“A hundred dollars, Berta. Are you kidding? I sprayed deodorant on them, stuffed them in a paper bag, and a week later I gave them back. I don’t even want to think about what he did with them after that.”

The expression of displeasure on Roberta’s face made Sherri laugh. Soon they were engaged in one of their contagious laughing fits that caused them to lose their breath. Tears sprang out of their eyes. As soon as they began to calm down, they looked at each other and burst into another fit of laughter, almost forgetting what it was that had caused them to begin laughing in the first place. As much as Sherri adored her new friends at the resort, she couldn’t laugh like this with Carmen, Tina, Val, Ginger, or Rhonda.

Roberta said, “I would have fucking slapped him.” This, Sherri realized, and not in a way that made her proud, was the reason Gloria probably gave Sherri the job instead of Roberta—because Roberta would stand up for herself, and they wanted girls who wouldn’t do that, girls like Sherri.

“Do you think—” Sherri began to ask, not sure what it was she really wanted to know. “Do you think all men are like that? Even the good ones? Deep down, do they even care about us, or are we just—warm bodies?”

“I don’t know,” Roberta said. “My brothers, sometimes they seem like that, but sometimes they don’t seem so different from me. I mean, we want sex too, right?”

“Yeah. Sure. But I guess I want more than that.”

“Like more what?”

That was a good question. Sherri didn’t have words for what she wanted. She’d hoped that the right man could fill her loneliness and dispel her insecurity. That’s how it seemed on TV and in the movies, like a woman was otherwise incomplete. She couldn’t say this out loud, because she also knew that women were supposed to be independent and liberated, but her independence terrified her. “They’re like aliens.”

“I guess.” Roberta pulled a pack of Virginia Slims out of her purse and handed one to Sherri, who lit hers off the tip of Roberta’s, almost like a kiss. “So, you like it there?”

Sherri paused, wondering if she should confide in her old friend, and also wondering if she should admit the downsides of her job to herself. “I do, but the uniforms are killer. They make them two sizes too small, so you’re really stuffed in. And Gloria is a bitch. She really is. I feel like everyone is watching every single thing I do, like I’m under a microscope. I have to be perfect all the time. Every minute. For the room captains, for Gloria, for the guests, for the other Bunnies, for everyone.” Until she’d said that out loud, she hadn’t realized how much it had bothered her.