Tonight, the Greek recognized them and took them to a table himself. After dinner, they went directly to Jake’s room. He’d bought a flower for her, a gardenia, lying in a wrinkle of white tissue paper. Its aroma filled the room.

“I’ve told my buddy, Carson, about you, and he wants to meet you. He’s decided to be a stunt man—they make lots of money—and he wants us to get a place together, maybe rent a little house. I’m going to stay. Did you hear me, Annie? I mean, things are looking up, aren’t they? Do you want me to stay, Annie? If Carson and I get a little house, it would be nicer for us than this room, wouldn’t it? I had another idea for you, The May Company. It’s the biggest department store out here. They’ll give you decent wages.”

Annie saw the future—herself returning to the “little house” where Carson, the stunt man, and Jake, the dancer, waited. Like the Sheriff, she would return with a burlap bag full of stolen objects. Soon, they would both begin to call her the Sheriff, too. She looked down at her shabby shoes, the heels so worn on the outside that it was a strain to stand upright.

“My father told me there were hotel rooms that cost five hundred dollars a week,” she said.

Jake frowned. “What?”

“Just that.”

“Saturday, we can go to the beach.”

“Every Saturday? You and me and Carson?”

“I mean, this Saturday.” The frown gave way to bewilderment. “What’s the matter?”

“Sorry,” she said coolly, smiling. Uncertainly, he smiled back. “How’s your colitis?”

“Okay,” he said, subdued.

“When does your picture start?”

“My picture?” He walked to the window. “It’s only a few days’ work.”

“Are those little houses you were talking about furnished?”

“I don’t know.”

She pitied him as she might have pitied an animal being baited, a little less, perhaps. He could stop her if he only knew it. She looked at the waxy petals of the gardenia. What was that? A celebration of sexual intercourse? That loss of grace, that sprawl of limbs, that revelation that only the outside of life was dry and imperishable but that the inside was all wetness and blood and the perishable and perilous beat of pulses?

Frightened by the tumult of anger that raged within her, she began to pace about the room.

There was a noisy thud, her ankles were gripped and she fell to the hard floor. Jake had tackled her; he lay on the floor at the end of her own length, his hands still holding her ankles. They were both gasping, the wind knocked out of them. Jake began to climb her as if she’d been a rope, hand over hand, keeping her immobilized, until his face was only a few inches from hers.

“Annie, Annie…” he said.

She clenched a fist.