He picked up the mirror. He just about had the mind-set. He watched his reflection: lean face, brown skin a little blotchy from lack of sleep, forehead swollen with rasa, the Tantric power of retained sperm. Slowly his features began to melt and run.

He heard a sound from the bathroom, a muffled sigh, and his concentration broke. And then, instead of the Astronomer, he was looking into the mirror and seeing Veronica. She sat on the toilet, her panties around her ankles. In her left hand was a pocket mirror, in her right a short piece of red-striped soda straw. Her head rolled loosely on her neck and she rubbed her cheek against her shoulder.

He put the Mirror of Hathor back on the mat. The junk didn't surprise him; it was just that she would do it here, right here in his apartment. He moved the protesting cat off his lap and went to the bathroom. He popped the lock with his mind and kicked the door open and Veronica's head jerked up guiltily. "Hey," she said.

"Pack your shit and get out," Fortunato said. "Hey, 's jus' a li'l coke, man."

"For Christ's sake, how stupid do you think I am? Do you think I don't know smack when I see it? How long you been on this shit'?"

She shrugged, dropped the mirror and straw into her open purse. She stood up, nearly tripped, then saw her feet tangled in her panties. She balanced herself on the towel rack while she pulled them up and snapped the purse closed. "Couple months," she said. "But I'm not on anything. I jus' do it sometimes. 'Sense me."

Fortunato let her by. "What the hell's the matter with you? Don't you care what you're doing to yourself?"

"Care? I'm a fucking hooker, why should I care?"

"You're not a hooker, goddammit, you're a geisha." He followed her into the bedroom. "You've got brains and class and-"

"Geisha my ass," she said, sitting heavily on the end of the bed. "I fuck men for money. That's the goddamn bottom line." She pushed her unresisting leg into her pantyhose, the big toenail laddering a run all the way down the right side. "You like to kid yourself with all this geisha shit, but real geishas don't fuck for money. You're a pimp and I'm a whore and that's all there is to it."