” North said.

3