“Oh yeah, this rich asshole,” he said. “This yuppie is going to take your kid. If we can get Perley back in the first place, that is. Yeah.”

“Yeah?” the beer sat in my empty stomach, the warmth of the bar drained away.

“Shit’s fucked,” Rudy said, waving to the tender and holding the door for me. “One thing I’ve noticed is that rich people don’t seem to get themselves into these situations.”

We drove in silence to the library. He kept the engine running as I climbed out. “I hope it helped to talk about it,” he said.

“Sure,” I said.

“I’m always here for you,” he said. “You women are my family.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“What time you need picked up?” he asked.

“I’ll walk home,” I said, though what was the point of hating Rudy if all he was telling me was the same shit I was already telling myself?

I hunched over the library’s PC, feeling sleazy, as if I were looking up pornography, not oil field jobs. The website listed roustabouts, oilers, excavators, drivers. Low-end seventeen bucks an hour, high-end thirty. From the plastic cup next to the computer I grabbed a scrap of paper and a stub of pencil meant for recording Dewey decimals. I did some basic arithmetic. In ninety days, with no days off, at twenty bucks an hour, working twelve hours a day, sometimes more, I could make more than twenty thousand dollars. The no breakfast, the beer in my stomach rose. My mouth watered. It would be enough to buy a septic system. Enough to pay a lawyer. Enough to get Perley back. Maybe even enough to stop me from thinking about some rich guy in Manhattan. Enough to pry myself out of invisibility, to show that this was my family. I was the provider.

I started filling in the fields: Karen Sweeney, address, DOB, then I got to résumé. Résumé, shit, I barely had one besides working as a nurse and a couple of under-the-table construction jobs. Dishwashing in high school? Apple picking in Wenatchee? Odd jobs on the road? None of that shit applied. And how did people get jobs, anyway? By knowing the right person, that’s how.