“Where do you live?”

“I moved in with Stephanie and Jen from the club last month. It’s just a crappy three-bedroom in San Bruno, but it’s on the BART.”

I take a long swig of coffee and flag down the waitress for a refill. “What do you pay for rent?” I ask as she tops me off.

“Five hundred.”

“Five hundred?” I say, slapping my hand on the table and sloshing my coffee. The three old men sitting at the table across from us stop eating and scowl at me. I lower my voice. “Kevin’s charging me nine hundred a month to sleep on his sofa.”

She bursts out laughing. “And you paid it?”

I shrug. “I didn’t really have a choice unless I wanted to sleep in the park.”

She gets herself together as the waitress shows up with our food. The waitress plunks Izzy’s vegetarian scramble down in front of me and gives Izzy my blueberry pancakes. “Anything else you want?” she asks without looking at either of us.

Izzy switches our plates and smiles up at her. “World peace, affordable health care, and a thong that doesn’t chafe when I dance.”

The waitress spares Izzy an annoyed glance, then spins and walks away without another word.

I reach for the syrup. “If I could find an apartment for less than nine hundred a month, I could sock some serious cash away.” And look for a real job.

Izzy pulls her plate closer and pokes at her eggs with a fork. “I think Brittany was saying her roommate was moving out. You could ask.”

I just look at her.

She laughs again. “She’s not that bad.”

“For hell spawn, you mean? Because I swear every time she looks at me it’s like she’s trying to suck out my soul.”

She rolls her eyes. “The demon thing is a costume, Sam.”

“Then you move in with her,” I say, throwing a hand at her, “and I’ll take your room with Stephanie and Jen.”

She grins at me. “Nice try, but there ain’t no way I’m letting that demon bitch suck my soul.”

I roll my eyes. “So, you coming to Astray with us or what?”

She gives me a wily smile. “Yeah. I’m coming.”

“ALL I’M SAYING,” Ginger says, waving the bartender down from her stool, “is that dancing like you guys do objectifies women.”

The opener—some local band that seems to have only one rhythm, so all their songs just blend together into a monotonous drone—is tearing down after their set. The lead singer is a hot Asian chick, and I’m betting Jonathan’s nailed her already.

“It also pays the tuition,” Izzy says from my other side.

I give her a look as Ginger orders another cosmo. Who knew Jonathan’s girlfriend would turn out to be a raging feminist? And I can’t miss the irony here—that the biggest womanizer I know is dating Gloria Steinem. She hasn’t let up since we got here a half hour ago. Though she’s trying to be careful to not full-out diss Izzy and me, that’s tough to do when she seems to believe our current job is solely responsible for the oppression of women.

“You go to school?” I ask Izzy.

She nods. “Got accepted into biochemical engineering at UC Berkeley.”

“Wow. Is that why you moved up here?”

She swirls the thin red straw through her mojito. “Yeah. I’ve always wanted to go, but I couldn’t afford all four years there, so I started at JC and worked full-time to sock enough money away that I could apply as a junior transfer.”

“I’m impressed. Berkeley’s super hard to get into.”

She shrugs like it’s no big thing. “I guess.”

There’s no way I’m telling her I just flunked out of Santa Cruz. And it makes me think maybe Mom was right. Izzy had a goal and busted her ass to make it happen. I’ve never had to work for anything. Mom and Greg took care of everything, and I’ve always just expected they would. Maybe I have taken everything for granted.

“See!” Ginger bites the cherry from her drink off the stem. “That’s what I’m talking about. Here’s a girl with a serious brain,” she says, pointing the cherry stem at Izzy, “and she’s selling her body to a bunch of horny men who have no respect for her as a person to fuel their fantasies of superiority over women as a whole. They slip cash into your g-string to establish their ownership—to demonstrate that you’re an object to be bought and—”

“To finance my education,” Izzy cuts in. “And I don’t wear a g-string.”

Ginger looks past me at Izzy and throws her hands up, exasperated. “You should be interning at Lawrence Livermore and discovering the cure for cancer, or developing sustainable food sources for third world countries.”

“I looked into it,” Izzy tells her. “Couldn’t make the rent on what they pay interns, so the cure for cancer will just have to wait until they revamp their salary structure.”

“No offense here, Ginger,” I say, turning to watch Jonathan and the guys as they sound-check up on stage. “You know I love Jonathan like a brother, but I’m pretty sure you knew he was one of the biggest man-whores in the Bay Area before you started sleeping with him. I can’t speak for what goes on between you two, but I’m pretty sure he didn’t have a whole lot of ‘respect as a person’ for most of those girls,” I say, making air quotes. “He was just fucking them.”

“No offense taken,” she says, and I can tell from her expression she means it. “The difference is, sex is a basic instinct. It’s organic and necessary, and, when it’s consensual, both partners benefit. How do you benefit by dancing on stage?”

“Other than the money?”

“What’s the price of your self-respect, Red?” she asks, her eyes narrowing.

“Four hundred a night,” I say a little defensively, then add with a shrug, “and it makes me feel desirable and sexy.”

“You are sexy and desirable,” Ginger counters. She waves a hand across the crowded bar. “Any guy here would give his left nut to get into your pants.”

I give her the skeptic’s squint. “So, you’re saying sleeping with those guys would be less degrading than dancing for them?”

She points at me as her eyes brighten, thrilled that I’m finally getting it. “Exactly!”

I don’t even have a response.

Jonathan saves me from needing one when he leans into the mic and says, “This first song goes out to my all my favorite girls.” He grins and flicks a salute in our direction, and two girls at a table in front of us squeal and wave their arms in the air, bouncing in their seats. I’d bet tomorrow night’s tips that Jonathan’s slept with both of them.

As Jonathan and the guys launch into their first set, Ginger stands and drags Izzy and me off our bar stools. “C’mon, you guys,” she yells as she tows us to the dance floor. “Time to use your siren powers for good instead of evil.”

On stage, Topher whips his long blond hair in and out of his face, and his lead guitar is like an extension of his long lean body as he cranks out a riff that has everyone is the place moving. Three-quarters of everyone in the bar sings along as Jonathan wails about how girls are like pizza toppings, each one different but none of them bad. It’s one of the first songs he and Topher wrote together when they started the band two years ago, and it’s become their anthem. Any Astray regular knows it.

Ginger, Izzy, and I dance up front, near the stage, and while Jonathan seduces every woman in the room with his voice, I can’t help but notice where his eyes linger. Ginger moves her body to his urging, like a snake to her charmer, and his gaze stays locked on her.

Maybe there’s hope for that boy yet.

WHEN JONATHAN DROPS   me at the club on the way to his gig the next night, Izzy and Brittany are already in the dressing room. Brittany smirks at me as I grab my stuff from the closet. She’s back on center after my demotion.

Izzy mouths, Ask her, then flips her eyes at Brittany.

I give her back a subtle shake of my head and a wide-eyed look that screams, Shut up!