It was almost worse to spend time with Sam outside the hotel than in bed—that was when she felt the dirtiest for what she was doing. She tuned him out when he spoke to her, because he talked about cattle futures, highways, dry spells, and Elvis’s death. On the few occasions when they left the hotel, he took her to the Barbecue Inn and Brenner’s Steakhouse, always looking around to make sure he wouldn’t see anyone who knew him. He didn’t live in Houston but in a town called Crockett, partway between Houston and Dallas—close enough that he must have known people there, given how alert he was, like a kitten under a sky full of hawks. “If anyone asks, I’m going to say you’re my cousin and you’re going to college at Rice,” he said. “Got it?”

In the years to come, she would try hard to forget everything about Sam: that he smelled like a tannery, and that once, twice, three times he’d accidentally called her Loretta. She would also try to forget that morning when she took a long, hot shower, wishing she could go back in time to make herself pure and new again.

He was asleep when she returned to the bedroom. She quietly packed her things and checked her wallet for cash. Knowing she’d need more to get her through the next three days before her return flight, she slipped several twenty-dollar bills from Sam’s wallet into her own. In the process, she spied a photo of his three young sons in matching cowboy hats, sitting on top of a high fence. The boys looked just like Sam, and she guessed that in his “real life” people liked and looked up to him, thought he was a great cowboy, husband, and dad. How could he be both that person and the guy in the hotel room? The photo made her flush with guilt and shame and something even worse—the feeling that she’d lost herself the way Jeanne had told her she might. His kids were probably the most important people in his life, and he hadn’t even felt her worthy of mentioning them to her. She wasn’t special to Sam, she was a commodity. She understood that she was a warm body, that was all she was to him, and this understanding made her feel hollow and sad.

She grabbed her things and took the elevator to the lobby, eager to escape before Sam noticed she was gone. “How do I get to Galveston?” she asked the doorman, who directed her to the nearby Amtrak station. Galveston was a place she’d overheard a lady in the bar talking about; she’d called it “the New York of Texas,” which sounded perfect to Sherri, although she discovered the sleepy sandbar was nothing like a big city.