If I were a man, I can’t imagine it would have turned out this way. I will say no more except what I have in my mind and that is that you will find the spirit of Caesar in this soul of a woman.
—from the letters of Artemisia Gentileschi
(1593–c.1652)
“Eddie wants to see you.”
“What’s he want?” Nita asked. “Another blow job?”
“Probably. I think he’s tired of the new girl.”
“Well, fuck Eddie. And fuck you, too.”
“Christ, Nita. You on the rag or what? I’m just passing along a message.”
Nita didn’t turn to look at Jennifer. She stared instead at her reflection in the mirror, trying to find even one familiar feature under the makeup. Even her eyes were wrong, surrounded by a thick crust of black eye shadow, the irises hidden behind tinted red contacts. From beyond the dressing room came the thumping bass line of whatever David Lee Roth song Candy used in her act. That meant she had ten minutes before she was up again. Lilith, Mistress of the Night. Black leather and lace over Gothic-pale skin, the only spots of color being the red of her eyes, her lips, and the lining of her cape. Nita’s gaze dropped from her reflection to the nine-foot-long whip that lay coiled like a snake on the table in front of her.
“Fuck this,” she said.
The dressing room smelled of cigarettes and beer and cheap perfume which just about summed up her life. She swept her arm across the top of the table and sent everything flying. Whip and makeup containers. A glass, half full of whiskey. Cigarettes, lighter, and the ashtray with butts spilling out of it. A small bottle filled with uppers. The crash of breaking glass was loud in the confined quarters of the dressing room.
Jennifer shook her head. “I’m not cleaning that shit up,” she said.
Nita looked up from the mess she’d made. The rush of utter freedom she’d felt clearing the table top had vanished almost as quickly as it had come.
“So who asked you to?” she asked.
Jennifer pulled a chair over from one of the other tables and sat down beside her. “You want to talk about it?”
Nita bit back a sharp retort. Jennifer wasn’t her friend—she didn’t have any friends—but unlike ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the world, Jennifer had always treated her decently. Nita looked away, wishing she hadn’t sent her shot of whiskey flying off the table with everything else.
“Last time I was up, my ex’s old man was in the audience,” she said.
“So?”
“So the only way I could keep my visitation rights with Amanda was by promising I’d get a straight job.”
Jennifer nodded, understanding. “The old bad influence line.”
“Like she’s old enough to know or even care what her old lady does for a living.” Nita was really missing that drink now. “It’s so fucking unfair. I mean, it’s okay for this freak to come into a strip joint with his buddies and have himself a good time, but my working here’s the bad influence. Like we even want to be here.”
“I don’t mind that much,” Jennifer said. “It beats hooking.”
“You know what I mean. He’s going to run straight to a judge and have them pull my visiting rights.”
“That sucks,” Jennifer agreed. She leaned forward and gave Nita a quick hug. “But you gotta hang in there, Nita. At least we’ve got jobs.”
“I know.”
“And you’d better go see Eddie or maybe you won’t even have that.”
Nita shook her head. “I can’t do it. I can’t even go out on the stage again tonight.”
“But . . .” Jennifer began, then she sighed. “Never mind. We’ll figure out a way to cover for you.”
“And Eddie?”
Jennifer stood up and tugged down on the hem of her miniskirt. “That’s one you’re going to owe me, girl.”
When Nita stepped out the back door of the Chic Cheeks in her street clothes all that remained of her stage persona was the shock of jet-black hair that fell halfway down her back in a cascade of natural curls. She was wearing faded blue jeans that were tucked into cowboy boots. The jeans had a hole in the left knee through which showed the black fabric of her body stocking. Overtop of it was a checked flannel shirt, buttoned halfway up, the tails hanging loose. Her purse was a small khaki knapsack that she’d picked up at the Army Surplus over on Yoors Street. Her stage makeup was washed off and all she wore now was a hint of eye shadow and a dab of lipstick.
She knew she looked about as different from Lilith in her leathers and lace as could be imagined, so Nita was surprised to be recognized when she stepped out into the alleyway behind the club.
“Lilith?”
Nita paused to light a cigarette, studying the woman through a wreath of blue-grey smoke. The stranger was dressed the way Nita knew the club’s customers imagined the dancers dressed offstage: short, spike-heeled boots; black stockings and miniskirt; a jean vest open enough to show more than a hint of a black lace bra. She wore less makeup than Nita had on at the moment, but then her fine-boned features didn’t need it. Her hair was so blonde it was almost white. It was cut punky and seemed to glow in the light cast from a nearby streetlamp.
“Who wants to know?” Nita finally asked.
“Does it matter?”
Nita shrugged and took another drag from her cigarette.
“I saw you dancing,” the woman went on. “You’re really something.”
Now she got it.
“Look,” Nita said. “I don’t date customers and—no offense—but I don’t swing your way. You should go back inside and ask for Candy. She’s always looking to make a little something on the side and I don’t think she much cares what you’ve got between your legs, just so long as you can pay.”
“I’m not looking for a hooker.”
“So what are you looking for?”
“Someone to talk to. I recognized a kindred soul in you.”
The way she said it made Nita sigh. She’d heard this about a hundred times before.
“Everybody thinks we’re dancing just for them,” she said, “but you know, we’re not even thinking about you sitting out there. We’re just trying to get through the night.”
“So you don’t feel a thing?”
“Okay, so maybe I get a little buzz from the attention, but it doesn’t mean I want to fuck you.”
“I told you. That’s not what I’m looking for.”
“Yeah, yeah. I know.” Nita ground her cigarette out under the heel of her boot. “You just want to talk. Well, you picked the wrong person. I’m not having a good night and to tell you the truth, I’m not all that interesting anyway. All the guys figure women with my job are going to be special—you know, real exotic or something—but as soon as we go out on a date with somebody they figure out pretty quick that we’re just as boring and fucked up as anybody else.”
“But when you’re on the stage,” the woman said, “it’s different then, isn’t it? You feed on what they give you.”
Nita gave her an odd look. “What’re you getting at?”
“Why don’t we go for a drink somewhere and talk about it?” the woman said. She looked around the alleyway. “There’s got to be better places than this to have a conversation.”
Nita hesitated for a moment, then shrugged. “Sure. Why not? It’s not like I’ve got anything else to do. Where’d you have in mind?”
“Why don’t we simply walk until we happen upon a place that appeals to us?”
Nita lit another cigarette before she fell in step with the woman.
“My name’s not Lilith,” she said.
“I know.” The woman stopped and turned to face her. “That’s my grandmother’s name.”
Like people couldn’t share the same name, Nita thought. Weird.
“She used to call me Imogen,” the woman added.
She offered her hand, so Nita shook it and introduced herself. Imogen’s grip was strong, her skin surprisingly cool and smooth to the touch. Shaking hands with her was like holding onto a hand made of porcelain. Imogen switched her grip on Nita’s hand, shifting from her right to her left, and set off down the alleyway again. Nita started to pull free, but then decided she liked the feel of that smooth cool skin against her own and let it slide.
“What does ‘Nita’ mean?” Imogen asked.
“I don’t know. Who says it’s supposed to mean anything?”
“All names mean something.”
“So what does your name mean?”
“ ‘Granddaughter.’ ”
Nita laughed.
“What do you find so humorous?”
Nita flicked her cigarette against the nearest wall which it struck in a shower of sparks. “Sounds to me like your grandmother just found a fancy way of not giving you a name.”
“Perhaps she had to,” Imogen said. “After all, names have power.”
“Now what’s that supposed to mean?” Nita asked.
Imogen didn’t answer. She came to an abrupt halt and then Nita saw what had distracted her. They’d been walking toward the far entrance of the alley and were now only a half-dozen yards from its mouth. Just ahead lay the bright lights of Palm Street. Unfortunately, blocking their way were three men. Two Anglos and a Hispanic. Not yet falling-down drunk, but well on the way. Palm Street was as busy as ever but Nita knew that in this part of the city, at this time of night, she and Imogen might as well have been on the other side of the world for all the help they could expect to get from the steady stream of pedestrians by the mouth of the alley.
“Mmm-mmm. Looking good,” one of the three men said.
“But the thing is,” added one of his companions, “I’ve just got to know. When you’re fucking each other, which one’s pretending to be the guy?”
Drunken laughter erupted from all three of them.
Imogen let go of Nita’s hand. She was probably scared, Nita thought. Nita didn’t blame her. She’d be scared herself if it wasn’t for the fact that she’d come to a point in her life where she just didn’t give a shit anymore. Reaching into one of the front pockets of her jeans, she pulled out a switchblade. When she thumbed the button on the side of the handle, it opened with an evil-sounding snick.
“Oh, conchita,” the Hispanic said, shaking his head in mock sorrow. “We were just going to have some fun with you, but now there’s got to be some pain.”
He stepped forward, the Anglos flanking him, one on either side. Before Nita could decide which of them was going to get the knife, Imogen moved to meet them. What happened next didn’t seem to make any sense at all. It looked to Nita that Imogen picked up the first by his face, thumb on one temple, fingers on the other, and simply pitched him over her shoulder, back behind them, deeper into the alley. The second she took out with a blow to the throat that dropped him on the spot. The third tried to bolt, but she grabbed his arm and wrenched it up behind his back until Nita heard the bone snap. He was still screaming from the pain when Imogen grabbed his head and snapped his neck with a sudden twist.
Imogen held the dead man for a long moment, staring into his face as though she wanted to memorize his features, then she let him fall to the pavement. Nita stared at the body, at the way it lay so still on the ground in front of them. Her gaze went to the other two assailants. They lay just as unmoving. One moment there had been three half-drunk men about to assault them and in the next they were all dead.
“What—” Nita had to clear her throat. “What the fuck did you do to them?”
Imogen didn’t even seem to be breathing hard. “It’s a . . . a kind of judo,” she said.
Nita looked at her companion, but it was hard to make out her features in the poor light. She seemed to be smiling, her teeth flashing as white as did her hair. Nita slowly closed up her knife and stowed it back in her jeans.
“Judo,” Nita repeated slowly.
Imogen nodded. “Come on,” she said, offering Nita her hand again.
Nita hesitated. She lit a cigarette with trembling fingers and took a long drag before she eased her way around the dead man at her feet to take Imogen’s hand. The porcelain coolness calmed her, quieting the rapid drum of her pulse.
“Let’s get that drink,” Imogen said.
“Yeah,” Nita said. “I think I could really use a shot right about now.”
They ended up in Fajita Joe’s, a Mexican bar on Palm Street with a terrace overlooking Fitzhenry Park. The place catered primarily to yuppies and normally Nita wouldn’t have been caught dead in it, but by the time they were walking by its front door she would have gone in anywhere just to get a drink to steady her jangled nerves. They took a table on the terrace at Imogen’s insistence—”I like to feel the night air,” she explained. Nita gulped her first shot and immediately ordered a second whiskey, double, on the rocks. With another cigarette lit and the whiskey to sip, she finally started to relax.
“So tell me about yourself,” Imogen said.
Nita shook her head. “There’s nothing to tell. I’m just a loser—same as you’ve got to be if the only way you can find someone to have a drink with you is by hanging out around back of a strip club.” Then she thought of the three men in the alley. “ ’Course, the way you took out those freaks . . . those moves weren’t the moves of any loser.”
“Forget about them,” Imogen said. “Tell me why you’re so sad.”
Nita shook her head. “I’m not sad,” she said, lighting up another cigarette. “I’m just fucked up. The only thing I’m good at is running away. When the going gets tough, I’m gone. My whole life, that’s the way I deal with the shit.”
“And the dancing doesn’t help?”
“Give me a break. That’s not dancing—it’s shaking your ass in a meat market. Maybe some of the girls’ve convinced themselves they’re in show business, but I’m not that far out of touch with reality.”
“But you still get something from it, don’t you?”
Nita butted out her cigarette. “I’ll tell you the truth, I always wanted to be up on a stage, but I can’t sing and I can’t play a guitar and the only way I can dance is doing a bump ’n’ grind. When you’ve got no talent, your options get limited real fast.”
“Everyone has a talent.”
“Yeah, well, mine’s for fucking up. I work with women who are dancing to put themselves through college, single mothers who’re feeding their families, a writer who’s supporting herself until she can sell her first book. The only reason I’m dancing is that I couldn’t make that kind of money doing anything else except hooking and I’m not that hard up yet.”
“Perhaps you’ve set your sights too high,” Imogen said. “It’s hard to attain goals when they seem utterly beyond your reach. You might consider concentrating on smaller successes and then work your way up from them.”
“Yeah? Like what?”
Imogen shrugged. “Breathing’s a talent.”
“Oh, right. And so’s waking up in the morning.”
“Feel this,” Imogen said.
She caught Nita’s wrist and started to bring it toward her chest.
“Hey!” Nita said, embarrassed. “I told you I’m not like that.”
She was sure everybody on the terrace was staring at them, but when she tried to pull free, she couldn’t move her hand. She might as well have been trying to move the building under them. Imogen brought Nita’s palm through the open front of her jean vest and laid it against the cool smooth skin between her breasts. In the light cast from the terrace lanterns, her eyes gleamed like a cat’s caught in a car’s headbeams.
“What do you feel?” Imogen asked.
“Look, why don’t you . . .”
Just get out of my face, was what Nita was going to say, except as her palm remained on Imogen’s skin, she suddenly realized—
“You . . . you’re not breathing,” she said.
Imogen released Nita’s wrist. Nita rubbed at the welt that the grip of Imogen’s fingers had left on her skin.
“I’m sorry,” Imogen said. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“How can you not breathe?”
Imogen smiled. “It’s a talent I don’t have,” she said.
This was seriously strange, Nita thought. She was way, way out of her depth.
“So,” she began. She had to stop to clear her throat. Her mouth felt as though it was coated with dry dust. She took a gulp of whiskey and fumbled another cigarette out of her package. “So what are you?” she finally managed.
Imogen shrugged. “Immortal. Undead.”
That moment in the alley flashed in Nita’s mind. The three men, dispatched so quickly and Imogen not even out of breath. The vise-like strength of her fingers. The weird gleam in her eyes. The cool touch of her skin. The fact that she really didn’t breathe.
Nita tried to light her cigarette, but her hand shook too much. She flinched when Imogen reached out to steady it, but then accepted the help. She drew the smoke in deeply, held it, exhaled. Took another drag.
“Okay,” she said. “So what do you want from me?”
“No more than I told you earlier: company.”
“Company.”
Imogen nodded. “When the sun rises this morning, I’m going to die. I just didn’t want to die alone.”
“You want me to die with you?”
“Not at all. I just want you to be there when I do. I’ve lived this hidden life of mine for too long. Nobody knows me. Nobody cares about me. I thought you’d understand.”
“Understand what?”
“I just want to be remembered.”
“This is too weird,” Nita said. “I mean, you don’t look sick or anything.”
Like I’d know, Nita added to herself.
“I’m not sick. I’m tired.” Imogen gave a small laugh that held no humor. “I’m always amazed at how humans strive so desperately to prolong their lives. If you only knew . . . .”
Nita thought about her own life and imagined it going on forever.
“I think I see where you’re coming from,” she said.
“It’s not so bad at first—when you outlive your first set of friends and lovers. But it’s harder the next time, and harder still each time after that, because you start anticipating the end, their deaths, from the first moment you meet them. So you stop having friends, you stop taking lovers, only to find it’s no easier being alone.”
“But aren’t there . . . others like you around?” Nita asked.
“They’re not exactly the sort of people I care to know. I’m not exactly the sort of person I care to know. We’re monsters, Nita. We’re not the romantic creatures of myth that your fictions perpetuate. We’re parasites, surviving only by killing you.”
She shook her head. “I look around and all I see is meat. All I smell is blood—some diseased, and not fit for consumption, it’s true, but the rest . . .”
“So how do I smell?” Nita wanted to know.
Imogen smiled. “Very good—though not as good as you did when those men attacked us in the alley earlier. Adrenaline adds a spicy flavor to human scent, like a mix of jalapeños and chili.”
The new turn their conversation had taken made Nita feel too much like a potential meal.
“If your life’s so shitty,” she asked, “why’ve you waited until now to put an end to it?”
“My existence is monstrous,” Imogen told her. “But it’s also seductive. We are so powerful. I hate what I am at the same time as I exult in my existence. Nothing can harm us but sunlight.”
Nita shivered. “What about the rest of it?” she asked, thinking of the dozens of late-night movies she’d watched. “You know—the running water, the garlic, and the crosses?”
“Only sunlight.”
“So tomorrow morning you’re just going to sit in the sun?”
Imogen nodded. “And die. With you by my side to wish my spirit safe-journey and to remember me when I’m gone.”
It was so odd. There was no question in Nita’s mind but that Imogen was exactly what she said she was. The strange thing was how readily she accepted it. But accepting it and watching Imogen die were two different things. The endings of all those late-night movies went tumbling through her in all their grotesque glory.
“I don’t know if I can do it,” Nita said.
Imogen’s eyebrows rose questioningly.
“I’m not real good with gross shit,” Nita explained. “You know—what’s going to happen to you when the sunlight touches you.”
“Nothing will happen,” Imogen assured her. “It’s not like in the films. I’ll simply stop living, that’s all.”
“Oh.”
“Have you finished your drink?” Imogen asked. “I’d like to go for a last walk in the park.”
Fitzhenry Park was probably the last place Nita would go for a walk at this time of night, but remembering how easily Imogen had dealt with their attackers in the alley behind the club, she felt safe enough doing so tonight. Walking hand in hand, they seemed to have the footpaths to themselves. As they got deeper inside the park, all sense of the city surrounding them vanished. They could have been a thousand miles away, a thousand years away from this time and place. The moon was still working its way up to its first quarter—a silvery sickle hanging up among the stars that came and went from view depending on the foliage of the trees lining the path.
Nita kept stealing glances at her companion whenever there was enough light. She looked so normal. But that was how it always was, wasn’t it? The faces people put on when they went out into the world could hide anything. All you ever knew about somebody was what he or she cared to show you. Nita normally didn’t have much interest in anyone, but she found herself wanting to know everything she could about Imogen.
“You told me you live a hidden life,” she said, “but the way you look seems to me would turn more heads than let you keep a low profile.”
“I dress like this to attract my prey. Since I must feed, I prefer to do so on those the world can do better without.”
Makes sense, Nita thought. She wondered if she should introduce Imogen to Eddie back at the club.
“How often do you have to . . . feed?” she asked.
“Too often.” Imogen glanced at her. “The least we can get by on is once a week.”
“Oh.”
“I’ve been fasting,” Imogen went on. “Preparing for tonight. I wanted to be as weak as possible when the moment comes.”
If Imogen was weak at the moment, Nita couldn’t imagine what she’d be like at full strength. She wasn’t sure if she was being more observant, or if her companion had lowered her guard now that they were more familiar with each other’s company, but Imogen radiated a power and charisma unlike anyone Nita had ever met before.
“You don’t seem weak to me,” she said.
Imogen came to a stop and drew Nita over to a nearby bench. When they sat down, she put a hand on Nita’s shoulder and looked her directly in the face.
“It doesn’t matter how weak or hurt we feel,” she said, “we have to be strong in here.” Her free hand rose up to touch her chest. “We have to project that strength or those around us will simply take advantage of us. We can take no pride in being a victim—we belittle not only ourselves, but all women, if we allow that to happen to us without protest. You must stand up for yourself. You must always stand up for yourself and your sisters. I want you to remember that as you go on with your life. Never give in, never give up.”
“But you’re giving up.”
Imogen shook her head. “Don’t equate the two. What I am doing is taking the next step on a journey that I should have completed three hundred years ago. I am not surrendering. I am hoping to kill the monster that I let myself become and finally moving on.”
Imogen looked away then. She shifted her position slightly, settling her back against the bench. After a few moments, she leaned her head against Nita’s.
“What do you think it’s like when you die?” Nita asked. “Do you think everything’s just over, or do we, you know, go on somewhere?”
“I think we go on.”
“What’ll you miss the most?”
Imogen shrugged. “What would you miss if you were in my position?”
“Nothing.”
“Not even your daughter?”
Nita didn’t even bother to ask how Imogen knew about Amanda.
“You’ve got to understand,” she said. “I love her. And it makes me feel good to know that something I was a part of making isn’t fucked up. But it makes me feel even better knowing that she’s going to be raised properly. That she’ll be given all the chances I never had. I didn’t want her to grow up to be like me.”
“But you still visit her.”
Nita nodded. “But once she’s old enough to understand what I am, I’ll stop.”
If not sooner. If John’s old man didn’t get the judge to revoke her visitation rights because of what he’d seen her doing tonight.
“It’s getting late,” Imogen said. She stood up, drawing Nita to her feet.
“Where’re we going?”
“To my apartment.”
To call it an apartment was a bit of a misnomer. It turned out that Imogen owned the penthouse on top of the Brighton Hotel, overlooking the harbor. The only time Nita had ever seen a place this fancy was in the movies. While Imogen went to get her a drink, she walked slowly around the immense living room, trailing her hand along the polished wood tables and the back of a chesterfield that could seat five people comfortably. There was even a baby grand in one corner. She finally ended up at the glass doors leading out onto a balcony where she saw two images superimposed over each other: a view of the lake and Wolf Island in the distance, and one of herself standing at the window with the living room behind her, Imogen walking toward her with a brandy glass in each hand.
Nita turned to accept the brandy. Imogen touched her glass against Nita’s and then they both drank.
“Why’d you pick me?” Nita asked.
“The name on the flyer outside the club first caught my eye,” Imogen said. “Then, when I began to study your life, I realized that we are much the same. I was like you, before the change—deadened by the ennui of my life, feeding on the admiration of those who courted my favor much the same as you do with those who come to watch you dance. It’s not such a great leap from using their base interest as a kind of sustenance to taking it from their flesh and blood.”
Nita couldn’t think of anything to say in response to that so she took another sip of her brandy.
“I want you to have this when I’m gone,” Imogen went on.
“Have what?”
Imogen made a languid movement with her arm that encompassed the penthouse. “This place. Everything I have. I’ve already made the arrangements for everything to be transferred into your name—barring unforeseen difficulties, the transaction will be completed tomorrow at noon.”
“But—”
“I have amassed a considerable fortune over the years, Nita. I want it to go to you. It will give you a chance to make a new start with your life.”
Nita shook her head. “I don’t think it’d work out.”
She’d won a thousand dollars in a lotto once. She’d planned to do all sorts of sensible things with it, from taking some development courses to better herself to simply saving it. Instead, she’d partied so hearty over the space of one weekend she’d almost put herself in the hospital. The only reason she hadn’t ended up in emergency was that everybody else that weekend had been too wasted to help her. She still didn’t know how she’d managed to survive.
“It’d just make me fuck up big-time,” she said.
Imogen nodded—not so much in acceptance of what she was saying, Nita realized, as to indicate that she was listening.
“I have to admit that I haven’t been entirely honest with you,” Imogen said. “What we’re about to embark upon when the sun rises could be very dangerous to you.”
“I . . . don’t understand.”
“I won’t die the instant the sunlights strikes me,” Imogen said. “It will take a few minutes—enough time for the beast inside me to rise. If it can feed immediately and get out of the sun, it will survive.”
“You mean you’d . . . eat me?”
“It’s not something I would do, given a choice. But the survival instinct is very strong.”
Nita knew about that. She’d tried to kill herself three times to date—deliberately, that is. Twice with pills, once with a razor blade. It was astonishing how much she’d wanted to survive, once it seemed she had no choice but to die.
“I will fight that need,” Imogen told her. “It’s why I’ve been fasting. To make the beast weak. But I can’t guarantee your safety.”
Nita filled in the silence that followed by lighting a cigarette.
“Understand,” Imogen said, “it’s not what I want. I don’t normally have conversations with my meals any more than you would with a hamburger you’re about to eat. I truly believe that it’s time for me to put the monster to rest and go on. Long past time. But the beast doesn’t agree.”
“You’ve tried this before, haven’t you?” Nita asked.
Imogen nodded.
“What happened?”
“I’m still here,” Imogen said.
Nita shivered. She silently finished her cigarette, then butted it out in an ornate silver ashtray.
“I’ll understand if you feel you must leave,” Imogen said,
“You’d let me go—even with everything I now know?”
Imogen gave her a sad smile. “Who’d believe you?”
Nita lit another cigarette. She was surprised to see that her hands weren’t even shaking.
“No,” she said. “I’ll do it. But not for the money or this place.”
“It will still be in your name,” Imogen said.
Unspoken between them lay the words: if you survive the dawn.
Imogen hesitated, then it seemed she had to ask. “Is it that you care so little about your life?”
“No,” Nita said. “No matter how bad shit gets, whenever it comes down to the crunch, I always surprise myself at how much I want to live.”
“Then why will you see this through?”
Nita smiled. “Because of you. Because of what you said about us having to be strong and stand up for each other. I won’t say I’m not scared, ’cause I am, but . . .” She turned to the glass doors that led out onto the balcony. “I guess it’s time, huh? We better get to it before I bail on you.”
She put down the glass and butted out her cigarette after taking a last drag. Imogen stepped forward. She brushed Nita’s cheek with her lips, then hand in hand they went out onto the balcony to meet the dawn.