Jimmy poked his head out the front door, then a hand, and motioned her inside.

She had maybe ten feet of driveway + front porch to cross, but Ann needed to gather herself before she got out of the car. She was in a little wraparound sun dress she’d stuffed in her purse for lagniappe while Jimmy was dickering with the thrift-store guy about the white patent-leather platform heels she also had on. When they got out in the parking lot he locked the car doors and made her strip before he let her in, in front of God and however many passers-by,— waitress uniform, underwear, down to the tennis shoes. Leave em on the asphalt, he said. She had to yank the dress on in the front seat so she’d never even stood up in it yet.

Jimmy’s sense of humor. She got pretty hot at him—stamped and cussed up a storm and would’ve kept on but it occurred to her she was Causing a Scene—and by some kind of rebound she got as hot for him after, once she gave up and did it anyway. She kinda liked the giving up. She’d have practically let him take her right there in the car if he’d asked her.

They were in a weathered-looking subdivision back of a commercial strip: small houses, big trees, cracked upthrust sidewalks, nobody walking them. Ann hunched her way out of the passenger seat clutching the dress around her, nakeder under the implied suburban eye than she’d felt in the parking lot. She wasn’t very sure on the heels yet either, and nearly ran afoul of a big step up onto the porch.

Jimmy shut the door behind her. The unwindowed entryway was in perpetual twilight. Ann blinked the day glare out of her eyes and took a glance around.

“It looks empty,” she said. Jimmy found the light switch and thumbed it on.

“Foreclosure sale.” He walked a few echoey paces towards the back. A door opened, then the sound of a running faucet. “And water,” Jimmy said, coming back out and wiping his hand against his pants.

“I got a buddy clues me into these places,” he told her. “They’re all over.”

“Jimm-ee-ee-ee,” Ann whined, bouncing her frustration like she was five. “Goddamn. I thought you said we were gonna go someplace we could have some fun.” The last thing she wanted to do was have to cool her heels and pretend to be interested while him and some realtor guy talked drywall.

“Have fun right here, doll,” Jimmy said. “Jimmy’s a fucken one-man Fun Zone.” He switched the light off and slapped Ann on the ass. “Go on, shuck that dress.”

He wandered away again, disappearing down a hall to the left. “Here?” she called after him, rubbing where he’d smacked. I don’t rate a fucking motel room? “I quit my job, Jimmy!” Ann yelled. But the dress was already off; untied, it soughed down around her feet with barely a wiggle.

There was a coat closet, but no hangers. Ann draped the dress off the doorknob and looped her purse over to hold it. “Boyfriend too I guess, while we’re at it,” she muttered. Naked and aimless, she stepped into the living room.

All day clouds had been dogging the sun. Now they were in a patch of clear, and the room was flooded with light. “Oh hey, look!” Ann exclaimed. The long outer wall was dominated by three large double-paned windows, side by side by side. They sat over deep sills at least a foot off the floor, and went almost to the ceiling. She walked over to them.

Jimmy came into the living room from the other end. “Gotta text my guy,” he grumbled, “I think that fridge might be fucked.” Ann tried hoisting herself onto one of the window sills, clutching at the bottom pane for a brace, but there was no purchase for her there and she clattered back down before she could get up. It was all she could do not to fall off her platforms. “What’s all this?” Jimmy snickered. “View from the heights?”

“My gramma grampa had these windows, Jimmy! See these weird, like, pie plate kinda things? latches? I forgot all about em.” Ann took a couple steps back to appraise the view. “I was little I used to wear out my fingers on those things, you know climb up inside the curtains, get yourself in there tight, pretend they can’t see you? Always made me feel big. They called it the picture window.”

“Yeah, real midcentury shit,” Jimmy said, glancing at the hardware. “Not sure it counts as a picture window though.”

“I wonder why they have it facing the driveway. My grandparents, you could look out on the beech tree out on their lawn. Watch the squirrels. Like you had a whole world all to yourself.” Jimmy craned his head into the window to look at the sky. “Northern exposure,” he mused. “And it’s a narrow lot, this is probably your best bet for natural light in the whole place.” He motioned Ann to him with his head and dug something out of his pocket.

“What’s that?” Ann said. He was tapping out two little hills of white powder from a vial onto the back of his hand. He held it out to her in a loose fist. “Here,” he said. “Snort.”

“Jimmy what the fuck,” she sighed, hands on her hips. “I don’t do drugs.” She dipped her head and took a quick hit in one nostril, then in the other. She got a faint sort of metallic tang in the back of her throat, otherwise it didn’t taste like anything at all.

She sniffed her sinuses clear and gave him a hard look. “So what was that, cocaine, Jimmy? You got me doing cocaine now?”

Jimmy chortled. “I guess you really don’t do drugs.” He stowed the vial away and pulled his phone out. “It’s just like a chill party favor, relax, you’ll love it.” He tapped her rump a couple times with his free hand and held the phone up, camera side out, with the other. “Go on,” he said, “get back up there.”

“Jimm-eeeee!” Ann looked from the phone to the room’s bare walls, as if pleading for a witness. “Jimmy I just wanted to stand in it for a sec, it’s not—” She gesticulated helplessly at it. “I’m not taking nudie—”

“Pssh,” Jimmy said, “it’s daytime, nobody’s gonna see you from outside. Place is dead, there’s nobody even around.”

Fuming, Ann squinted into the glare. It was the parking lot all over again. “I can’t even balance in there,” she sulked, tossing her head.

“Well not on those clamshell things you can’t,” he said. “You gotta get up—” he mimed it for her—“get your arms up, you know, grip up inside the tracks there, you can do it. Come on, you look cute up there. In the sun, in them platforms? Got a whole California thing going on, you look like Bridget Fonda in Jackie Brown.”

Ann pouted at him from under her brows. “Jackie Brown? Sam Jackson? Tarantino?” “I don’t know who any of those people are, Jimmy,” she said sullenly.

“Too young for Tarantino.” He clucked his tongue and set his broad hand firmly under Ann’s rear. “Well, not like you’re here for your conversation. Come on,” he said, pushing up, “let’s try this again.”

“I’m twenty-five Jimmy.”

“I don’t hold it against you,” he said. Boosted, Ann managed to grab ahold with her arms like he’d told her, but she had some trouble finding her balance, and almost collapsed when he let go his hand. “Spread your feet out a little,” Jimmy said, “catch more of the sill. There you go.” He backed up, staring into the phone, framing his shot. “Now you’re stable.”

A high haze had gathered over the sun, and by degrees the brightness lost its intensity. A wind picked up in the neighbor’s maples, turning already in the early fall. For the first couple of snaps Ann was tense yet, but then she got into it. It was warm in the window, she was a being of lace and air, and she started feeling carefree again, like in the car. She tried her perch, leaned back, then again farther, letting her hair fall from off her neck, while Jimmy made directorial noises she didn’t feel responsible for attending.

He dropped down on his haunches by the sill to shoot her from below. Jimmy was a leg man. Ann remembered how hot he told her it looked when she stretched out and propped her foot up on the dash, when they were stopped at that light. And that dude in the SUV alongside! She made eye contact when he pulled up and the next thing she was fully spread open and fingering herself at him. It was a long light too. No idea what possessed her. Some jerk behind them started laying on the horn when the light changed and the guy went pop-eyed, like he woke up out of a trance, and peeled away in a screech, and her and Jimmy laughed about it so hard they almost caught the red again.

“I really do like my heels, Jimmy,” Ann said cajolingly. She turned her foot a little this way and that to admire how they looked. “It was real nice of you getting em for me.”

“They went on your card, babe.” He took another snap and stood back up.

“Yeah but you picked em out special. It’s romantic.”

Ann closed her eyes and let herself drape. She was a hammock in the breeze, and the girl swinging in it. Jimmy came up behind her and rested his palm on her hip. She leaned her head back against his shoulder. “Am I high, Jimmy?” she whispered. “Is this is what being high feels like?”

He slid his hand inside her thigh and over her crotch. “This is what being high feels like, doll.” Ann grunted and shivered when he pushed his finger inside, but she was instantly wet for him. Just like when he touched her before, at the diner. She’d gone over to his booth, wasn’t even her station, dropped her panties for him and hiked her skirt up and her stupid apron like he told her and then just,— lost her shit. He barely had to do anything. She came loud, but the weird thing was, nobody else in the place paid them a bit of mind. Just an ordinary day shift post-lunch. She was lost in space with Mr. Magic Fingers, and all the rest of them going through the motions like they were in a whole separate universe.

Jimmy’s hands were meaty and his fingers thick. He shoved another one in and for an instant Ann felt like she was blacking out. Her eyelids fluttered, and the stuttering light reminded her where she was standing. “Jimmy, what are you doing to me,” she whimpered, “I’m not this kind of girl.”

“We are what we do, what my momma always said.” Jimmy gave her an upthrust that almost lifted her off her feet, then popped his fingers out and wiped them off against the small of her back. “She was a whore too.”

He hadn’t made her cum this time. With him suddenly not inside her Ann felt cold, and small, and empty,— not just empty in her pussy but in herself. The sun had gone in, and the day took on a sullen cast. Jimmy’s phone dinged.

“Stay there,” he said, walking away. Ann stood up taller, to get some of the weight off her arms. She was afraid to step down on her own. He’ll help me when he comes back, she thought, except he wasn’t gone but a second, and she hadn’t arranged it in her mind yet to ask him. He stood quietly behind her and put a fingertip at the base of her neck.

Her breath, her heart, everything inside her slowed. He trailed a long, snaky curve down to the bottom of her spine. “I ever tell you about Amsterdam?” Jimmy said. He made a series of jagged little upstrokes all along Ann’s waist then ascended in slow whorls around her shoulder blades. Like wings, or a big tree spreading across her back. “Course not, we just met. You know what a red-light district is. Well they got these like alleys running through there, with these tiny little storefronts? and in every storefront a naked hooker.” He drew an angular pattern about heart level that might have been a star. “Near as. Just stroll on past,— one after another, every one of em’s putting you on a little show.” She felt an energy go through her. He was tracing a tattoo she never knew she had. Some secret that could only be told on the skin. “Wild stuff, man.”

Jimmy’s phone dinged again and he broke off. “Listen,” he said, “we passed a big-box a little ways back, I gotta go get some shit,— air mattress, cooler … Beer. Towels. You know, supplies.” He walked into the foyer, his boots heavy on the wood flooring, while from inside her high Ann tried to work out what was happening. She tried to call out to him but her throat felt like it hadn’t been used in an age.

He popped his head back in, though from Ann’s angle she could scarcely see him. “Just taking your purse,” he said. “Hey I got my pal coming by some point. He gets here ahead of me, just,— be entertaining.”

“Jimmy I gotta peeee,” Ann keened, so softly she barely heard it herself. She started to weep. The door slammed.

The clouds thickened overhead, the afternoon lapsed into dusk, and Ann lost track of time. The wind got gustier. She didn’t see if there were squirrels. Every now and again a car passed. Her arms were so beyond tired they weren’t even arms anymore, just clawhooks. Her platforms had merged and become one with the windowsill. It was fine. She went with the fixtures. Stay this way forever if that’s what he wanted. That’d show him.

A car came down the street with its lights on. The sky in the west, what Ann could see between carports, was a wall of just-extinguished flame. Another car came by going away from her, slow, and when it braked the taillights splashed red across her front. The light glazed her mons and turned the drying piss trail down her leg to garnets. Her hips began to gyrate, a tortuous, automatic, enervated come-on. She dreamt a microdream of that whore in the shop window, on sale to everyone, hawking everyone the goods. She whispered the whore’s mantra to herself, be entertaining, and pressed her nakedness that much closer to the glass.