“Get out of here! Look how natural you are. And that hair!” He took more shots, the lens fluttering in a staccato rhythm she found mesmerizing. Her eyes began to feel heavy. Why was the shot affecting her so quickly? Johnnie walked behind her and off to her side, checking every angle. The trees felt like they were closing her in, and mosquitoes were beginning to bite. Her father had met a poet from Fort Atkinson, Lorine Niedecker. He’d read some lines of one of her poems to Sherri and they floated into her consciousness. “What horror to awake at night / and in the dimness see the light. / Time is white / mosquitoes bite.”

“OK, let’s drop our top,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“Your top,” he said, “take it off.” He flicked his finger in the air as if he were flipping on a light switch. His tone was cold, almost scolding, as if she were slowing him down, and made her feel like a little girl. She wondered what would happen if she said no. She wished she had the nerve to deny him. Her thinking had grown foggy. She looked around. There were men out there on the golf course, but they couldn’t see her. Nobody could. Wasn’t it illegal to take off your clothes in public? But she wasn’t in public, not really. The resort was private property, and they were pretty well hidden.

“Go on, darlin’,” he said. “These shots are just for evaluation. A test, like I said. We can send them in to corporate and see what they think.” There was that word again. “Corporate” sounded very serious, very buttoned-up. “You never know, they might want to fly you out to LA, make you a centerfold.”

She knew plenty of Bunnies who would jump at the opportunity to find stardom, no matter the cost. But she had complicated feelings about the word “centerfold.” To men, it sounded glamorous. Well, not all men. She knew Arthur wouldn’t approve, but Arthur was across the Atlantic. To women—to her mother, if she were alive—it would sound horribly cheap and tacky, not to mention permanent.

“You can make some big money. Travel. Get into television and movies. You never know.” He adjusted his lens. “You’d be amazed at the careers our girls have found, the money they’ve made.”