“Come out when you’re good.” Her accent sounded more crude. Pat started to piss and realized that his wallet was still in his pants, which were in the other room, alone with her. But he wasn’t worried. Didn’t seem like a thief, right? And as Pat peed he took a look in the mirror at an old man with graying chest hair who was thin and bony from disease. He heard Carmen patter across the apartment and a door to the bedroom open. Are you really going to fuck this strange woman? All the whiskey in the world couldn’t make this less surreal, and his alligator heart was really drunken panic that he was about to be beaten and robbed by her pimp hiding in a closet, and the desire drained out through his bladder.

And then Pat flushed and peeked out of the bathroom, naked at half-mast, and—he was not seeing double—there was another woman there.

She was a taller, more slender version of Carmen. She looked very young. Her jet-black hair fell past her satin black bra, almost to her black panties. Her face was long and oval, like a Madonna from an old painting, her skin a light color of wood stain.

“This is my girl Lupita. What do you think? She’s nice, right?”

“Muy linda.” Pat’s mouth was dry. The girl twisted into Carmen, trying to hide herself.

“You speak español now? Bueno, Pat. Listen, Lupita wants to join us. We can all have a good time together, no?”

“How old is she?”

“She’s nineteen.”

“Are you sure?”

“I should know. I’m her mother.”

This stunned Pat, who was on some sort of receiving delay. He was a million miles out in orbit, as far from Shapiro’s office or Doll’s Bar as he could get. Mother and daughter, huh? Well, that deserves a drink. But before he could reach for his beer, Lupita approached him with a silent smile and put her hand there. She smelled like baby shampoo too, and her hand was soft, more gentle than her mother’s, who earlier had milked him like a cow. The siren in the back of his mind wailed, but Pat ignored it and leaned into this young creature and her soft fondling. He touched her there, and this was what he wanted now. Both of them.

“That’s good. She’s nice, right? She go with you, then I go with you.”