It was a party in Camden Market, late. We were standing in a bowl of glass lit by torches, a Sumerian-themed restaurant a floor above the market. Moving black escalators led up into the building. It snowed outside, white flakes falling as we drank and danced.

I guess I just wanted love. I guess she was just looking for something real. And I guess neither of us got exactly what we wanted.

She wore her hair like a black halo, muscled arms in a sleeveless top, she made you think of Cleopatra Jones in an old movie, fighting wiry kung-fu men in an American war in Asia. Marlene Dietrich was serving drinks behind the long bar. 'What do you do?' she said. We were both sipping champagne. I nodded at the Marlene. 'CEA,' I said.

'Copyright Enforcement Agency?' She looked impressed, or amused, I couldn't quite tell. 'Do you have a gun?' she said.

'Yes.'

'Did you ever kill anyone?'

'Rarely,' I said, laughing.

'Oh, so it's...'

'It's not like in the movies,' I said. Thinking of the East European factory we busted, several years back. They had a dormitory-full of product - young Sylvesters, Bruces, Jean Claudes, imperfect copies, slack-jawed and hollow eyed, of a line that was never all that popular after its brief heyday. It was an abandoned factory building far from habitation. The gang that ran it had filming equipment. They went through the copies like tissues, sometimes wasting four and five on a single shoot. Bruce on Jean Clude, Sylvester on Sylvester on Sylvester, blood sports gangbangs with razor blades. When we took them down, the ring operators came quietly, even smirking. Worst they'd get was, what, five to ten? With time off for good behaviour. We destroyed the copies. They were lined inside, waiting. Only one tried anything, with a wordless cry he kicked up, a Jean Claude and agile with it, but you could tell he knew it was no use even before I shot him.

The rest merely stood there. There is something almost eerie about copies. The code never comes out quite right. they're cheap, mass produced in labs all over. These days any kid with a gene kit and a bathtub can grow his own Elvis. We went past them and shot each one in the head. It's the best way. Then we brought in the flamethrowers and burned the place down.

None of which I told her when she asked. I just smiled. A part of me wondered if she, too, was a copy. You can't always tell, and it's an occupational hazard. The other part of me didn't care. I asked her if she'd like to dance and she said yes, and we swayed there, in that glass bowl, with the snow like a benediction falling outside.