📸 Photo

The Starlight Room

Nine chandeliers hung over the lush velvet booths at Harry Denton’s Starlight Room, the light scattering off a two-hundred-pound mirror ball suspended over the dance floor. Heavy crimson drapes parted from the picture windows like a stage, revealing the glimmering San Francisco skyline beyond.

Positioned on the twenty-first floor of the Sir Francis Drake Hotel, the Starlight Room was an opulent fixture in the city’s teeming nightlife—a flashback to 1930s style, strewn with deep red and gold damask and hand-rubbed silk. More garish than hip, the club kept people coming by hosting regular theme nights. This was Russian Wednesday, and tuxedoed servers were pouring vodka shots at the crowded bar while music from the motherland spilled over the crowd.

In the ladies’ room, Tsengeltsetseg Tsetsendelger was being kissed. Tipsy from a night out, the young Mongolian immigrant wasn’t sure how it happened, or why, but a pretty five-foot-four girl with tumbling brown hair had decided to kiss her. Then Tsengeltsetseg blinked. There was another, identical woman beside her.

Michelle and Liz introduced themselves, and a wide, unaffected pumpkin smile crept onto Tsengeltsetseg’s face. She told the Esquere twins that they could call her “Tea.”

Tea was a regular at Russian Night and fluent in both Russian and