How easy it was for Genevieve. All that money. The clothes, the shoes, the indulgences. The games that money lets you play. The superior attitude that comes free with the cash. God, she was so angry with that woman. The things she’d said back there at the Coyote…cheating on her husband with two men and then trying to put the blame on Lulu! Well, Lulu might have done a few low-down things in her time, but she would never have stooped so low as to marry a man she didn’t love. Lulu was worth more than that.

Taking her glass of beer, she turned to find a place to sit, and…Could it be? She was almost sure…yes, it was.

Olga was sitting alone at a table, staring into her empty glass.

“You know, chérie,” said Lulu, “I love you more than anyone in the world.”

“Except Camby,” said Genevieve.

“Including Camby.” She lit a fresh cigarette and passed one to Genevieve. They’d finished the Scotch. “Men, they come and go. But your best friend is forever.”

“Got anything else to drink?”

“You have a lot of power over me,” continued Lulu. “Power to make me happy. Power to hurt me badly.”

“I want to get tight,” said Genevieve. “Tighter than I’ve ever been.” And she got down on her hands and knees and started groping around under the bed, searching for more bottles.

“Sometimes,”—Lulu’s voice had gone vague and dreamy—“I am wounded so deeply by the people I love that I go crazy-mad. And then I get drunk and do stupid things.”

Genevieve tried to come out from under the bed and bashed her head hard on the metal frame.

“I do these stupid things out of love,” said Lulu. “Not out of hate.”

“What are you talking about?” Genevieve rubbed at her sore head.

“I went and put my mouth before my brain,” said Lulu. “The way we both do sometimes. Because we are hurting in our hearts. We have terrible tempers, the pair of us. We go off like fireworks and say things we regret.” She reached out to stroke Genevieve’s face again. “Vivi, I am truly, deeply sorry.”

Camby and Violetta had gone off together and Genevieve had let her down unforgivably. Lulu was drinking to forget her woes, but with every drink, they grew. At least she didn’t have to drink alone. Olga, as it turned out, was surprisingly sympathetic, as well as being morbidly fascinating. She was talking about how she’d first fallen in love with Paolo Zachari.

“He was so full of ideas,” she was saying. “So beautiful and clever. There was an energy about him—a magnetism. And there I was—an empty husk in comparison. I’d used up all my youth and my strength on just surviving.”

“I certainly know how that feels,” muttered Lulu.