He didn't need a picture. He kicked off his shoes and unzipped his jeans, then pulled them down with his boxers in one swift, practiced movement.

Nadine laughed, gave him an appreciative once-over, and leaped into his arms.

They lay on the cold tiles in their own sticky sweat, looking up at the bare rafters and ducts. The glow of a joint illuminated their faces in the otherwise dim store.

"That was fucking great," he said, holding in a toke.

"That was great fucking," she corrected him. "And just so you know, I haven't been pining away for your return all these years like some swooning Victorian heroine."

He laughed, exhaling a lungful of savory smoke. "Oh no?"

"Oh no. This was strategic."

"How so?"

She turned to face him, rising on an elbow. "What better way to get back at a town that's fucked me over my whole life than by fucking its native son?"

He passed the joint and regarded her in the dim light. "Native son? These people don't even remember me."

"Martin Savage? Please. Just because no one talks about you doesn't mean they don't remember. That's why they don't talk about you. Because of what you represent."

"And what's that?"

She took a long pull off the joint. "Escape, for one thing," she said, smoke spilling from her lips. Then she scowled, exhaling the rest through her nostrils. "How old is your mother, Martin?"

"She never said. Must be in her eighties by now, I'd imagine."

"So she had you when? In her forties?"

"Thereabouts."

"How often did women have children at that age back then? Single women, in particular."

He shrugged. "I'm not a sociologist."

"What did she look like, the last time you saw her? How old would you say she looked when they hauled her off to the loony bin?"

"That's not nice."

"She's not nice."

He sat up stiffly. "This is taking a weird turn."

Nadine shot up beside him. "This took a weird turn forty years ago, Marty."

She stubbed the joint out on the tiles. Her ass peeled off the floor as she stood, sticky with sweat. She slipped her feet into a mismatched purple G-string and pulled it up over her hips.

"What do you know about midwifery?"

He watched her get dressed. Was she serious? A minute ago they were fucking like long-lost lovers and now she was asking him about midwives? He scooped up the torn condom wrapper from the floor, glad he'd thought to use it.

"Do you know there hasn't been a birth in this town for decades that hasn't been performed by the Midwives?" she asked finally, buckling the straps of her overalls.

He picked up his jeans and began unhurriedly dressing while still sitting on the floor, like a kid putting on his snow pants. Clearly, he'd overstayed his welcome. He needed to extricate himself as delicately as possible. It seemed like a switch had been turned. She'd gone from flirty to crazy in sixty seconds. He zipped up his jeans.