The silence was total; the man lying next to her, so slender, so silken-skinned, seemed now a manifestation of the darkness, something she’d imagined. Then he spoke, his mouth against her ear. “You were new,” he said, whispering. “I didn’t know that.” There was a touch of pride in his voice. She suddenly felt angry, angry in the same way she had been with Walter when he’d said he hated virgins. Jake was making some claim on her. She wouldn’t allow it.

“I should have used something, I guess,” he said. She couldn’t worry about that—how could they have made a baby when she lay there like the dead.

He went all the way home with her. The light was beginning to break over the hills, a light the color of water in a tin pail. “I’ll come and get you from work tomorrow,” he said. He kissed her before she went in. She liked that, his light boy’s kiss.

Underneath a door was a telegram from Walter that announced his arrival for the following Sunday. She looked at the Sheriff’s alarm clock, two hours left for sleep.

Lying awake in her bed, knowing she wouldn’t sleep at all, she thought of Walter. She thought of her father, laughing and on his hands and knees in front of a fat woman in some Village bar he’d taken her to once. She thought of the high-school teacher from Summit, his awful kisses. She thought of Jake.

Her job was terrible; she’d never get Jake’s room now. But she’d done one thing for Walter. She’d removed the condition he’d objected to. Then, wanting to cry out with shame, she said aloud, “Jake did it. I got him to do it…”

Chapter 8

On the second day of her job, Annie asked the manager for a stronger bulb for the basement. He said, she could see the boxes, couldn’t she? Well, then, enough is a sufficiency; there hadn’t been any complaints before—maybe her eyes were at fault.

She imagined that after a few weeks in that basement, you would lose the heart to complain. The day was no better except that Miss Gluck, with rather insidious smiles, seemed to suggest they were allies against the poor women who searched so dejectedly through the racks of sleazy dresses.