Jen Michalski's collection of short fiction, Close Encounters, is available from So New Media. Her work has appeared widely, including McSweeney's Internet Tendency, failbetter, storySouth, 42 opus, Gargoyle, The Potomac Review, Hobart, Pindeldyboz, and others. She is the editor of the literary quarterly jmww and lives in Baltimore.

We Don’t Normally Do This

The woman taps on your window. You lower it slightly, the air conditioning escaping the car, the hot taking its place.

Can you help me? she asks. I need some money to eat.

The woman’s face is tan, of the permanently outdoors variety, her skin inelastic, puffy, of the non-health variety.

You don’t normally do this, not for anybody. You know it is because you are a white woman and because the woman is white. She probably knows this, too. You open the lock on the passenger-side door.

Get in, you say to the woman. I live a few blocks away.

They have never been this close to your home before, not even the men. When you think about it later you will realize that the woman was standing a block up from the local liquor store, a half block down from the bus line. A perfect place to do business. But they have still never been this close to your home before. And you don’t normally do this, not for anybody.

The woman doesn’t smell. You expected something acrid to come from her or maybe cheap perfume. There are no bags. No shopping cart on the side of the curb. The woman wears old Nikes and shorts, a t-shirt with a cigarette company’s logo. No blemishes on her legs, arms.

I don’t normally do this, you explain. I don’t carry cash. But I have food at home.

I really appreciate this, the woman says. I’ll eat anything.

You unlock the door to the house and let the woman go in first. The woman scans the room, looking at your knickknacks, your television, the wrinkled magazine on the coffee table. You close the door and the woman turns to you, a knife in her hand.

I don’t normally do this, the woman explains. But I need the money. I know you got some.

I don’t carry cash. You shake your head. You have your hand on the doorknob but the woman lunges at you, pulls you to the center of the room. You wonder whether you can wrestle the woman but decide not to. It is not that she is stronger, you think, just that the woman is more desperate, you know.

Bullshit, the woman answers. You got emergency money, something. The woman takes some DVDs off the top of the television, yanks the purse from your limp hand. Find it. Or I’ll stab you.

The truth is you lied to her. You have forty-two dollars in your purse. But even if it is a woman, even if you don’t normally do this, you weren’t willing to give the woman money to buy drugs or alcohol or whatever got her doing things she wouldn’t normally do, like asking strangers for money at street corners.

It’s in my purse. You nod toward your purse, now in the woman’s hand. The woman glances at it, keeping her eye on you. She reaches in and emerges with your wallet, which she flips open with her finger.

Can you just take the money, leave my driver’s license and cards? You ask. I’m going to cancel the cards if you take them.

Shut the fuck up. The woman throws the purse at you. It hits you in the leg, and then lies doubled over on the floor like a kicked dog. It doesn’t hurt, the purse, but you feel tears in your eyes anyway.

You have what you want, you say. Please go now. I kept my end of the bargain.

You’re a liar. The woman motions you toward the hall closet. If you had given me the money, I wouldn’t have to do this.

You don’t have to do anything, you say. You can just leave.

You must think I’m stupid. The woman laughs. Shrill, hiccupy, like a teenager. I ain’t as stupid as you, that’s for sure.

You’re not as kind, either. You frown.

You shouldn’t have said it but you want to, a parting shot. The woman laughs again and gets behind you, pushes you into the hallway and toward the closet. With the knife against your back you squeeze in among your scratchy winter coats, the smell of moth balls light in your nostrils. As you turn to face her, an umbrella pokes at the back of your knee. The woman closes the door and jams something in it from the outside. Maybe the knife, you’re not sure, a chair.

You’re not sure if the woman is gone, so you don’t scream at first. At first you think about your heart rate, so high and in your ears, and you wonder whether you will die. When you don’t die you downgrade to total shame, like the girl who went home with that guy at the frat party and got raped. Like that girl, you are so stupid, so trusting, but mostly stupid, and if you get out of this, you will never tell anyone what happened. And you will never do anything like this again.

When it is quiet, when it is as silent as a coffin outside, you scream. Even though you live alone and no one will come home, hear you, find you. You don’t scream for anyone to hear. No one is going to know this ever happened. You scream bloody hell. You scream at her, that she got away with making you look stupid. You scream because you are stupid but alive and locked in your closet.

But suddenly this is the least of your worries because the woman opens the door.