She finally got away from her hometown when she was twenty-one, but only as far as Kissimmee. She arrived with no real money, no plans other than being someplace that wasn’t Merritt Island, and she festered there in the humidity for the next six years, working in delis and restaurants. For a while, she shared an apartment with a pair of hard-edged girls who were both named Becky and who called themselves Splitsville. It turned out that Splitsville had been the name of a strip joint where the Beckys had worked, and since the club was now closed, their plan was to keep the name and start up a freelance strip troupe of their own. Birthdays and bachelor parties. No slutty stuff, they emphasized. Just dancing and being friendly and getting naked—slowly—while their friend Anthony manned the tape deck and doubled as security. Two hundred dollars for two hours work. They taught her how it was done in their living room (Anthony gave pointers), and Karen did it professionally—once. The event was a retirement party for the CEO of a Kissimmee land development company. The CEO, in the middle of Karen’s disrobement, passed out, but the CFO tried to join the dance and perform his own drunken striptease. In one flailing swoop he got his ankles twisted in his trousers, went down on a marble coffee table, and took Karen with him, shattering his kneecap and vomiting across her neck.

She saw the evening as an omen: get out of Kissimmee.

She moved to Orlando, feeling more than ever like a loser girl from the sticks who would never amount to anything. She took her own apartment and a hostessing job at Buffalo Jack’s—a position that rescued her from waiting tables but chained her to a maître d’ stand in a cowgirl costume. Another four years passed without seasons, highlights, or milestones. She had always worked, had tried to live frugally, but she’d acquired over $18,000 in credit card debt. She had mildew growing in the closet of her apartment, and a molar that was changing color and occasionally throbbed but that she had no money for a dentist to examine.

During her break one busy evening, she stood in the ladies’ room washing her hands in front of the mirror, glaring at the little white cowgirl hat anchored to her hair with bobby pins. Back behind the maître d’ stand, she fantasized about mouthing off to the next customer who walked through the door. What is this, she thought of asking, National Eat Out Night? The door opened. She smiled.

“Now that,” said Daniel James Luckett Jr., “is a pretty smile.”