She decides to spare no details, partly because it feels good to talk, and because it seems that this is what he wants, the way the others wanted her to slap them or call them “Daddy” or “sir.” She talks about the first time she slept with a man for money. When her cash from the car and the ring dwindled, she asked one of the cocktail waitresses where she might stay on the cheap. The woman told her that the Trump Plaza had been the cheapest room in town, until it shuttered. Now it’s just the motels over by the marsh. A girl like you doesn’t want to stay there.

No choice, she said.

Well, bring pepper spray. Make sure they give you a room with a door that locks.

She didn’t even make it from the motel office to the room before a man propositioned her. She didn’t say yes or no, only let him follow her to her door. Pointed to the bedside table until he peeled a few bills from a roll in his pocket. She hadn’t even been with her husband since the baby. The pain made her vision go white. They had sewn her up, and she swore she had come back together crookedly, wrong. She bled, stained the white sheets.

Didn’t tell me you had your fucking period, he said. Slammed a lamp to the ground on his way out.

“It was easier to keep doing it than to avoid it,” she tells the man. She is oddly relieved at being able to unburden herself, but she’s anxious, too. When will they get on with it—the thing he’s brought her here for? Whatever way he’s paid to use her. She’s heard of men who just want to talk, from some of the other girls on the street, but never met one herself. So far she’s only been with the ones who get their money’s worth.

“Don’t you think your daughter deserves to have a mother?” he asks her.

“It’s better this way.” She knows it’s true, but still, her voice cracks. “Today, I went to a psychic, this little shop on the boardwalk near Caesars.” She hears herself laugh a bitter little chuckle. “Not a psychic, really. Just this teenage girl. I wanted to know what she could see about my daughter. If … if … she might forgive me someday. A goddamned psychic. A kid, probably a fake. And even then I was too afraid to hear what she had to say. I’m too afraid to see how bad I’ve ruined everything.”

He steps away from her and pulls a bottle from the mini fridge, disappears into the bathroom and pours it into a glass. She wonders if she’s imagining it: the way his footfall has changed, the work boots stomping away. He returns from the bathroom, holds the glass out to her.