“This was nice of you,” she says.

“Thanks.”

“What do you want?”

“Nothing. That was just lagniappe, as they say in New Orleans. A little extra something-something.”

She laughs as if that’s the most ridiculous thing she’s ever heard, a man wanting nothing from her.

“You’ve been kind of standoffish with me. Like we got off on the wrong foot or something. And it’s nicer if people who work together get along.”

“We get along fine.”

Every instinct warns him not to reference that one night, when he didn’t ask her back to his room. In fact, he has to turn it around, make it a story about how she gave him the brush-off. Her pride demands this. In her head, that might already be the story.

“Look, you’re a good-looking woman. You can’t blame men for getting a little mopey around you.”

She’s interested now. “Mopey? That’s your word for it?”

“I worry you’re going to make me your friend. Tell me all about the guy you really like.”

“Not really in the market for a boy friend,” she says. He thinks there’s a pause between the two words. “You still at the motel?”

“Yeah.”

“With rent as cheap as it is in this town? You could do better. You should see my place. It’s huge.”

“I’d like that. To see your place. One day.”

Bait.

“I need some furniture. Can you get off next Saturday? During the day?”

Hook.

“Maybe.” It will be hard, but if he comes up with a good excuse, promises to be there for the dinner rush, it should be okay. They don’t really do a good lunch business on Saturday, so Mr. C could be persuaded to cook. Schools are out and the roads are clogged with traffic because most of the weekly rentals change over on Saturday. Locals can barely get out of their driveways on the weekends. The people bound for the beach are too close to those salty sea breezes to stop by the time they reach Belleville, while those who are headed home feel as if they’re too early in their journey to abandon their momentum.

And next weekend is the beginning of the long Fourth of July weekend, so the traffic will be worse than usual.

“There’s an auction, over to Mardela Springs. I might be able to pick up a few things I need for my new place. But I’d need someone strong. Someone with a truck. You drive a truck, a big one, right?”

“Pretty big,” he says.

“Well, let me know. If you can get off on Saturday.”

She has eaten every bite of the food he put in front of her. The plate barely needs to go in the dishwasher. Who eats like that and has a figure like hers?

He finds himself thinking of the folktales his mother liked to tell him. Greek and Roman mythology wasn’t enough for Lillian Bosk. She had studied Slavic languages, written a dissertation on Eastern European folktales. She loved to tell him about the ala and Baba Yaga, and what happened when young women came to visit them. The stories differed in key parts—the ala wore a horse’s head while delousing her “human” head; Baba Yaga, in her heyday, was almost a goddess.

But the stories always ended the same way, with the demon devouring her nosy visitor in one bite.

6

The Saturday of the auction is hot, but not humid. Adam’s truck has air-conditioning, but when he asks if they can drive with the windows open, she says yes. Polly always plays the good sport, the girl—woman—who doesn’t mind if her hair gets tousled. Being a good sport sounds like such a good thing, but there’s no good thing that can’t become bad for you. Polly looks at the skies, remembers some tiny shred of poetry from grade school, something about blue skies arching. She never got that. How can a sky arch? It doesn’t touch the ground.

“What do you need?” he asks her.

“Everything.” She doubles down on that one word, gives him a quick glance, but level, not through the lashes. She hates women who do that, peer through their lashes.

“You got a budget? Easy to get carried away at an auction. There’s something about someone else trying to get what you want, even if you don’t want it that bad, that can make you crazy.”

Tell me about it. She’s been clocking Cath clocking Adam.

She’s wearing a sundress that she found in the Purple Heart on Main Street. In a vintage shop back in Baltimore, this same dress might cost $50, $75. Here, it was $12. Her body is made for clothes like this—fitted through the bodice, then a big swirl of a skirt, patterned with bright fruits. She found a pair of earrings—purple glass grapes that dangle from her lobes. A little matchy-matchy, but it works. She wears flat sandals and when she starts roaming the dusty rows of furniture and housewares at the auction, it feels as if something is nibbling at her ankles. What kind of bug can live in such dry dust?

More than once, she feels his gaze on her shoulders. She knows she has a beautiful back, her bones clearly visible, but not in a way that makes her look underfed or scrawny. Her shoulder blades look like wings. Or so she’s been told, by more than one man. Two, to be exact. Both husbands.

This one says nothing, though. Today, he seems determined not to compliment her.

Focus on what you need, she tells herself, not what you want.

She shouldn’t be buying anything, but she did the math: The motel, at $220 a week, was $880 a month. So she’s saving $580 by taking the apartment, which means she can get out west by September, wrap things up mid-October. But she can’t live in a completely empty apartment for two months. She needs utensils, a kitchen table, a couple of chairs.