The night was sticky and Johnson’s hand left a moist imprint on his wallet. His eyes were on Jeanette’s chest and she knew she had him. She brought her arms closer together. The cross of her gold chain disappeared between mounds of flesh.

“You don’t have to do that,” she said.

It was uncomfortable enough to ask for cigarettes; Jeanette didn’t know how to accept additional favors. She glanced toward Sasha but Sasha chewed a fingernail, not paying attention.

“It’d be my pleasure,” Johnson said. “Maybe you can pay me some other way.”

Jeanette wasn’t stupid. She got it right away. Oh, went a flick in her head. She knew when wanting her became wanting her. Usually it scared her a little, men’s comments. She’d walk down Kendall Drive by Sasha’s house, a street that felt more like a congested highway, and men would honk at her, would follow them, would stop to gawk and shout. She liked it. She hated it. Thought it was a fact of life, like waiting for the light to change or taking an umbrella just in case.

But she pictured the men following through on their promises, shoving her into their cars, to fuck her, to fuck that juicy ass. That’s what those cooler, harder girls did, wasn’t it? They got fucked. But she couldn’t picture the popular boys at school, boys like Chris and Raul and Marcelo, talking to their girlfriends like that, expressing such raw desire. She was amazed she could inspire such want, such need. She was baffled that these same men who shouted at her and Sasha did things that, say, her mother and father did. She could not picture her father fucking her mother. She thought, These men must want me more than anyone wants my mother, more than anyone wants the coolest girl in school. Then she felt good.

So she smiled some more at Johnson. Pretended she didn’t understand. “What kind of favor?” she said.

Johnson laughed. He looked around. He was the kind of guy who couldn’t stop looking around as if his next words were on cue cards scattered in the distance.

“What are you girls doing tonight? You know, after you smoke your cigarettes?”

Jeanette wondered what he wanted. She wondered if men who wanted to fuck her would accept a night driving around the city. She saw dirt under Johnson’s fingernails and wondered if he was the kind of man who built things or tore them apart, who knew about machines in a way her own father did not.

“We don’t have any plans,” Jeanette said.

The man nodded. “I see.”

Johnson looked at a cue card on the left, a cue card on the right, then opened his door to grab something from the passenger side seat. He handed her a flyer.