“It was in the boot,” she explained as he grabbed it off her palm. He snapped the rubber band and fanned the bills—old, limp, used. They smelled like mold and sweaty feet. “Is that all of it?”

“Shit, who cares? It’s enough.” He sat down on the bed next to her. Dead presidents stared up from his sweating fingers. “Good enough. Good enough.”

“Sol?” She sounded tentative, scared. He looked over at her and flashed her a grin.

“Let’s celebrate.” He stared at her breasts and stroked a handful of money along her throat, down the shadow of her cleavage. “Right here. How about that?”

“Here?” She sounded doubtful.

“On the bed,” he said, and met her eyes. “On the money. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

Her lips parted, and her tongue crept out to trace her lips. He reached down and ran his fingers up the inside of her leg under her dress.

“On top of the money?” she repeated. He touched silky panties and wriggled his fingers around the elastic, stroking, sliding slowly in. She bit her lip. He added another finger.

“In the whore’s bed,” he said, and eased his fingers out, then in. Warm and wet and slick. He watched her face change, her body shudder. “Like a whore.”

When she was whimpering and pushing hard against him, he stood up and unzipped his pants. He folded them neatly over a chair, draped his underwear on top, and when he turned around Kelly was naked on all fours, buttocks facing him like fat pink bubbles. Money sprayed green around her, crackled under his knees as he positioned himself behind her.

Robby. He thought of Robby, spreading herself for him. The surge of lust was almost painful. He guided himself into Kelly’s hot slick hole and pumped hard, hearing money shift and crumple as she crouched back to meet him. She was saying something, but all he thought about was Robby.

It only took about a minute, beginning to end. He pulled out at the end. White drops spattered over the money, and Kelly moaned in frustrated disappointment and collapsed face down on the sheets. Sol sat back on his heels, sucking in deep breaths that tasted of sex and cheap perfume and baby powder.

“Get the money,” he told her, and picked up his underwear. He checked the creases in his pants and frowned. “What’d you do with my gray suit, anyway? This piece of shit wrinkles like crazy.”

“It’s at the cleaners,” she whispered. It sounded like she was crying, which pissed him off. He brushed lint from olive wool.

“Well, is it ready?”

“Yeah, I guess so. Sol—”

“Get your ass up,” he interrupted. “We’ll get some lunch.”