At this point in their lives, Sherrill Ann allowed it to be known, they didn’t need male escorts no matter how well-intentioned and they didn’t want male solicitude, they’d had enough, God knows, of that—five children between them: they were simply out to have a good time and to get home before their babysitter became impatient.

Which meant: they did not give out their telephone numbers, they did not even give out their last names, they weren’t being coy and they certainly weren’t playing games, and, yes, they paid for their own drinks. Every time.

Which meant: they were fun-loving girls who didn’t take themselves too seriously.

Sherrill Ann in her satin blouses tucked in tight, her funky suede vests and hoop earrings and wide leather belts, Sherrill Ann in high-heeled kidskin boots, chain-smoking, laughing uproariously as she traded witticisms with the men; Sherrill Ann with a midsouthern accent (wasn’t it?) but vague about her background, well you see she and her husband moved around a good deal, he was the restless kind, the kind who couldn’t be trusted, as events subsequently proved. Mary Beth was the quiet one, Mary Beth was blond, and snub-nosed, and sweet, and blushed easily, while Sherrill Ann joked with the men, argued companionably about horses, Irish setters, farming, hunting and fishing, local politicians, cars, pickup trucks, tractors . . . which were good bargains and which were not. Sheila, high after two or three steins of draft beer, laughed without restraint at rather crude remarks—remarks Mary Beth pretended not to understand or didn’t in fact understand—but Sherrill Ann wasn’t the kind to take shit from anyone, should anyone get too forward.

(On their way home Monica wondered aloud, half in awe, half disapproving, how Sheila could bring herself to say such things, to strangers!—and Sheila explained that that was just the point, they were strangers; they didn’t count. “Mary Beth takes things too seriously, in any case,” she said.)

On these frantically comic evenings Sheila wore her hair brushed loose and crinkling on her shoulders, or pulled back tight in an old-fashioned ponytail—“one of the styles,” as she told Monica, “of my lost innocence.” Like a hatcheck girl she applied crimson gloss to her lips; she did something elaborate and fanciful with her eyes; her cheeks, normally so pale, were most beguilingly rouged. As to her perfume—well, it was powerful; it was potent. The luridly shiny material of her blouses grew taut against her small high breasts when she inhaled; the outline of her firm, similarly high buttocks was the more pronounced by her horsey stance at the bar. She knew her way around, did Sheila—that is, Sherrill Ann: her gaze low, level, mocking, flirtatious even as it was supremely indifferent.