"Leave my house," she hissed.

Mumbling apologies, I fled.

Still flushed from the erotic dance I'd seen, I was too full of heat and longing to realize how deeply I had shocked the woman. I didn't know what to do with my desire. I wanted to find someone to pound it out of me, a crazy man, to fuck me till my pulse finally slowed. I had come to that house, to that slumbering town, to finish something that I had to do in order to become someone better. In four weeks I had written almost nothing. I'd given up ambition as easily as a healthy habit.

I wandered up and down the town's main drag all afternoon, stopping at a pool hall near dusk. There was only one other female in the bar, a mountainous woman whose bosom spilled across the table where she sat. A shot glass rested, thimblelike, between her breasts. A lean man, maybe thirty-five, sat beside her. His face was unexceptional until he smiled at me. I saw in his eyes the light I was looking for, a glint of dementia, the shimmer of stopped time. I imagined that face rising up from between my spread thighs, saw that mouth devouring me like a jackal. He beckoned to me, and I sank into a seat at their table.

"You from around here?" The man leaned closer as he spoke. His skin smelled of wind-dried sweat. His eyes were as pale as new nickels against his brown skin.

"I'm just here for the summer. I'm renting a room at the farmhouse on Mullen Road."

"That was Mary June's place," the woman said. "Did you hear that, John?"

Instead of responding, the man got up and went to the bar. He returned with a glass of amber elixir, which he offered to me.

"Who is Mary June?" I sipped the whiskey. Heavy and smooth, it plunged straight through me, making my cunt tingle from the inside. The man called John had long sun-gashes down his tanned cheeks; I wanted to trace those salty grooves with my tongue. His lean hands caressed his beer bottle as if they were entertaining ideas of their own.