“You are making me act like a monster,” Padgett says, “but you’re the monster,” and it doesn’t work this time, either.

“You can hate me, I guess,” Martin says. “That’s a good sound philosophical position. But we’re in the thick of it. Do this with me, and we’ll be out of the woods.”

He is promising something. His face is afire with it. She cannot help, tenderness so recent between them, but believe, not what he says, but nonetheless believe something, an outline where they’ve traveled together, a tamped-down trail they share. “I don’t hate you,” Padgett admits, “but that can be a placeholder. You’re talking about a crime.”

“We’re talking about money, and conning it out of someone,” Martin says, “and what’s the matter with your drink?”

She looks at it. She looks the whole thing over. Nothing, she guesses, and says nothing as she drains it. Nevertheless, it seals the deal. A large grin, eagerly curvy, moves from Martin’s forehead to his open face, as if this were the parade he has been dreaming of, this whole time she’s known him. “Last call,” he calls at last, happily.

“One more,” Rachel says, returning with the empty glass and the paper bag. She’s been at the jukebox but hasn’t even chosen a song. “One more before I go home to my husband.”

Her husband. Padgett tries to track it out, this married life people get themselves into. It’s something she’ll never comprehend; every grip she has fades into the gauzy night like a paper doll in water. She is moving her fingers on her phone, to get home to her husband and his precious child. She is married and drunk, a mom and a criminal. She is leaving and she is stuck here, nowhere near out of it. It is all, wherever she looks as the phone searches the night, the whole world is the woods.

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