The door to Bunk 6 stood open an inch, and Samantha stood in it with his hand flat on the frame, barefoot on the boards, the slip hanging past mid-thigh and swaying when the draft moved through the room. Ten days. The dressing was gone, folded somewhere, and the line under the cotton was a soft pink seam, neat and closed, paler than the skin around it. He had looked at it in the mirror over the washbasin for a long time before he came down the hall. He had touched it with two fingers and felt nothing but a slight tightness, like a seam in a stocking.

Izabella sat on the edge of the bunk with her legs apart and her hands flat on the mattress on either side of her. She did not say anything. She looked at him the way she looked at the men at the register when she was counting the till — slow, from the bottom up, and she stopped at the seam under the cotton and stayed there a moment before she went on to his face.

"You came down," she said.

"You said ten days."

"I said ten days." She stood up off the bunk, and the mattress creaked behind her, and she crossed the floor in two steps and stopped close enough that he could see the small gold hoops in her ears and the way her lipstick had worn off at the center of her mouth. "You kept your word."

"I didn't know I was making one."

"You held my wrist," Izabella said. "That's a word where I come from." She went down onto her knees in front of him, and the boards took her weight without a sound, and her hands came up the outside of his bare thighs, thumbs along the seam of the slip, and she looked at the pink line under the hem the way a woman looks at a hem she's about to fix.

Georgia's voice came from the hall. "You want the door open or shut?"

Samantha turned his head. Georgia stood against the frame with his arms crossed, one ankle over the other, the blue skirt creased where he'd been sitting on the counter all morning. He wasn't looking at Izabella. He was looking at Samantha, and there was something in the look that Samantha had seen once before, in a doctor's office with the light over the table.

"Half," Samantha said.

Georgia pulled the door to until it rested against the frame with a hand's width of hall left showing, and he leaned back against the jamb and crossed his arms again, and the light from the high window lay across his shoulder like a stripe of paint.

Izabella's hand slid up the inside of Samantha's thigh, unhurried, the flat of it warm through the slip's thin cotton, and her thumb found the hem and pushed it up an inch, then another, until the seam was in the open air and the afternoon light from the window fell on it and made it look even paler than it was. She stopped there. She looked at it for a long moment, and her thumb came down and traced the line from one end to the other, light as a pencil.

Samantha's breath went in through his nose and did not come out.

"Ten days," Izabella said, to the seam, not to him. "Look at that. Neat as a buttonhole." Her thumb went back the other way, slower, and this time Samantha felt it — a pull, thin and bright, like a wire drawn through the skin, and his hip flinched back a half-inch before he could stop it.

"Sorry," he said.

"Don't be sorry." She laid her palm flat over the whole of it, warm and still, and left it there while she looked up at him. "It's supposed to feel like that. Means the nerves woke up." Her other hand came up and cupped him underneath, the base of him, the loose skin drawn up over the shaft, and she held him like that, weighing him, and Samantha felt himself stir against her palm before he could think about whether he wanted to. "There it is," she said.

"Izabella—"

"You can say stop any time. You know that." She said it without looking up, the way you say a thing you've said before and mean. "But don't say it because you're ashamed. That's a different word."

Georgia shifted against the doorframe. Samantha heard the small sound of his stiletto heel against the boards, and when he looked over, Georgia had his chin down and his eyes on Izabella's hands and his mouth flat. He didn't say anything. He was watching the way you watch a thing you've already been through and can't decide whether to leave or stay for.

Izabella's hand moved. Slow, from base to tip, the loose skin sliding up over the head, and the head came out of it, flushed and wet at the eye, and she looked at it and then at the seam just under the crown, and she smiled with one side of her mouth. "He did good work," she said. "Whitfield."

"You know him?"

"Everybody knows him." Her hand kept moving, unhurried, and the wet at the tip gathered and smeared under her thumb, and she used it, spreading it down the shaft, and the sound it made was small and wet in the still room. "He did my cousin. Sixteen. Cried the whole way home in the truck and then wouldn't stop showing it to everybody at the lake."

Samantha laughed, once, and it came out wrong, and Izabella laughed too, low, and kept her hand moving, and the laugh turned into a breath that caught.

"Yeah," she said. "That's the sound." She lowered her head. She did not take him into her mouth. She put her tongue flat against the seam first, the whole flat of it, and dragged it from the base of the scar to the crown, slow, and Samantha's hand came up off his side and found the doorframe and gripped it.

"Oh," he said.

"There?" Izabella said, against him.

"There."

She did it again, the same flat drag, and this time she stopped at the seam and pressed her tongue against it and held, and the pull Samantha felt was not a wire anymore. It was a hand. It was a hand around the whole of him, hot and closing, and his hips moved forward an inch without his permission and she took the inch and did not give it back.

"Good," she said. "That's the whole point of it. That's why they do it."

"Why who does what?" Georgia said from the door. His voice had gone flat, the way it went when he was working the counter and a customer said something he didn't like.

Izabella lifted her head an inch, not enough to look at him. "Cut men," she said. "They feel more. Ask him." She tipped her chin at Samantha without moving her mouth off him. "Ask him if he feels more."

Georgia didn't answer. Samantha looked over, and Georgia had his arms crossed tighter and his eyes on the floor between his own stilettos, and there was a flush starting up his throat that had nothing to do with the afternoon.

"Sam," Georgia said. "You don't have to do this."

"I know."

"I mean it. You can walk out that door and I'll walk down with you and we'll go home and nobody in this building says a word."

Samantha looked at him. Georgia's jaw was set and his eyes were wet at the corners, and Samantha understood, suddenly, that Georgia was not offering him a way out. Georgia was asking for one.

"I'm okay," Samantha said. "I want to."

Georgia held his eyes a second longer, and then he nodded, once, and looked away down the hall, and his throat moved when he swallowed.

Izabella took him into her mouth.

Not deep. Just the head, just past the crown, her lips closed around the seam and her tongue working underneath, and Samantha's whole body went up onto his toes and his free hand came off the doorframe and found her hair and did not grip, just rested there, the way you rest a hand on a rail you're not sure will hold.

"Christ," he said.

Izabella hummed around him, and the hum went up the shaft and into his belly, and she pulled back slow, lips dragging, and let him out of her mouth with a wet sound, and looked up at him with her chin wet and her eyes steady.

"Say it again," she said.

"Christ."

"No," she said. "My name. Say my name when you feel it."

She took him back in, deeper this time, and her hand came up to meet her mouth, working the shaft below her lips, and the wet sound of it filled the small room and the light from the high window lay across her shoulders and the dust turned slow in it, and Samantha stood with his back to the doorframe and his hand in her hair and his feet bare on the boards and let it happen to him.

"Izabella," he said, and it came out like a question.

She answered it by taking him to the back of her throat and holding, and her throat worked around him, and Samantha's hand closed in her hair without meaning to and his knees went soft and he caught himself on the doorframe with his other hand.

Georgia was still in the doorway. Samantha could see him from the corner of his eye, the blue skirt and the crossed arms and the one heel lifted off the boards and set back down, and Georgia was not looking away anymore. He was watching Izabella's mouth move on Samantha and his own lips were parted and his hand had come up and was resting flat on his own chest, high up, over the sternum, the way you press a hand to a door to feel whether it's locked.

"Don't stop," Samantha said.

Izabella did not stop. She set a rhythm, slow and deep, and her hand kept working the base of him in time with her mouth, and the wet sound and the small sound of her breath through her nose were the only things in the room besides the tick of the bulb and the far-off clatter of plates from the diner below, and Samantha's hips began to move with her without his asking them to, small and helpless, and she took that too.

"That's it," she said, around him, the words slurred and wet. "Fuck my mouth. Go on."

"I don't—"

"You do." She pulled back to the crown and held him there, lips just closed, and looked up at him with her chin shining. "It's the same mouth I eat lunch with. It's not going to break."

Samantha laughed, and the laugh broke in the middle, and he moved his hips forward and she took him back in and this time he did it himself, small strokes into her mouth, and her hand slid down and cupped his balls and rolled them, gentle, and the pull in his belly went tight and low.

"Georgia," Samantha said, without meaning to. He didn't know why he said it. He looked over, and Georgia was looking at him, and Georgia's face had gone strange and open, and he nodded, just a small nod, like a man telling you to go ahead into a room he's already been in.

"Go on, Sam," Georgia said. His voice was low and it caught on the second word. "She's good at it. Let her."

Izabella made a sound around him, pleased, and took him deeper, and her throat worked, and the tightness in Samantha's belly pulled all the way up into his chest and stayed there, held, the way a wave holds before it breaks, and he was there, he was right at the edge of it, and he said her name again and she kept going and did not stop and did not pull off, and the room went narrow and bright around the shape of her head and the wet heat of her mouth and the flat of her tongue dragging up the seam one more time—

Samantha's head tipped back. His eyes closed. He heard Izabella's breath through her nose, slow and steady, and his own hand lifted off the doorframe and came up toward the back of her head, hesitant, not quite landing.