Sherri felt like she’d been holding her breath until she got her period, a tremendous relief after her night with Frank. She’d been so happy to find blood in her underwear that she ran up and down the hallway in her dorm happily screaming, “I’m not pregnant, I’m not pregnant! No baby for meeeee!” This was the perfect excuse to let everyone know that she wasn’t a virgin.

Carmen and Ginger ran out of their rooms to share in her excitement, and agreed to celebrate Sherri’s empty womb at Thumbs Up—or “Thumbs,” as they called it. There was a line in front of the dive bar—there was always a line—but every bouncer in town knew the Bunnies, partly because they were there so often, and partly because Sherri’s third week on the job, all the Bunnies had bought fifty-dollar fur coats from some guy Bunny Carmen had met at Sugar Shack. He’d parked a VW van in the farthest corner of the back lot. He said he’d inherited the coats from a rich aunt and had no use for them.

“Your aunt sure had a lot of coats,” Sherri said.

Val nudged her. “They’re hot.”

“I know!” Sherri said, modeling the rabbit-fur-and-leather hooded coat she’d picked out. She’d never owned anything so fabulous in her life. “I’m boiling.”

Val rolled her eyes. “‘Hot’ means stolen, you dip.”

“These are from Vegas,” Carmen said. “But you never heard that from me.”

Sherri and her friends, dressed in sable, mink, and rabbit fur, sailed ahead of other patrons waiting in line to get into the bar when the bouncer signaled for them to go in. Sherri vaguely recognized a few of the front-desk workers from the resort. They glared at the Bunnies who were spared from the chilly weather—the dampness was bone-chilling. Once they were inside, it was only a matter of time before the guys sitting at the bar sent drinks over. The Bunnies gave careful little waves of thanks that didn’t offer too much encouragement.

Carmen, Val, Rhonda, and Ginger were like the sisters Sherri always dreamed of having. They offered advice about contraception, making her promise to get a prescription for birth control the very next day. “You’re lucky,” Ginger said without the slightest judgment. “What you did was like driving through an intersection with your eyes closed.”

“Like eating raw hamburger!” said Carmen. She wore so much lip gloss that Sherri could almost see her reflection in it. Ginger ordered a round of Everclear shots, her voice low and authoritative like a man’s.

“You should have been more careful,” Val said, but who was Val to talk? She’d gotten Sherri drunk, left her alone most of the night, and hadn’t even wanted to drive her back.