Upstairs, Mark stood at the kitchen counter spreading almond butter on toast. From across the kitchen Reese was struck by a vision of him as a stranger. Mark was suddenly not her boyfriend of five years but an unfamiliar man in his late thirties with thinning hair, a swollen stomach, and small, soft hands. She could not imagine spotting this man across a train platform in some Central European capital and allowing the crowd to carry her to him, brushing against him in hope that some part of her would stick, burr-like, to the weft of his flannel.

“I don’t like the name Todd.” Reese had had an unsettling sexual encounter with a Todd in high school, in the wings of the stage where the marching band practiced. During their courtship Mark would have seized upon this allusion, a thread he could pull to unravel her.

Mark peeled his jacket from the back of a chair. “I’m late. See you tonight.” He kissed her cheek, hurting her with his beard.

Reese struggled to individuate her descriptions of the three fucking-machine videos. She was running out of ways to describe a vagina as hungry. Her pussy is ravenous. Her pussy had a light lunch and now it’s dinnertime. Her pussy slavers for nourishment. Her pussy is about to faint from low blood sugar. Her pussy carries almonds in its purse to tide it over until the next meal.

Reese watched as Mark tore the skin from a breast and set it aside. He pried up shards of white meat with his fork and wrapped the meat in its own skin, then placed the packet in his mouth so the skin wouldn’t lodge between his incisors. He appeared so self-possessed, so contented by his tiny rituals, that Reese was filled with resentment. She knew her anger didn’t correspond to the actual structure of their lives. She was free to do as she liked. She was not bound to the home by anything but the fact that they possessed a single car. And yet she felt a primordial rage toward Mark, as though he were a brute husband who went out to conquer the world, while she was trapped in this house with its flooded basement. She endeavored to say nothing to Mark, and to observe how much time would pass before he noticed.

She returned to the living room, where she spent the morning summarizing videos in the categories of Water Bondage, Sadistic Rope, Electro Sluts. Her descriptions read increasingly like recipes. We start her on her back and stuff her until she squirts her savory juices. We finish her standing and drizzled with cream.