It was a relief to hear someone else say it out loud. Like I wasn’t alone. “Yeah. You’re right. He is.”

“Honey, you need to get out of that marriage.”

“I know.”

“You’re so much better than he is. I never understood why you married a loser like him. You’re pretty, you’re smart, you’re tough. You’re special.”

I sighed and closed my eyes, feeling unsteady. “I never wanted to be special. I just wanted to be normal. Around here, normal girls get married.”

“Okay, but why Ricky?”

“He said he loved me.”

“He was lying,” Sandra said.

I didn’t understand. I couldn’t focus. There was too much noise, too much smoke, too much cold, too much stench wafting out of the toilets. I was going to be sick. “What are you saying?”

“The football game? The first time you met him? He’d been watching you for weeks.”

I stared at her, seeing two Sandras, then three, then four, like a mirror in a fun house. “That’s not true.”

“Honey, he bragged to everybody at the mine that he was going to get you. Ricky was stalking you like a deer in the woods.”

I took off Sandra’s coat and handed it back to her. “Here.”

“I’m sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“I’m not upset.”

“You’re crying, Rebecca.”

“I’m not crying. I just really, really, really need to pee. What are those women doing in there?”

I was going to lose it. If I didn’t do something right then and there, I’d be peeing on the floor. I squeezed my bare legs together. I rubbed my face, which was wet, and I didn’t even know why. I saw the bar’s back door at the end of the hallway, and I wobbled that way on my heels, practically falling down. The only thing I could do was go outside in the snow. I could pee there. I really had to pee.

Then I met Ajax.

He came out of the men’s bathroom. There was never a line there. He was like a foot taller than me, looking all cocky and handsome, like Sean Connery when he was in Goldfinger and not older than dirt like in Never Say Never Again. Ajax checked out my face, my dress, my arms, my legs, my nipples, pretty much everything I had to offer the world. His mouth bent into a grin. It was a cute grin. He knew where I was going and what I had to do, and he thought it was incredibly funny.

“Gotta pee?” he asked.

“Oh, yeah.”

“Go in the men’s room. I’ll watch the door.”

“Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!”