Sherri emerged from the locker room and considered her options. She had no idea that every move she was about to make on that fateful day would, in effect, be like sprinkling bread crumbs of guilt in her memory, creating a path of mistakes that she’d travel again and again long into her future.

She felt trapped, with nowhere to go but East Troy, the great boomerang. If she went to her house, Roberta would see her, because Giles was just across the square, and her stomach turned with shame at the thought of what she’d done. Worse, she couldn’t stand to see all the people in town who apparently thought she was a slut. She could go to Arthur’s, and she would, eventually, but she sure couldn’t ask Mitch to drive her there.

Mitch! She could still catch him. She kicked her stiletto heels off her feet and ran barefoot up the carpeted stairs one, two flights up, and raced down the hallway to Hugh Hefner’s suite. She’d go with him to California in his Excalibur, that’s what she’d do. Screw this place. Screw Gloria. Screw East Troy. Nobody would even miss her—nobody but Arthur.

Arthur, Arthur. What was she supposed to do with him? She compartmentalized her thinking, pushing the image of him and his sweet smile and low voice and soft, broad back into a separate closed space in her mind, like one of the many hotel rooms she passed with DO NOT DISTURB tags hanging on the door handles. He was too good for her. She didn’t deserve him. He’d believed she was smart enough for college and she couldn’t even keep it together as a Bunny.

She reached Hefner’s suite, perched at the edge of the lobby. She took a deep breath and knocked on the door, a light, polite tap that belied her desperation. Nobody answered. She hadn’t been gone that long—maybe an hour. Was everyone still sleeping?

She knocked again, this time louder, louder. “Mi-itch,” she said, her voice carrying downstairs and echoing off the glass walls surrounding the indoor swimming pool. “Open up.”

Finally, the door swung open and a groggy Gregg Allman himself stood there in a pair of saggy white briefs, the gold mushroom charm with the band’s name resting on top of his chest hair. Even after a night’s sleep his hair was still perfectly parted down the middle; his part was so neat and straight that it was the only thing in her life that made sense that morning. He rubbed his eye with the back of his fist. He didn’t seem to recognize her from the night before. “Yeah?”

“I’m looking for my boyfriend. He was, I was—we were both here last night.”