Later he lay on his back beside her. The afternoon light was gone altogether from the room but lay against the buildings across the street, giving the crackled paint and weathered wood a tone of softness not there otherwise. She was turned on her side away from him, sleeping he thought. The dense small knots of her spine descending to the small of her back and then the swell of her hips thrust back at him and he lay looking down the length of her and thought everything he’d ever seen in his life could be found there. Fruit of all sorts, the lay of land: pastures, meadows, turned ground. Hillsides rising up. The structures of bark replicated in the patina of interlacing skin tones, one flowing to the next. The knots and ribs of tree branch and root overlaying one another. Her hair wild marsh grass and wind blowing through hay and the bundling high fleet winter clouds. The parts of her never touched by sun newfound snowbanks hot to the touch. The salt of her skin. The furrow of her backside turned earth. The small pasture spring unseen from any distance at all but always there, the moisture seeping away to disappear into the surrounding ground. Her teeth a feral ivory. Her breath mist off a river.

It was dusk when he woke beside her. It was only then that he thought of the Italian’s waiting wagon, the bottles of wine. It seemed a distant place, unreachable from the small reserve surrounding him in the room.

There was no remorse but the sense he’d made a trade of sorts and the lost job now appeared to clarify and he wondered just how long it might have lasted otherwise, if he’d perhaps even someway saved himself. Everyone it seemed knew more of what he was doing than he did. So it was well and good. Time to scoot, he thought. There was still the question of money owed him. Other questions also. He sat up in the bed and smoked, sending trails toward the soft gasp of heat out the window. Joey rolled onto her back to look sideways at him. After a time she said, “Now what?”

“I’m thinking on it.”

“I’m wicked hungry.”

“Yuht.”

“Aren’t you?”

“Yuht.”

“Well don’t strain yourself thinking.”

“I’m just trying to piece it all out. What comes next.”

“You were supposed to haul hooch for the guineas weren’t you?”

“Uh-huh.”

She got off the bed and started to dress. “You sit there thinking. I’m dying here. And I’ve got to figure some way to get my clothes and stuff. And then what.”

He stood naked and took her arm. “Hold on,” he said. “Let me go out and you stay here. Let me do a couple things and I’ll bring us back some food. Then we can work on your problem and how to get out of here.”

She looked at him. Drew the chemise over her head and took up the dress and held it. Then said, “What makes you think I want your help?”