Slick knows her voice before her face.

She sings at the club he frequents with the Crew, when he and Boxcars need drinks and Deuce needs a dance and… Slick honestly figures Droog doesn't need anything at all, but the ladies there are fond of getting him comfortable enough to remove his jacket so they can rub his shoulders.

Slick doesn't need no dames to rub his shoulders; he's fine as long as he has something strong that burns on the way down and the honey-sweet of a cabaret singer in the background, and that's how he gets to know her – like a silk ribbon through his consciousness, when his mind is hazy with alcohol, that voice is there, and she must have a regular job or somethin', because he's never been a night she isn't serenading him through the carbonation in his drink.

Slick has never once looked at the stage, but tonight things went well, and all four of them had decided to hit the club to celebrate a victory rather than drown the shame of a failure.

So Slick decides he's going to figure out just what kind of face goes to the voice that haunts his dreams, so he knows who to go up to after she's done singin', with some smooth line about wondering whether her throat hurt from all that beltin' and offering to maybe make it hurt more, if she liked, but, uh, via somethin' actually there that was large enough to hurt, like, say, maybe his cock?

Fuck, that's just weird. He oughta… oughta ask Droog about this. He glances over, and finds his 'friend' covered in girls he probably won't be sharing. Well then. Fuck that guy.

The club is hazy and Slick finds that even looking right at the stage, even with his single good eye, he can't see much of her other than that she's a Prospitian and she's packing some serious curves. Which is good, because he likes that in ladies who aren't huge awful bitches (bluh bluh).

He realizes it's probably creepy to just stare at her for her entire performance, and that is exactly what he does, although it's not like he's spending the whole time staring at her ass, or something equally ungentlemanly.

In fact, he spends only part of the time staring at her ass, and part of it listening to her voice, because he only has one good ass-starin' eye, but a pair of ears that work just great, and his mind works, too, although it works better when he isn't drunk.

He composes a scenario in his mind in which he walks up the stairs backstage, and finds her dressing room door, and he knocks on it. She answers in a pink robe that is mostly sheer for some reason, sheer enough that the white of her body is bright underneath it like a star, but not so sheer that he can see the lining between her plates.

More left to the imagination.

He slides a finger under her chin, tips her head up so he can look into the cool depths of her dark eyes, and murmurs something at once romantic and unfit for public ears, and bam, that's that, he's got her and she's gonna give him the best damn shoulder rub anyone ever saw.

None of it actually goes quite as planned.

First, Slick stumbles on his way up the stairs, then he finds his mysterious lady not in her dressing room and not in a sheer robe, but talking to a man holding a trombone whom Slick supposes was in that band he wasn't paying any attention to.

So he stands awkwardly for a few seconds until he hears a lull in the conversation, and injects himself less impressively than he'd hoped to: "H-hey…"

Ms. Paint has been having a wonderful evening thus far, and many of her evenings are wonderful, because she enjoys singing and wearing pretty dresses with slits up the sides and low, flirty heels, and especially the music that accompanies her voice. Maybe she is what people pay attention to, but she wouldn't presume as much. She thinks of her voice as a leaf in a river. Her audience can use it, if they wish, to trace the ebb and flow of the music around it, but a leaf on its own is only a leaf and not terribly interesting.

Nonetheless, she's used to people approaching her, and she enjoys it when they do. The trombonist is a good man and an excellent player, but Ms. Paint thinks he's had a bit too much to drink and ought to get home to his wife before she worries about him.

She's letting him know as much, and has just finished when she hears another voice that she doesn't recognize, although it sounds as though directed at her. The trombonist smiles and saunters off, and she turns to find another man who most certainly oughtn't to be backstage like this!

"Hello, sir… Are you looking for someone?" she asks, tilting her head a little.

He opens his mouth like he wants to say something to her, and Ms. Paint is nearly certain he isn't simply trying to show off all of those lovely sharp teeth he has. But no words come out, and eventually he closes his mouth and gulps.

Though it's faint, she can see the very slight redness of a blush over his black cheeks.

She smiles. "Did you enjoy the show?"

"Uh."

She watches him expectantly.

"Ya got a nice f-face, doll."

Most certainly the best compliment she's received all night. "Oh, my. Thank you. I think you have a nice face, too."

He mumbles something.

"I'm sorry?"

"…buy ya… drink?"

Ms. Paint has to have him repeat it again before she hears him right, but she can't really refuse an offer posed so sincerely. She introduces herself to him on the way back to the bar where he'd been sitting, and he stumbles over replying with his own name quite literally.

She likes his name, though. Spades Slick. It's a good name. Easy to remember, and once she gets him talking a little he mentions his friends, who are called Diamonds, Hearts, and Clubs, as if they have their own secret society (for men named after card suits)! It's very interesting, and she wonders if they are code names.

Maybe he's a spy? How dashing!

She asks him, and he splutters and flails a little before answering that no, he is not a spy, but a gangster, which is dashing in its own right, she thinks. Surely he isn't a hardened criminal or anything like that. He's a nice man who's bought her a drink, and is remaining awfully flustered.

To think it's for her sake is a little self-centered, but she hopes, a little. She finds him endearing.

She feels bad when she sees his face after she politely refuses his offer to 'show her his stabs', because knives are not proper for a club, but he looks so downtrodden over it… So she allows him just one knife, which he carefully removes from a sheath on his belt and proceeds to fawn over as though it were his child.

It may be the post-performance satisfaction; it may be the drink; it may just be him. Either way, she enjoys this Spades Slick, even if he is kind of a goober. She finishes her drink, and hastily, as if he'd been preparing it all night, he offers to walk her home.

And how can she refuse the offer?

Slick'd really thought she would've. He's being such a fuckup; he's been being such a fuckup, and he knows it, because honestly, what kind of freak offers to show a lady his stabs?! Probably a serial killer, that's what.

And he hadn't been able to hardly talk beforehand, and he'd been stumbling and flailing and maybe she just wanted him to walk her home because she thought he was really drunk and needed someone around to make sure he didn't, didn't… fuckin'… drown in a gutter, or some shit.

You goddamn fool. You goddamn idiot.

You stupid motherfucker, you bought a lady a drink and now you're walking her home.

Aw shit. Aw. Yes.

Slick is mostly quiet on the way back to her apartment, watching the pair of moons around this planet – kinda like Derse and Prospit, except, like… both moons orbiting a single planet that isn't chained to either of them. A bigger, brighter moon, and a smaller, redder one, and the white one is making her carapace even whiter, and picking out silver in the fur coat she's wearing. It's cold, but Slick doesn't really mind. She looks so cozy, and he's glad just to watch that, and his hands shake in his pockets not from cold, but from nervousness.

They walk up some stairs, and she stops, and he runs into the door to her apartment building.

He's pretty much come to terms by now with the fact that he isn't smooth and is in fact a blundering maroon.

"Are you alright, Mr. Slick?"

"Huh?" He blinks at her. "Oh, uh, yeah, babe, yeah, 'm fine…"

"That's good. I'm glad." She smiles at him, and although her eyes are more squinted this way, they somehow seem shinier and brighter and more beautiful and fuck, he can't look away. "Thank you for walking me back." He doesn't even really hear her. "You're very nice and I hope we see each other again soon."

She leans up, kisses him on the cheek, and then the door opens and closes and for a few seconds Slick is just standing there with his mouth partly open and the rest of him perfectly still, cold gathering in his fingertips and toes.

Then eventually he snaps out of it, and stumbles back down the stairs, and all he can see is those eyes and he can feel her chilled lips on his cheek, her warm breath, and those words in his ears, threaded in his mind not like the ribbon of her singing, but more like a thread that's sewn there somewhere in the depths of his thoughts on a seam between hope and reality.

I hope we see each other again soon.

And that's when he knows. He's doing it, man. He's MAKING THIS HAPEN.