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'They don’t even make film for those anymore,' I said, laughing. 'I wish they did. Now it’s just a curiosity, an antique.'

'Just what I need,' she said. 'Have some freak videotapin’ me.' She went across the room and picked it up, turned it over in her hands. It had a handle and a trigger like a gun. She pointed it at me with an exaggerated air of menace.

'To film something you would just hold down the trigger,' I said. 'If you let up it stopped filming.'

'Heavy sumbitch,' she said. She placed it back on the shelf and sat down again. But she couldn’t take her gaze from it. She stared at it for what seemed like a long time.

'That big eye, or whatever you call it, makes me nervous. Like someone’s watching me.'

'Lens,' I said.

'Gives me the creeps,' she said. 'Lens. Whatever.'

I went over to the shelf and turned the camera to face the wall. I understood a thing or two about paranoia, and I didn’t want to encourage hers.

'Maybe you want to take a hot shower,' I said.

'Sounds nice.'

I took a fresh towel from the closet and set it on the edge of the sink. After I heard the water turn on, I sat down on the futon next to her coat and lit another cigarette.

One pocket of her coat lay open like a great gaping mouth, an invitation. With hardly a moment’s hesitation I reached into it. I found a scrap of paper with an anonymous address written on it, a payroll stub for a man named Gerald, a Trojan condom in a creased wrapper indicating long transport without use. I wondered whether it would be safe to wear it anymore.

The other pocket held nothing. I went next to her bag. In it were a pair of scuffed, black, high-heeled shoes, a blouse, a pair of underwear, an empty paper bag damp with beer, and a small black notebook. I held the notebook in my hand. Everything else I’d touched was a practical object with a clear purpose, while the notebook was a thing of mystery, capable perhaps of revealing some aspect of her private life. But even as I violated her privacy, my conscience was calibrating degrees of violation, and I finally thought better of it and put it back.

I suddenly felt dirty and ashamed. I sniffed my hand, which smelled of stale beer. I went to the kitchen sink and washed up to my elbows with dish soap, more out of a desire to absolve the instruments of my transgression than to stave off unwanted odors.

She came out of the bathroom wearing nothing but the towel. She held a damp pair of underwear and two damp socks.

'Can I put these someplace to dry?' she asked. There was neither shame nor coyness in her expression. It was as if she had asked me what time it was. Adopting a similar nonchalance, I arranged an electric fan in front of a desk chair, over the back of which she draped the socks and underwear. Then she sat down, put her feet up on the coffee table, and lit another cigarette.

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