I downed my beer in an obsessively overanxious manner.

Finally I gestured to the blonde (of the formerly being backed against the bar by Bette Porter reputation) and said “Who’s your friend?” because I thought this was a very good, noncommittal way of wondering about things.

Bette frowned slightly and followed my line of sight. “I don’t know,” she said thoughtfully, “but I think I wasted a beer on her.”

I was not at all sure if she was trying to be funny or not, so I laughed anyway.

Bette glanced at something over my shoulder, flicked her eyes back toward me and said, “Do you want to go outside?”

I turned my head to try and find what had caused her vague, concealed panic, but only saw a girl lurking around in a general lurking manner, although her lurking could have been for any number of reasons. I looked back at Bette and I must have looked surprised (or stupefied), because she added hastily, “Just someone I don’t want to talk to right now,” which I translated to mean that lurking girl was probably in the early-to-late stages of Bette Porter stalking. I shrugged and followed Bette out of the club.

“Do you mind if I smoke?” she asked me, but she already had the cigarette lit, so it wasn’t as if I could say no. I watched her from a bit of a distance, not trusting myself in her proximity.

I watched her. Sometimes I watched the strange ebb and flow of the front doors of Milk-girls came in sober, girls left drunk, girls came in alone, girls left with someone. I wanted to make sense of it. I needed to. I turned to Bette, whose gaze was on the line to get in.

“Bette?” She turned to me. “What do you think happened?”

She dragged on her cigarette for a long time, most likely attempting to delay her response. She glanced at me and smiled a small, sad smile. “We were friends. I had a soft spot for you and I made the mistake of asking you to work for me.” She shrugged. “We were friends.”

I knew this to be untrue. I knew it had to be untrue because I didn’t sleep with my friends. And as Bette had pointed out, she wasn’t friends with her exes. So where did that leave us? Was there a forward motion?