SUNDAY MORNING I got up after ten. I was still tired. Maybe I was tired from oversleeping. My hip was sore from falling on that damned root. My hair was dirty. I thought about showering. I wondered if I’d be able to go back home after Labor Day and do what I’d been doing before, with Kiffany and work. I couldn’t picture it. I sat down and opened the Sunday paper. I thought I was the only one in the house. Then Denise came up from the basement with laundry. She handed me a folded pile of my clothes. She must have picked them up off my floor and washed them. “Wow, thanks,” I said.

I asked her where Dave was. She said he had a meeting, and went into the kitchen. I followed her. “Hey, let me help,” I said. “Put me to work. I’ve been sitting on my ass long enough.”

She was smiling, but I knew what she thought of me: She thought I was a dope. And she was married to the brother of a dope. She put her apron on. There was flour all over the counter. I sat down on a stool. She tied the apron around the front.

“It’s not work,” she said. “I like baking.”

Denise had her hair down. Her cheeks were smooth, like girls’ in high school. Underneath the apron she was wearing a yellow track sweatshirt that had been mine ten years ago. Dave must have stolen it from me. Her boobs came up around the top part of the apron. She looked hot in everything.

I said, “What are you doing?”

“I’m making muffins. I’m about ready to screw this up.”

“What kind of muffins?”

“Pumpkin,” she said. “I think there’s a mistake in the recipe.” She was reading the recipe carefully, rubbing flour around on her hands. She had long fingernails and nail polish. Women claim long fingernails get in the way, but these didn’t. From where I sat, I could smell Denise’s perfume, or her shampoo, whatever that odor was—Denise’s smell. It smelled beautiful. When you’re not around them you forget. Man, I was so hard up. I was dying for something. She went to the refrigerator and opened it, and I looked at her sweet ass. She had on running shorts, they were slit on the sides, and the top parts of her thighs were the kind you immediately think about sucking on—firm, yet round and cute. She took out a bowl and dumped some dough on the floury part of the counter.

“Is that for the muffins?”

“No. I’m making bread, too.”