He'd left her two years ago but she could still at night put her hand between her legs and he would be there on top of her saying Come for me and when she couldn't she'd remember the little hotel in Mexico with the round white tables and folded umbrellas and after they married his snakeskin boots at the end of the bed with black satin sheets but still she couldn't come masturbating alone in the dark, so she thought of standing naked while he held an open safety pin dragging the tiny sharp silver point delicately over her breasts, pulling her to the floor where later she ground broken glass into the cracked red and white linoleum with her heel, and he would grab her so hard sometimes she felt she'd never been truly held before and she said Go further, take me further, and when the final papers came she got drunk as usual and drove to his old flat he'd moved back into and knelt on his doorstep saying his name over and over into the mail slot, through it she could see part of the hallway he'd led her down once and tied her up and shaved her and she said Now I'm yours and she was and he was holding her I love you come for me and she came, and it was raining and down the hall of the rooming house someone's travel alarm was going bleep-bleep-bleep without stopping and there was nothing to drink and no one to say There, there while she cried.

First published in, "Nobodaddies"