Elaine is standing in the wide open door of the barn looking across the empty space at a spot a few feet away from Turner. She’s backlit, wearing a summer dress with her face half in shade since the lamp on the floor next to Turner’s cot isn’t bright enough to reach her. It’s a hot night and brutally humid so Turner’s lying on top of the sheet in briefs and nothing else. Elaine says the bushes he planted last month are starting to look nice. She never saw them before and thinks he’s doing a lot of good things around the place, things she didn’t expect but finds herself liking pretty well.

Sometimes Turner almost believes he’s what he presented himself to be two months ago - a displaced laborer en route to the coast, abruptly pinned down by a wild pandemic. She lets him sleep in the barn in exchange for odd jobs. Sometimes he gets a little cash on top, which he doesn’t need considering there’s two backpacks full of stolen money up in the otherwise empty hayloft. He only takes her money for the appearance. He stashes it in a book with the intention of giving it back whenever time comes to leave.

Elaine takes a cautious step inside. She still doesn’t look at him more than a second or two at a time.

“What do you call them again?”

“Smoke bush,” he says.

“Oh. Right. Smoke bush.”

Turner’s hands are beginning to callous up like they were back when he did things like that – planting things, fixing things. He doesn’t know how he remembers half of what he knows.

“So maybe,” Elaine starts, taking another step inside that’s meant to look like any other kind of gesture but approach, “I was thinking … the house could really use some paint. I know it’s a bigger kinda job, but I think I can get you some extra money. If you’d wanna, that is. You don’t gotta, but if you wanna …”

“Elaine.” She stops talking, folds her arms under her breasts. The silhouettes of her thighs are faintly visible through the diaphanous fabric of her dress. Her legs make him think of saplings. There’s something raw in her face that comes off as pretty. She doesn’t wear makeup but pays attention to her brows and hair which is a color he doesn’t know the name of. She takes a couple steps closer and Turner can smell her shampoo.

“Don’t worry,” he says. “I’ll paint the house,” he says.

She pulls a bigger sigh than the drama of the moment calls for. She’s clearly pleased but thinking about something else.

“I don’t know how to thank you. I’ll see you’re fairly compensated.”

“It’s okay. The arrangement we have so far is working fine. I don’t need any extras.”

She nods, frowning like he said something more serious than he said. She turns away for a moment like she’s wondering whether or not to walk out but then turns again and walks up close. The dim lamp has her lit up like a dark painting.

“So you think you’re stuck here until they got a vaccine for this thing going on out there?”

“Hard to say. I don’t want to impose.”

“Maybe you could start sleeping in the house.”

She finally makes eye contact. Turner reaches for her hand and puts it on his thigh. She looks down at the floor and slowly drags her palm up his leg until she touches his cock through his briefs. He wonders if she only ever touches what she can’t see. She sighs lightly and fondles him. He reaches under her dress and slides his hand up her damp inner thigh. She’s not wearing panties when he touches her smooth pussy. She makes a sound and widens her stance, giving him room to stroke her lips. They’re already half wet and it’s not long before she’s flushing hard and swallowing gulps of air.

His cock grows past his briefs. He stops fingering Elaine and pushes them off. She pulls up her dress and straddles him. The cot is small and awkward so she keeps her feet on the floor and holds his pulsing dick in place while she lowers her pussy down his shaft with a strangled whimper. When she hits bottom she holds still. She fits him like a hot sleeve made for nothing else in this world. Turner slips his hands up her legs and around her hips until he’s clutching the small, taut spheres of her ass.

“I gotta say. I lied,” she says. “The first day. I lied.”

“I know. It’s okay.”

“My husband didn’t leave me. He wasn’t so nice and somebody worse killed him. Me? I just ended up in the wreckage.”

“Shhhhh.” He caresses her hips and ass. Rocks himself into her, reminding her where they are in this chapter of the night.

“Okay,” she whispers and begins to rise and fall on his stalk.

“Geezus, Elaine. Fuck.”

It feels like her pussy is sucking his cock. She plants her hands on his chest and rides him like a dancer. Barely a few minutes in he says he loves her. It won’t stay inside him and everything breaks loose. Their bodies lurch hard until she chokes around something that could’ve been a word. Her pussy squeezes down on his cock and he fills her with a hot burst of cum.

The cot is too narrow for lying side by side so she lies on top of him. His cock still inside her. Turner wonders about leaving. It’s what you do when you’re going somewhere. When he got here, he wasn’t going anywhere, only running away from somewhere else. Now Elaine’s damp weight is pressing down on him. There will be a house to sleep in. It’s going to be a fresh, new color. The days are going to stack up high as clouds, and there will be nowhere else to go.