His asking made me realize what I actually wanted was to go home—alone, to find that notebook with the lists of her things, the picture of her as a teenager stuck to one of the pages with the bit of used chewing gum—but it seemed callous to say no, so I let him order us more drinks, tumblers of whiskey and beer this time. He downed his whiskey while I sipped mine slowly. He ended up drinking both our beers, and then another shot. We moved to a corner booth and I could see, thanks to a string of white Christmas lights, that his eyes had turned red and watery, though we didn’t talk about Lonnie again. He told me about his art and some debacle with his landlord while I sat there, crossing and uncrossing my legs against the cracked vinyl of the seat until I noticed my tights start to run on the backs of my thighs.

At one point he took out his phone to show me the photos he’d been working on. Photos of women, body parts chopped up, repeated. The white of a sheet, streaks of blood. Slowly, staring at a black-and-white one, I realized it was my body on that wooden beam, suspended, arms splayed—my face.

All I could think about was how dead I looked, my eyes closed, like a body on display, ready for dissection. I must have touched my face after I cut myself because there was blood on my jaw. In one shot I could see Carlow’s foot—he was barefoot, though I don’t remember him taking off his shoes—right between my legs on the beam. I kept expecting him to say, “Touch yourself,” but he never did. I had thought about doing it anyway, but I wanted the direction, the command. I’d wanted him to look at me the way he’d looked at her, or rather the way I imagined he looked at her when they were alone. It felt like a faraway desire.

He left with me, throwing a crumpled stack of uncounted bills onto the table. There was a moment on the cold dark sidewalk when we faced each other and I thought we might have a nice goodbye at least, something I never got with Lonnie, but in the next moment his mouth was on mine, his tongue sour with the taste of alcohol, his lips sloppy and wet. One of his hands held my shoulder so tightly it hurt and the other was in my hair. I found my body rejecting him before I could even really understand what was happening. I shoved him off.