Even in Owen’s hotel room, Antoinette out of her clothes and slithering through the shadows like an agitated white snake—her skin cold against his, the very chill of her hostility exciting, something to overlook and overcome—she continued to express her venom toward her colleague, who thought he was too hot a shit to come to this miserable so-called fair and sent her instead, expecting her to be grateful for this nonexistent favor. Even as she was being fucked, her tongue ran on about how some people just get under her skin, she knows she shouldn’t let them, it’s exactly what they want, mega-pricks like that, her girlfriends tell her to rise above it and not give the creepy bastard the time of day, and even as Owen came in her—she was one of these circus-performer types, bringing her legs way back like she is being shot from a cannon, he didn’t see how her clitoris was getting any contact but then she should know—it occurred to him that she was in love with this hateful Eric and felt spurned by him, and was using Owen to make him jealous. She thought that Eric could see her, that he was with her every moment. She was obsessed with him and was angry because, drunk as she was, she could feel Eric not caring; hanging up there like a bat in the corner of the ceiling, he didn’t care who she was acting like a circus performer with.

She awoke, finally, as they lay beside each other overheated and disappointed, to the dim reality of him, Owen, as opposed to that of the man tormenting her self-esteem back in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. She announced, in a different, sobered voice, “Hey, whatever your name is. You’re not so bad. Thanks for listening. My girlfriends think I’m crazy on the subject.”

“Well,” Owen said, mild and acquiescent as he tended to be, “we are crazy. People in general. Eric sounds like an interesting guy.”