She went on at nine. The room received her the way the room always received her, with the particular quality of attention that meant Mona Lick was on and the evening had properly begun. She took the pole. Started slow. Let the music do what the music did and let her body do what her body knew.
The thinking part of her mind ran its separate track in the background.
Track one: the warehouse number and the probate dispute and how long she had before circumstances changed in a direction she couldn't counter.
Track two: Bastien Leclair and the twelve month binding period and what a practical management strategy actually looked like for a legal problem she had not yet fully mapped.
Track three: the specific and inconvenient memory of a courtyard and precise patient fingers and the way he had
