Once she had slept with another man just to get the scent of Harvey Stoner off her skin. Harvey Stoner could touch her now and it didn’t matter anymore. She felt only small tugs on her skin, a heat in her belly, and then he was gone. And the less he mattered to her the more he wanted her. And the more he wanted her the less he mattered, until he had become small to her. She wasn’t sure what she wanted from him, if she had ever wanted anything from him.

She had left her rhinestone ankle bracelet to gather dust on the windowsill. There was a run in one of her silk stockings and she had thrown them both away. Seeing Baptiste again had made her turn from Harvey. Everything he could give her seemed suddenly unimportant.

“Louise, you love me,” he had said, half-asking.

She looked at the deep shine of the dashboard. She blinked at the reflection of her face, black and silver in the plum-painted metal.

“You don’t have to, you know?”

“I don’t,” she said.

“You don’t what?” He leaned closer to her and was tapping his chin on her shoulder.

She knew what he wanted to hear. She could smell a faint lick of sage through the open window. There was a look some men got when they had lost themselves. A look that wasn’t in their eyes but in the way they carried themselves. It seemed their place in the world had changed, as if they had lost the ability to stand alone. She noticed first the knee crossed inward, toward her. Then more and more they leaned in her direction. And all of their questions began to be directed toward her. What did she want from them? What did she feel about them? What did she think about them? Harvey was pressing toward her. Wanting to know. Wanting to know himself through her. He made her feel sick and closed in, like she needed to press out with her hands, a victim who needed breath.

“Let me out here,” she said to him.

“I want to know if you love me,” he said.

Louise watched the road. He banked his car on the edge of a drift and Louise felt the veer of his tires, the suction of snow. Harvey reached for her hand. She pulled her hand away from him and he grabbed her wrists so tightly she felt the burn of his grasp.