“Uh guys,” Bette said, her irritation mounting. Alice turned back to the phone.

“Bette, you’ve got game in Michigan. That’s amazing for a snotty LA ***** like you.” Alice again turned to Dana, “Bette’s taking the Midwest by storm,” and Bette again heard Dana descend into laughter, though this time nearly hysterical, and Alice chided herself for letting her get so stoned.

“Uh okum Bettethe show’s coming back on. I’m sorry you didn’t meet a lawyer in the lobby so you could meet and ***** according to your usual standards. But saucy is extra hot whatever it does for a living. Am I right?”

Bette’s mind wandered to the curve of Tina’s neck, the slender wrists revealed by shirt sleeves casually rolled up, the uniform jacket tossed carelessly over her chair. “You’re right, Alice.”

“Ok, oh *****, what’d she say about Macy Gray??” Alice‘s voice rang in Bette’s ear, and it suddenly hit her that the reality of her life in L.A. was not what she wanted to be in touch with at this moment.

“Call me when you get back, Bette. I want details.” Alice‘s laugh was the last thing Bette heard before flipping her phone shut and staring at it in her lap.

“Details,” she said to herself. “Right.”

Bette looked around the room, her eyes falling on her suitcase, where any other night in a hotel she’d pull out a pair of boxers and a tank and read in bed until she got sleepy. Where she’d have laughed at Alice‘s TV compulsions, then called back an hour later to be filled in on the misadventures of Alice and Dana over the past week that she’d been gone. Not where she’d be standing over her bag wondering where she put that pair of jeans that fit her ***** so perfectly, trying to think on what pretext she could possibly pull this whole thing off.

She pulled aside the curtain and looked out at the half foot of snow on the ground, amazed at the landscape, so gritty and dark in the winter, so the opposite of her home. And Tina downstairs, working in a too empty hotel, looking far too attractive, flirting with her from the moment she walked in the door, and all because Bette had revealed her bitchy, overly annoyed self automatically and without thinking. It was Tina’s casual impertinence that had caught her off guard. People were always kissing her ***** at hotels.

Bette shivered at the thought and then laughed. “Oh lord,” she said, offering up one of her classic eye rolls. She caught sight of her face in the mirror, and stepped closer, noting the dilated pupils, the anxiety, the heat. She stared herself down. Art Girl, as Alice called her. With delusions of grandeur.

But tonight, for some reason, her mind was not speaking that language, while her body seemed assiduously tuned to the energy around her. She turned back to her face in the mirror, and for the first time ever felt grateful for her good looks. She didn’t know whether Tina was ***** or straight or somewhere in between, but she knew when a woman was interested in her. “*****,” she exhaled steadily, glancing down at her watch. “I am in so much trouble.”