The afternoon was spent in quiet contemplation of shambling, malnourished spiders high up in corners, of cigarette burns in the linoleum kitchen floor. Jay struck yoga poses on the threadbare living-room rug while the sun sank, the blinking yellow light over the intersection down the street winking hypnotically through the window. At eight o'clock, when the footsteps came up the decrepit wooden stairs outside, when the knock came on the aluminum kitchen door, he was there in his metal folding chair in the kitchen, loafered feet on the collapsible card table, sweaty bottle of Bud Light in his hand. He called: "Get in here."
In walked beauty through the squealing screen door, faux leather bag on her shoulder. She stood there, hand on hip, coatless, grease stains on her uniform. "About time," ventured Jay.
"Howdy, baby," the waitress replied vacantly, eyes scanning the apartment as if she'd been expecting somebody else.
"I'd sure like to know your name."
"Well," she said, "they call me Terry."
Jay nodded thoughtfully, rubbing his chin. "Now what kind of girl," he wondered aloud, "comes after dark to the room of some strange man she doesn't even know, Terry?"
Electing, apparently, to answer with a gesture, she withdrew a snub-nosed handgun from her purse. "Did you say something about wanting a gun?"
"Well, I guess I did."
She cocked the hammer on the thing, pointed it at his head in such a way he figured she knew how to use it. He began to stand up. "No no, don't get up," she said. "No need for friends to play polite." Her other hand was procuring something else from the bag: the fifty-dollar bill, of course, he'd left on her tabletop. This she crumpled like she'd done his address that morning, then chucked it across the kitchen into the corner by the stove.
"You get down on your hands and knees," she said, "and crawl and get that money."
This Jay did, feeling the grime on the linoleum floor under the heels of his hands. Having fetched it, he sat there on his knees, holding it hopelessly. "Now you eat that fifty," she said, a vaguely insane warble in her voice -- and this he did, too, tearing the bill into bite-size pieces, gagging now and then as they went down.
"You got anything else," she said when he'd finished, "you want to say to me?"
Jay swallowed repeatedly, struggling to get the last piece down. "I'd say we've talked enough," he said. "Now get those fucking clothes off."
She crossed the kitchen, slapped him once stingingly across the side of the head. "You little slut," she said. "I swear to God. Get on that bed in there or I'll kill you."
When Jay's tongue was in her navel she said, "I reckon my husband ain't gonna like this."
"Fuck him."
