The man in personnel was from Buffalo. He knew where the Minnechaug Valley was. He asked her if she could start immediately. They were short-staffed. He said there were opportunities for dancers, as well, but she wasn’t interested in that. Back at the motel, she borrowed an iron from the front desk and laid her clothes out on the other bed, the uniform she’d been given against her first paycheck and panty hose. The last thing she thought about before she fell asleep was the phone call she would make tomorrow after she got the job. She smiled and shook her head, thinking about her friend. No, maybe she wouldn’t call until she started a dance class, which she would do once she had some money. She would start to dance, finally, real dance. What was this feeling, though, this vibration in her chest? Maybe it was confidence. She had always been jealous of her friend’s confidence—what must it be like to walk around with that? It wasn’t really a feeling, it was more like a knowing. It was knowing that if you did one thing for yourself, you could do the next thing, and so on, until it got you where you wanted to go. And she had done it. And it felt good. People would help you, that’s what she’d never realized. Before she fell asleep, she got out of bed and double-checked the locks on the door one more time.

Tomorrow was hers.

She was so tired that she didn’t hear the knocking. It had to penetrate slowly into her sleep. Once she sat up, it took her a minute to remember where she was. She put on a sweater to answer the door. It was his sweater, because she had nothing of her own that was warm. It still smelled like him. She stood in front of the door. The knocking came again.

“Hello?”

“It’s me. Open up.” She leaned her forehead against the cold steel.

“It’s me, Mel. Open the door.” The door had a peephole and a sliding chain lock. She ran her fingers over the dents in the steel. “I just want to talk,” he said. “I’m on my way back to LA. I just wanted to say good-bye.”

She had just done her nails, and she watched them come up to the chain. He heard a small sound when her fingers touched the knob. He waited, but he didn’t hear the slide.

“I been doing a lot of thinking in the last couple days.” From the way his voice cracked, she could tell he was crying. “You don’t need me anymore. I know that. Shit, you’re on your way. I’m on my way, too. I just wanted to say good luck.”