If she didn’t find a man for tonight, she still had her credit cards, though she didn’t like the idea of using them, of sending up a little flare: I am here. She sold the car for $750 at a mechanic’s shop on the way into Atlantic City, at a place with a strange tower made of scrap metal and hubcaps in the bare dirt yard. She was distracted, the way the light glinted off the hubcaps while she was trying to negotiate him up to $800. She was sure that a woman in her right mind would have waved the white flag, gone home, asked her husband for forgiveness, asked for help, for pills that would make her mind go right. She could go back and submit to the baby, to the laundry, to the endless diapers and scrubbing the grime between tiles in the bathroom. Instead she booked three nights at Harrah’s and the next week she pawned her wedding ring for a fifth of what it was worth.

She doesn’t know how long the man has been sitting next to her, but when she turns from the couple—the wife is now running her fingers through the man’s chest hair—he’s at her elbow, taking her in. He’s got sun-worn skin, and his eyes are a clear, placid blue, but shadowed by the baseball cap he’s got pulled low, the way so many of the blackjack players wear them. To hide. His eyes flash out from under the brim. Looking at them is like looking at a blue object sunk at the bottom of a glass of water. The contrast is startling, uncomfortable and attractive at once. She feels like he can see all of her—the place where the pawned wedding ring used to be, where she still runs her finger over the bare skin, the bruise on her thigh from where the last man whipped her with the cord from the clothing iron in the hotel room. He drinks a beer and then a club soda but buys her another glass of wine.

“Where are you from?” he asks.

She surprises herself by telling him the truth. McLean, Virginia. It feels good, purifying, this honesty. Like her first fresh breath of air in long time.

“So what are you doing here?”