Title: Alphabet City Alphabet

Author: ello luv

Summary: A look into our favourite Bohemians' lives

Disclaimer: I do not own Rent. Many thanks go out to Jonathan Larson for creating such a wonderful masterpiece. If only he could have seen his dream come to fruition.

L is for Lawyer

She knew that she really shouldn't be going out clubbing (she was dating Mark, wasn't she?), but it was something to do in order to get away from Roger's argument with Benny about the latter's rich new wife. Besides, Mark was too bust supporting his best friend to pay attention to her.

So out she went to the bar up in Manhattan where Roger's old band, the Well Hungarians, used to play before April had killed herself.

She walked in and strode over to the bar, enjoying the way everyone watched her as she passed in her tight jeans and low-cut shirt.

She settled on one of the barstools and ordered vodka. As she waited for the drink to arrive, she checked out the people on either side of her. On her left was a man with short, spiked black hair sipping a martini. He reminded her too much of Roger in his rockstar days so she turned to the right.

The woman had chocolaty-caramel skin and a mass of tight black ringlets on her head. She could see that the black woman kept glancing at her from the corner of one warm brown eye. She took a sip of her newly arrived vodka and turned to the woman on the right.

"Hi!" she chirped. The black woman turned, a little surprised.

"Hi."

"Let me buy you a drink."

Without waiting for an answer, she went to signal the bartender, purposefully leaning forward a little too far, feeling the black woman's eyes trace the line from her collar bone and down to where her breasts curved smoothly in her shirt. The bartender came over and took the black woman's order of a scotch on the rocks.

"I'm Maureen."

"Joanne," the black woman replied.

Joanne took a sip of the drink the bartender placed before her.

"So, Joanne," Maureen said, sipping her own drink, "What do you do for a living?"

"I'm a lawyer," Joanne told her.

Maureen ignored the nagging voice in her brain that kept reminding her that she was dating Mark, and leaned her elbows on the bar, pushing her breasts together.

"So, what's it like being a lawyer?"

Joanne's eyes flicked downward. The black woman took a drink, smiled, and began to talk.