That final night at the club, she wasn’t sure what set her off, what made this interaction different from the others. Perhaps it was something about the way the stranger did it, reaching out with no notice, cupping her left breast like his hand was a scale. She had always considered touch as another language, more honest than speech. It expressed what the person would never say.

The stranger didn’t look at her face, had no interest in her reaction. The way a butcher would heft a lamb, thinking of the meal, not the animal.

Nice piece of tail—he said, pretending to refer to the tail pinned to the back of her costume.

Lipreading, she would have thought he had said nice piece of hail, but she glimpsed his tongue tap the roof of his mouth to make the T sound. Most times she could lipread men more accurately than women, their mouths closer to the level of her eyes, easier to spot the movements of the tongue.

With this man, from the way his head was angled, she knew he wasn’t addressing her, but was talking to his friends, two executives in suits standing next to him. He was trying to impress them with his membership key to this club, the young women in their costumes, his action of grabbing her breast.

His hand squeezed. He didn’t squeeze to the point of pain like some of the men did, but this was one touch too many. Her vision tunnelling in, a staticky sound rising in her ears.

(Her dad’s nickname for her was Scrawny, after a terrier who was an escape artist, would nearly kill herself to get free at least once a week).

She reached between the man’s legs, to cup what her granddad called the tackle. She lowered her voice as though from desire and said her shift ended in an hour, which was his car?

There was a pause. He was looking at her now, focused. When he spoke this time, it was to her, not his friends.

She strode off to the changing room, switched into her real clothes and collected her hearing glasses. Exiting the building through the kitchen, she picked up a sugar pourer. In the parking lot, she poured the contents into his gas tank.

She never went back.

Walking home that night through downtown, she passed the Tampa Theatre. A brightly lit marquee for the musical South Pacific caught her eye. The posters by the door showed a beach and the sea, a woman leaning against a palm tree, all alone and staring out at the waves. What kept Cora’s attention was the woman.

To the men back in the club, this poster would be inviting, each imagining himself approaching, the woman turning, her need.

Cora saw the poster differently. She thought the woman looked happy staring out at the water all alone.

So she went to the travel agent’s the next day, leafed through some brochures and ended up buying a one-way ticket to St. Thomas, an island not that far away, less expensive, more tropical. She hoped there, she wouldn’t have to dress like an animal to get a job.