Everything is breaking down and she tells him no, that she will not do what he has asked her to do. Neon sign on the side of the building lights her body through the window. The bodega on the ground floor is doing its usual late-night condom and mouthwash trade. A bottle hits the pavement hard. Light dances down the bare lines of her body and he can see she’s breathing deep and worrying her fingers with her thumbs the way she does when she doesn’t want him to know whatever delicate truth is brewing inside her.

“This place feels like the end of everything.”

“It is. Kind of.”

“I want to crawl out of my skin.”

“Don’t worry. It’ll quiet down in another hour or so.”

“I hate you for bringing me.”

Richman deflates a moment. “Don’t. Please.”

“Why are we here?”

He walks to the window. Looks out and down. The hope of watching her open like an orchid drains out of his face.

“I just wanted you to see it.”

He turns back in, sits against the sill. A distortion of his silhouette leans across the bed. Ripples across her body.

“I’m from here,” he confesses.

She turns her head. Wild hair fans across the pillow. Arms cross over her breasts. Hips like a rumor taper down to crossed ankles. Her thighs press inward while her pussy hides under his shadow. She regards him as if face changed.

“You wanted to show me your past. I see now.”

At one square mile, Rapid Falls is the smallest, poorest city in the region. Full of immigrants and refugees not looking for a second chance, but the last one. No one who leaves ever comes back. Except Richman now. Because of Lark.

“No. My present. My family still owns this building. This place is inside me. The people. All their ghosts live inside me. If you love me then you love them, too. If you hate me, you hate them.”

“Your family? Was I supposed to meet them or something?”

He turns back to the window and shakes his head. “They’re not part of me at all.”

Working open the buttons down his shirt he watches a heavy-set woman in a Guatemalan peasant skirt lumber wearily up the sidewalk, two children chasing each other in circles around her. She is the sun pretending to ignore the revolving planets nourished on her light.

Richman turns back in and takes off his shirt as he walks to the other side of the bed. He pours two more fingers of Woodford’s from the pint on the bedside table. The aroma hits his brain a split second before the sting hits the back of his throat. He offers Lark the rest but she shakes her head so he drains it.

His eyes go numb but his vision sharpens. He sets down the glass and moves his hand onto her thigh. Soft slide over her skin. Every time he thinks he understands what she is made of he touches her and everything changes.

“Open them for me.”

She sighs instead of saying no. His hand slides down her leg, over her knee and shin to grip her ankle. The one crossed on top. He tries to pull it away, to open her legs as he has asked her several times already but her leg tenses and she’s stronger than she looks. The hand relaxes but stays.

“Why are we here? Why now? This is why you’ve been holding back when you already knew it was yours?”

He leans over and presses his face into the triangle of her clamped thighs and pussy. Inhales deep and presses his lips to the small patch of her mound he can reach. Her thighs tighten but the soft rush of breath that comes with the flex keeps him there. His tongue pushes out and wets the skin at the very top of her slit. She makes a sound that isn’t completely a sound. Something she didn’t want him to hear. He knows this and licks her again.

He rears up and looks at her face.

“We are here,” he says, sighing with shame, “because I wanted the beginning with you to be right at the beginning of everything. Like if you could love me here you could love me anywhere.”

She looks at the window where the white of the white lines along her dark body comes from.

“You’re not even naked.”

He stands. Takes off his pants. His cock is mostly hard but he kneels on the bed and watches her while he strokes himself fully hard. She watches his hand move up and down his shaft. Looks up at his face now and then but keeps her attention on the see-saw stroke of his fist.

“Spread your legs,” he tells her for how many times he can’t remember.

She turns toward the window again and uncrosses her ankles but doesn’t spread her legs.

“Spread,” he hisses. “Geezus, Lark, it’s only me.”

“Only you,” she says to the neon. “At the beginning of everything?”

He sighs instead of saying yes.

Her lips curl into something between a smile and the shape of a silent moan. Her knees rise and spread and for the first time he can see the true shape of her pussy, that tortuous V and tender curling of sexlips peeling slowly open with the widening of her thighs. He lets go of his cock and bows to her, sliding his wet tongue upward along her scarlet slash toward the burning pearl. He pulls it between his lips and pushes his finger inside her.

She tastes of damp skin and body heat. His finger curls and grinds. His tongue plays at the cream-laced aperture surrounding it. There’s a soft rattle at the edges of her breath as she pushes it out. Her body dances with the light dancing on her skin. Her mound arches toward him. Begging him home.