“Relax, Jo, would ya?” Robert Jackal had said that morning, buttoning his shirt collar and studying himself in my bathroom mirror. Eyelashes longer than any woman’s, but that was the only thing womanly at all about that carved handsome face, eyes pure no-hazel green, dark hair in disarray like a sleepy boy’s, crunchy between my fingers. “It’s not like you to be nervous.”

Even before the sun was up, my walls sweated little beads of condensation. I was enjoying the coolness of the pillow against my cheek, starfishing my limbs and trying to find some chill in the spot he’d left. I didn’t answer him.

“By the time I’m done, we’ll have so much footage we won’t know what to do with it all,” he said, then bent down to kiss me on the forehead, reaching down to tap his fingers against the bracelet he’d given me as a birthday present a few years back, a mistake he hadn’t repeated since. I’d slapped his face away.

As I waited, I piled my fleshless lime rinds into dimpled green pyramids. Keeping the trash to mark time, how many drinks I’d had, keeping my fingers busy so I wouldn’t start doing algebra about Klein’s net worth on the bar top. Three hundred twenty-six million meant he’d pay how much for photographs of his nasty predilections? What about for a video? Six blockbusters scheduled to come out in the next year meant a reputation was worth how much exactly? Fifty grand? More? My 20 percent of fifty grand would just about do it.

Calm down, I told myself. In less than an hour, you’ll have the prints. And this time tomorrow, or the day after, say, you’ll have what you owe to the Lady Upstairs.

Every three minutes, I allowed myself one long swallow of gin.

I let the couple distract me as I waited out Ellen’s seduction. The girl’s purse had crept from the floor to her lap, and now she clutched it tight between her knees like a chastity belt.

There are women who can spend time with men and manage to keep smiles on their faces no matter what. She wasn’t one of them and I liked her for it.

The man said something, too low for me to catch, leaning in close and intimate. I leaned forward, too. The girl tilted her head. He placed both hands flat on the table and repeated it again, louder, slower. As though the problem was with her hearing. The girl rocketed backward, a blush throttling her neck, and then, slowly, deliberately, she tipped the three-quarters-full beer he’d been nursing into his lap. He jumped up and flapped his hands at his crotch, squawking. I laughed out loud.