The car rocked as Jackal’s door slammed shut and I jerked awake, the ruse having turned real somewhere on the freeway. I could see him silhouetted, walking up to the gate of his apartment complex. He meant to leave me in the car to sleep it off. I stumbled out, the alarm cooing behind me, and followed him to his apartment.

Jackal hadn’t even bothered to turn a light on before he wandered into his bedroom, leaving the door ajar. I could hear him prop his window open, start up the box fan, then lean out to click off the car alarm. He came back into the living room, went to the fridge, and stared inside for a moment. He closed it without grabbing anything. Went to the bathroom, started to brush his teeth in the dark. Like I wasn’t even there.

“Are you going to make me sleep on the couch?”

Jackal leaned into the sink and spat. “I don’t care where you sleep.” Coming out of the bathroom, he stared at my face, and when he asked, “Are you crying?” it was a surprise to me that he was right.

“No,” I said, and unbuttoned my pants, reaching for him. “No, no, no.”

After, I went to the fridge, in search of anything. I was more in control now, fucked sober, but a sandwich would still help. I’d never cried in front of Jackal before, not real tears. Inside his fridge, there were two beers, a half-drunk bottle of red—in the fridge?—the wedged-inside cork grazing the humming yellow light. The only actual food a half-eaten wheel of cheese.

I’d never once been inside Jackal’s apartment when it hadn’t been clean. When things first turned extracurricular between the two of us, I’d wondered if he kept it clean because he wanted to impress me. Later, I’d realized that was just how Jackal was, like white teeth full of cavities. Nothing in the fridge, but not one item out of place.

“Do you bring other women here?” I asked, bare-assed in front of the Camembert.

“Jealous?” Jackal purred from the couch, his mouth still dewy from me.

“How much do those photographs go for?” What was the point of running your own blackmail sideshow if you kept the fridge three-quarters empty? It made me sad, the idea of some other woman seeing this pathetic excuse for a fridge.

“Not this again,” Jackal muttered, folding his arms behind his head.

“Two hundred a print? Three? And who wants them? The Lady would know if they ever became public.”

“They’ll never become public,” he assured me. “Stop worrying about it.”

I couldn’t, but I didn’t have it in me to argue anymore, not that day. I’d press Jackal again in the morning. With Klein dead, so, too, was my hope of an easy recoup of the police’s bribe.