It caught me off guard. I’d always had a job where you had to shower after, a job that made you dirty, where you came home tired and sore and sweaty and smelling like grease or smoke.

He was clearly in the other camp. The shower-before-work crowd. A job where you flexed nothing but your influence.

“If you want,” he said, when I didn’t answer.

“I left the clothes you gave me at home,” I said.

“I have more,” Bear said. He grinned.

I stood outside the big white square of the bathroom, my shoulders low. Exhausted, nervous, shamed. I felt so dirty that I needed to be cleaned before I could get dirty again. Like I needed to be decontaminated just to be here.

Bear leaned on the doorjamb, waiting. I wondered if he would stay to watch me. There were clean white towels rolled into a basket on a table. Then he said, “Are you telling me that a hot shower and a cold beer at the end of a workday doesn’t sound good?”

“No,” I said. “It definitely does. It’s just also the beginning of work.” I laughed a little.

“It’s just prep work,” he said.

He shut the door behind him when he left. And when I locked it, I covered my face and thought, I’m never going to get paid. I’m going to keep him company, I thought, and never actually catch up. I looked in the mirror and then opened the medicine cabinet, the way I had at Baby Jane’s, but I was acutely afraid of getting caught, of things falling out, of a trap having been laid for me. There was aspirin. Aleve. Hydrogen peroxide. Allergy tablets. Rubbing alcohol. Q-tips. Tom’s of Maine natural toothpaste in cinnamon. A silver razor blade and a tube of shaving cream. There were no drugs.

I used the shampoo that was in the shower, which smelled like mint, and a body wash that was a light clear green and smelled like rosemary. The towels were as big as bedsheets, deep and soft. I thought about walking out naked, but on the bed, Bear had left me a pair of forest-green corduroys that were big in the waist and too long, a plain gray T-shirt, and a flannel that, when I checked the tag, was blended with cashmere.

Bear was on his knees in the living room, getting a fire started, blowing with the hand bellows into the big fireplace. Outside the giant windows, it had started to rain, the sky a deep slate gray and the panes slashed with sideways drops.

I didn’t want to go home.

I wanted to disappear. Run as fast as I could without looking back. Change my name. Become something else. Become this. I wished he was even farther away. That we were out of Spring Falls. Out of state even.

I wished there was a way to check on Birdie. She’d been fine when I stopped home. Bored, hungry. I made her a peanut butter sandwich, took her to the bathroom, and put her on the bed with my mother, who was sweaty and sleeping, with a book and a few dolls. Birdie gave me a look.