“It wasn’t even him but someone young and quick enough to grab a bucket of water kept inside the door to pour out the fire and still chase me down the stairs and grab me before I made it to the street.”

“You get whipped for it?”

“What?”

“Did she thrash you for doing it?”

“No.” She looked at him, a look he thought meant she failed to understand him. He would learn this look meant he’d failed to understand something of her. She said, “She never put a hand to me. Not then or ever.” She paused, watching out the window. He left his hand on the swell of her hip, not moving. After a time she said, “She worked like that four years. Until she had the money she owed him. She wouldn’t pay him piecemeal. The evening came she had it when he arrived. I was ten years old. Sitting at the table doing my homework. I think about it now and wonder what that knock on the door meant to her. How she’d waited for it. What she thought at that point was happening in her life. How she let him in as always and poured him a cup of tea while he sat at the table. He no longer brought me candy or such. They’d long since stopped any pretending. Although he always took her out for the evening first. Myself, I think that was just to show her off on the town. Something he owned, what was his. But that night she poured tea for herself instead of slipping past the hung blankets to dress. Sat across the table and took the paper money from the can where it had been rolled waiting on the table for him for two-three weeks. And counted it out to him, down to the last dollar. And how he stood then, not counting the money over like I bet she’d hoped he would but folding it and disappearing it into his vest pocket. Then told her he’d forgive the interest. Took a ten-dollar gold piece out and laid it on the table. And told her to get herself dressed. Told her he was hungry and said by the look of her she was too. Told her to recall prostitution was a crime in the state of Vermont. But a gift between friends was nothing more than that. And then took out a cigar and trimmed the end of it and lit it up, his fat mouth sucking around it, and dropped the dead match on the floor and went down the stairs to wait for her. The room filled up with the smell of the match. And she stood there looking at the door. She was still young. I only realized that this minute. And then she went behind the blanket and I heard her dressing herself and she came out without looking at me or speaking goodnight or nothing. Went down the stairs. I sat there listening to her go.”