Mitch and Sherri could be down together, but they could also escape their troubles by having fun—too much fun. Sherri had always thought of men as a different species, mysterious, impenetrable. Mitch rid Sherri of that notion. Once he descended from the pedestal she’d put him on, she realized he wasn’t much different from her. He could be craven, insecure, desperate, sweet, greedy, moody, kind. This knowledge endeared him to her. It was better to be messed up together.

When the money began to run out, Sherri tried to get serious and send her résumé around. The economy was bad, and the words “Playboy Bunny” in her “Work Experience” section only seemed to attract lecherous managers and business owners who called her in for interviews just to ogle her, more interested in her measurements than her abilities.

“I can’t get a job in this town,” she said. “Temping pays dirt.”

“Baby,” Mitch said, “why don’t you just go back to being a Bunny?”

He was right. It was a job she knew how to do, a job she’d been good at, even if she felt she’d left the resort a failure. Yet she was haunted by what Arthur had told her: that she needed to focus on becoming rather than being. But Arthur had been all wrong about her.

There were two Playboy venues in town. She decided against the Mansion, because it loomed too large in her imagination after what she’d heard about it from the Bunnies who’d visited back in the day. She still had small-town sensibilities, and the promise of a bacchanalian scene exceeded her comfort level. There was a grotto, they’d said, and there were peacocks strutting across the yard, and orgies. Sometimes they said Hef would show up in his silk smoking robe, quiet and observant, a Bunny always at his side. Sherri had never once laid eyes on the man and put him in the same category as Oz and Willy Wonka. It seemed everyone was so quick to judge her, but look what Hefner got away with. A Bunny was always just a Bunny, but people insisted he was a misunderstood genius. That’s what Sherri used to think, but not anymore. She figured he was a pervert, and just plain weird.