She should’ve been offended. She wasn’t just a glory hole. The strange thing was that it wasn’t half-bad. The sad part was that the man probably couldn’t enjoy intimacy. He couldn’t give it. Maybe he feared that he might not get it back? So he couldn’t risk it. She stared up into his eyes and couldn’t help squirming a little but still he didn’t touch her. His eyes looked just above her forehead. He even kept his orgasm under control, even when her insides went all warm and expanding and she couldn’t help but let loose. Again, not what she expected from this. What plenty of guys in the boogie houses could not understand, or any man for that matter, was that a certain kind of sex was so often a transaction. A girl did it to get something, or because she had no other choice. It gave her time, a home, a break from a beating. But this? She didn’t know what this was.

They lay on the large bed in the master bedroom, both on their backs. Selfer had the covers pulled up to his throat like a virgin who had just lost it. His eyes searching the ceiling. He told her about his upbringing, his father a con man. He never had any love, so he didn’t see any in the world. He didn’t know how to find any, and he wouldn’t know it if it lay right under his nose.

“I know my rambling on like this is pitiful,” he muttered, “I don’t know what’s gotten into me.” Then he fell asleep.

Kanani felt sorry for him. All he knew was how to get a leg up and climb a ladder. She told herself, staring up at that ceiling, that she herself was nothing like him. She had to tell herself this at least three times. And then she let out a bitter chuckle. What else was she doing here but getting her mitts on gold or whatever treasure she could find and abscond with forever? She’d told herself that she’d use it to help out her mother. She’d told herself she’d create a new life. But what then? She knew what her faddah would have told her if he were still alive: she could never be happy this way.

Selfer snorted awake. He rolled off the bed, tossing covers, and stumbled across the room.

“What you doing?” she whispered.

“Can’t sleep,” he muttered. He went into the master bathroom, flipped on the light and pushed the door shut, but it bounced back open a crack. She could see his reflection in the mirror, pale, a gelatin. He kept staring into that mirror. Then he opened the mirror and pulled down a bottle of pills and threw a couple back and drank a glass of water.

Sleeping pills, she hoped.