I took a long shower like there was nothing more to feel about this afternoon than the hot water on my face and breasts, my upper back and rear, the steam clearing my nose and lungs, the slip of the bar soap in my hands, the slightly bruised feeling between my legs, and the ache in my shin and foot. I felt as connected to the ground as an old newspaper blowing down the street. I started to feel a little scared, and as I turned off the shower I could hear Lester out in the room, taking something from paper bags. The mirror was too fogged to see my face, but I didn’t want to anyway. I wrapped myself in two towels, then limped out to the room and sat at the glass-topped table near the window across from Les, who’d just finished laying out paper plates and plastic forks and take-out boxes of Szechuan food that smelled like soy and cooked meat. He was smiling at me, taking me in. He leaned down and took my face in his hands, kissing my cheeks and lips. I held his wrists and kissed him back, surprised at how grateful I felt when he did that.

We ate beef teriyaki on pointed sticks, fried rice, spring rolls, and hot mushi pork we wrapped in thin pancakes. Sometimes I would look over at him and he’d smile and I’d smile back. I was still eating when he stood up, took something from the bag, then squatted in front of me and started rubbing ointment on the bottom of my foot. It tickled more than it hurt and I laughed. “Okay, that’s enough.”

“It’s antibiotic. I bought you some gauze too.”

My legs were parted and he was rubbing my foot with both hands, smiling up into my face, his mustache a straight line, his deep brown eyes as warm as any I’d ever seen. I was suddenly wet and I stood, twisted from his hands, and lay back on the bed, opening my towel for him, and almost immediately he was inside me again, his pants around his ankles, his star and name tag pushing against my skin.

After, he took a shower. I knew he was washing the smell of us off him, and I wondered how he would explain getting home so late to his wife, the wet hair. The word “wife” sort of sunk into my stomach like hot metal, but then I thought how I was a wife too, and that my husband was probably with somebody else right this second. But this was such a lame excuse for what I was doing, and I could hear the water shut off in the bathroom, the curtain jerking open.

MY WEDNESDAY HOUSE was the CPA’s on the Colma River. There was a small deck overlooking the trees down to the water and I stood out there now, leaning on the railing to give my right foot a break. I’d been hopping around on the toes of it all morning while I vacuummed, dusted, and straightened up, and every few minutes my calf muscle started to bunch up in a cramp and I had to stop and knead it until it relaxed again.

The deck was cool and shaded, but the sunlight was all over the river, bringing out the green in it, a layer of pollen floating along the surface. The air smelled like sewage and bark, and I could hear the crows up in the trees. It felt good to be working, even though I probably should have listened to Les and rested another day. Last night he drove me back to my car in San Bruno. We kissed goodbye in the light of the storage shed lot, then I came back here, lugged in my suitcase, and bagged the leftover Szechuan food and stuffed it into the mini-fridge bar on the floor. Inside were small green bottles of Inglenook white wine, nips of Smirnoff vodka and Bailey’s Irish Cream, two Heinekens and the can of Michelob. I flicked on the TV, lay on the bed, and watched most of a movie about a man who kills his wife and three kids and gets away with it for almost twenty years before they catch him living a new life with a new family only a state and a half away. When the phone rang I didn’t know I was almost asleep. It was Lester, saying he was at a phone booth down the street from his house, he already missed me. Then he paused, I think to give me a chance to say I missed him too, but I couldn’t say that; I was used to being alone and right then I needed something I was used to. He asked if he could take me to breakfast. I told him yeah, though when I hung up it was as if I wasn’t anchored all the way to the ground, like when you’ve had too much to drink but you don’t know it until you lie down and it’s that instant right before the room begins to turn when you feel the chains break away. I was glad he’d called, but I also felt like a kept woman and I guess I told him that this morning over coffee at Carl Jr.’s.

It was only six-thirty, but almost all the counter stools were taken up with men in trucker caps, some in suits and ties, drinking their coffees and reading newspapers between bites of eggs, toast, and home fries. Half the tables were full too. Lester was in his uniform, already thirty minutes into his six-to-six shift, he told me. His shirt had neat creases in the sleeves and I pictured his wife ironing it for him the night before. It was hard to look right into his face. I was glad when the waitress came to take our order and left us with two cups of coffee.

“This is on me, Lester.”

“I said I’d take you to breakfast.”

“You did. You drove me here, now I’m buying.”

“Keep your money, Kathy, you’ll need it.” He sipped his coffee, his eyes still on me.

“You’re paying for my room, what do I fucking need money for?” I was a little surprised at how mad I was.

Lester put down his cup. He started to reach over for my hand but then stopped himself. He leaned forward and said quiet and low: “I’m not sure what’s happening here either, Kathy, but I do know I’m not trying to make you some toy of mine. I just had to see you before it was another day.”

“And what?”

“That’s all.”

“No, what?” I touched his hand. I didn’t feel mad anymore. “Before it was another day and what?

“You’d forget.” He looked into my face and scrunched his lips up sideways, his cheeks and throat darkening. He had to be the sweetest-looking man I’d ever seen.

“Ha, you’re lucky I even remembered how.” I leaned forward. “You’ll have to wear something next time though, cowboy.”

“I’m embarrassed.”

“Yeah, well—” I lightly slapped his hand. “Don’t do it again.”

Our waitress showed up with the food right then, and we both started to laugh.

When he dropped me off at the motor lodge, we kissed a long time in the front seat of his cruiser. He asked if he could stop by after his shift and I said yeah, he could. But as I left I felt that off-the-ground sensation again, things turning too fast, and I knew I had to get back into my normal routine, hurt foot or not.

I watched a leafy branch float down the river in the sunshine, then I limped back inside to finish up, but first I had to check on Connie Walsh’s progress because I knew nothing was going to make me feel more rooted than getting back into my house. I sat on the arm of the black Naugahyde couch so many middle-aged men seemed to buy, and I punched in the number that by now I knew as well as my own mother’s.

THE MOTHER WHORES ARE LOCATED ABOVE A COFFEEHOUSE NOT FAR from the Highway Department Depot and the Concourse Hotel. I walk from the cool darkness of the underground garage that smells of car exhaust and dried oil upon concrete, carrying my leather valise under my arm, and for this meeting I have dressed in my finest suit, a summer-weight cashmere-and-mohair black double-breasted I purchased from a Pakistani in North Tehran. The shirt is white, the tie is blue and brown, the color of steel. As I left the bungalow, Nadi asked me why I was dressed so, and I told to her the truth: I am taking care of important business today, Nadi. Investment business. She asked no more questions. This morning Nadereh wore a cotton pantsuit the color of red sharob. She had brushed her hair until it was full and well-shaped upon her head, and she had applied cosmetics to her eyes, cheeks, and lips. She smiled and handed to me the shopping list for this Saturday’s party for our daughter, and Nadi looked so zeebah then, so beautiful in her new expectations, that I drove from the bungalow and down the hill with a furnace in my stomach for what I must accomplish.