“Pretty lady like you shouldn’t cry,” said the cowboy sitting on her right. The sticker on his carry-on bag read HOU. He thought he was the Marlboro Man, in his big belt buckle and plastic-heeled boots. She snuffled and took a drink of vodka that tasted like salt and mascara.

“Yeah, what do you know about it?” she muttered around the glass.

“I know you got to kiss the girls to make them cry. That it, sweetie? Somebody kiss you and make you cry?” He had yellow-brown skin he’d bought in a blue-tubed tanning salon, and eyes green enough to have come out of a contact lens case. His hat was new and made of straw and had a feather hatband dyed bright purple.

“You asshole,” she whispered, and giggled and choked and swallowed all at the same time. He leaned closer and cupped his ear, a polite cheerful expression on his face.

“Sorry?” he said, and gave her what was probably his most charming smile, dimples and all. Velvet swallowed the rest of her drink in one gulp.

“You’re an asshole!” she shouted into his ear, and giggled helplessly as he slid right off the stool and onto his ass on the floor, face gone childishly slack with shock. “The world’sh—word’s—full of goddamn assholes!”

She gagged down one more slug of vodka and groped blindly for her purse. She narrowly missed putting her stiletto heel in the cowboy’s crotch as she ed over him to weave toward the door.

Ming was supposed to be here, goddamnit. Where the hell was she? Velvet leaned against a wall that seemed to be moving and looked out at the late afternoon street; too many people, too many colors, too many voices talking about too many things—some of them were talking about her. She swallowed hard and shut her eyes, but that was worse. Her head was starting to pound.

Mom would be so disappointed in her if she threw up in public. She imagined her mother standing in the doorway, shaking her finger. Dad stood behind her in his John Deere cap with a face like a tractor tireprint. She wondered if Burt Everard Marshall had family, a nice little fireplug of a wife, tubby smiling children. He’d looked like a family man. She couldn’t remember whether or not he’d been wearing a wedding ring.

Oh, god, she’d throw up if she didn’t have another drink. She wavered away from the wall and sank into a creaking wooden chair and, like magic, a gum-smacking waitress in black Lycra pants stretched to light gray appeared at her table. Her laminated name tag said MYRA.

“Get ya something,” Myra intoned. She looked about an inch above Velvet’s head and tapped her foot.

“Scotch,” Velvet said, and then canceled that with a wide uncontrolled wave of her hand. “One for the road. Banana daiquiri.”