When she had finished, she lit another cigarette and blew a slow breath away from me. I had wanted to be with Louise off the reservation for so long that when the moment presented itself to me I was ready to take it. I felt the slow trickle of sweat beneath my armpits. In late fall the day had turned hot. I would take my chance with her and hope I could settle my desire once and for all. Maybe it was Baptiste’s beating her that prompted me to this action, fear there would be no more chances.

I took her to a hotel room. On a day that sweltered like fever the steam pipes were sizzling. The room felt damp. I sat down on the bed and wiped my forehead. She limped behind me. I removed my jacket slowly, watching her face. She did not look away from me. She did not seem afraid of me. The window shade strained the late October sun yolk-yellow. I held my breath. I hated the sound of my voice then, the demands I was making on her. I had told Louise to do a hundred things as an officer of the law; now I was telling her as a man to stand in front of that shade, to undress for me slowly, one piece at a time, her summer-faded dress, her single shoe.

“Leave the stocking on,” I told her so low I didn’t think she would hear me, but she did. She lifted the dress up over her head. Awkward. The dim room glowed like goldenrod. She had on cotton bloomers, washboard-gray and riddled with holes. I decided I liked the holes, a hundred small scents of skin, a hundred openings to her. One crutch fell to the floor and she hopped to get it. She tried to cover her breasts with the spread of one hand. I could see the doctor had bandaged and taped her left breast. I felt the old anger for Baptiste pressing my chest. “What did that bastard do to you?” I said and wished I hadn’t.

She turned her back to me. “Left my brassiere at home,” she said.

She covered her face. Her shoulders bowed forward. I could see the hollow of her back, how it pooled in small darkness at the base of her spine. White light sprayed though thin tears in the curtain shade to touch her skin, each rib, I thought, her ribs. I watched her, knowing something about myself I had not known before.