The hotel bar was crowded with patrons all dressed up in their post-Christmas, pre–New Years best. Ann stood at the door, wiping the snow off her low black boots, and scanned the room for Peter. She didn’t see him anywhere and was delighted by the possibility that she had arrived first. This would give her an advantage. She’d choose an optimal seat and position herself attractively on it. She’d order a festive drink, one of those with the egg whipped into it, pastel pink, foam lapping at the lip of the glass. The first time he saw her face to face, she’d be the picture of carefree elegance.
To her left, a couple perched on the edges of rattan low-back chairs, each trying to show the other how good their posture was. The man wore a shiny blue suit and ordered oysters for his date, who was dressed like a present in a long red dress with a velvet bow tied in the back. A pair of thin gold necklaces bounced delicately each time she laughed. The man asked about the wine selection, scoffing at the Merlot, preferring the Malbec. It was the end of 2019, but it could have been the end of any year because it was always the same around this time, everyone hoping this would be the year they made it, whatever ‘it’ was. She could smell the desperation, the resolutions listed in notebooks, taped to mirrors, relayed to therapists. No matter what it was they wanted––to get in shape, get engaged, get promoted––it was all under the guise of improvement. She sensed this because she was an empath––she’d taken multiple online quizzes––but also because she was hoping the same would be true for her, that by January she’d have a steady boyfriend; by March, a better job; by summer, a retirement account.
It was the first time in years she’d felt a connection to a man. She couldn’t remember the last time one had taken up so much space in her phone, let alone in her brain. And she hadn’t even met Peter in person yet. They had been texting for days after matching on an app. He no longer lived in Pittsburgh but was back in the city visiting family for Christmas. He told her they’d have to wait until the 27th to meet in person and added a frowny face, which she––too quickly perhaps?–– double-tapped. They stole away minutes from each waking hour to trade quips and emojis (him), and flirtatious insults and selfies (her).
The more they texted, the more she felt like she knew him, like she’d known him for a long time. They had so much in common. Not just the usual things—films, books, foods. She’d been on plenty of dates with men who liked Robert Altman and Elena Ferrante and aioli with french fries. No, there was plenty more, a lot of it strange, like how, since the start of winter they’d inexplicably been revisiting the same pop-punk bands they’d loved in high school, screaming the lyrics on commutes to work (him, to his tenure-track professorship at Ohio State and her, to her desk job on the city’s South Side). As teenagers they had even attended the same Warped Tour two years in a row! They had quit trying to be vegetarians for good and now ate vast quantities of meat, he unapologetically and she guiltily. He loved making charcuterie plates and she loved making vegetable platters and with talents such as these, they could have snack dinners every night! They spoke of their greatest fears, hers: heights, and his: blood. He had once fainted in high school after trying to donate at the blood drive. She asked what his blood type was, and he had to ask his mother, who confirmed he was a universal donor. So was Ann. Even on a chemical level, they were compatible.
And then there was what she could only guess at. She imagined what he looked like in fourth grade because he disclosed he’d been a fat child, raised outside of the city next to a demo farm, and he admitted to wearing a lot of orange and lime green, Nickelodeon colors, and he was definitely near-sighted and had glasses by then, and she could picture him shopping for clothes at the JC Penny with his mother and watching Hey Arnold! after school while his parents quietly fought in the kitchen.
She took him for someone who had been shipped off to summer camp and signed up for Boy Scouts, where his troop leader taught him a rugged survivalism he’d never have to put to use. Her bet was that his parents didn’t stop there. Getting him out of the house as much as possible would allow them to work out their issues, and the more activities and groups Peter participated in, the more well-rounded he’d be. Their marriage counselor suggested it. They signed him up for piano lessons, archery, karate, art classes at the local community center. She could picture him shadowing the neighboring kids in their 4-H shows at the county fair, and auditing college courses by middle school.
How she longed to go to summer camp as a child, to join Girl Scouts and learn how to make paper-mache and darn socks and earn cute patches and make friends. To attain a modicum of self-confidence. She’d always wanted to learn an instrument, another language, a skill of any kind, but her mother argued it was too expensive. They had a patch of gnarled trees behind their house––she could pitch a tent out there; her mother could teach her how to sew and they could make little clay teapots and bake them in the oven. Besides, she said, did she really want to go door to door, selling cookies she herself couldn’t afford? Her mother had looked into it––not only were there no free cookies, there wasn’t even a discount.
On Christmas morning, she stared out the kitchen window at those same gnarled trees as she and Peter texted longingly about their first meeting. He said he was daydreaming about glimpsing her from across the room of the bar, pretending to idly scroll through his phone. They talked dirty. He said he would kiss her in public. She sent faceless, topless, filterless pictures.
They spoke of their family’s holiday traditions: hers, board games with her brothers’ family, Christmas movie marathons with her mother who passed out immediately, cigarette quietly extinguishing itself in the ashtray; his, a huge family, brutally Italian, celebrating the Feast of Seven Fishes, a tradition which fascinated her and which he spent a good deal of Christmas Eve explaining. He refused to send her any pictures except of food so she had to refer back to his profile picture and imagine him in his parents’ kitchen, in that red and black flannel, clean white apron looped over his neck, seasoning a trout filet, whipping up cocktail sauce. Her mouth watered at the sight of every decadent dish: squid ink pasta, hand-breaded calamari, spicy tuna tartare.
She superimposed herself into this new, exotic life, one where she had a long-distance boyfriend and future in-laws who bought whole fish with shiny black eyes. Columbus wasn’t that far. In fact it was the perfect distance––far enough to allow them to miss each other and live their own lives, close enough to visit each other on just a tank of gas. They could even meet in the middle. Each time they reunited it would be special, weekends spent intentionally with hours of sex that would leave them too spent to cook anything more than snack dinners. She imagined helping to prepare the food at some future Christmas, his mother’s gentle hand on her back as she delicately stuffed the cavity of a trout with slices of lemon. With every picture he sent, Ann felt more ashamed of herself, of her mother’s salty honey-baked ham and cigarettes, of her brother’s corny jokes. The more they talked, the clearer it became that embarking on a relationship with Peter would mean leveling up.
He sent her a link to his website, and she learned he’d attended not only Harvard but Berkeley, fucking Berkeley. He was smarter than her, much smarter, and this was terrifying because she’d only ever loved men who were smarter than her, and they couldn’t commit. But he assured her he could. In fact, his last relationship had ended because his girlfriend couldn’t commit, which was, quote, 100% of the problem. But Ann could commit! She had always committed! She scrolled back through the pictures, looking for signs that he’d ruin her life. In every picture, he was sitting down.
Can I be presumptuous? she texted. Are you short? Like 5’6″ maybe?
Is this a deal-breaker?
She thought of all the men she’d loved before who couldn’t commit, and they were all tall.
He told her to choose the coziest bar in town and she immediately thought of the wine bar, but after more careful consideration, she decided she had had too many first encounters there. She didn’t want this to be another failure.
She typed, Wouldn’t it be crazy if, and hit enter before she could erase it.
If what?
What if we met at a hotel?
She watched the ellipsis ripple and bit her nails.
Let’s live extravagantly, he texted finally. He described the morning after to her. The expensive cotton sheets, the coffee and room service eggs Benedict. He was, after all, a philosophy professor at a mid-tier college. His tenure committee was thrilled with his work. He could afford it.
You have just described my ideal date, she said.
But she didn’t expect it to actually happen. It would be crazy, certainly not something she could text her friends about in the group chat. Maybe they’d meet first at the cozy wine bar and see how it went. At least she knew what to order there, and precisely how much. She knew the layout, where the bathroom was. The exit. What was the rush anyway? If it went well, there would be plenty of time for fancy hotels. But then he texted Guess What? And he gave her the opportunity to guess, but she just said What, and he said, I booked a room.
◆
There were men all around the hotel lobby who looked like him, but they were too tall. They leaned against the bar and chatted with the big breasted bartender or stood in flocks, sheepishly checking out women who passed by.
But she sensed he was there––he’d told her he was chronically early to things, his nerves precluding him from even being on time, let alone late, and she felt naked standing there by the door, so visible. He could have been anywhere, watching.
After searching for a few minutes, she found him sitting on a bench scrolling through his phone, playing out the moment exactly as they’d fantasized it. She asked if he was actually looking at his phone, but because she didn’t use his exact wording about idly scrolling through it, glimpsing her from across the room, he said, kind of indignantly, Yes, I am, and God did she feel stupid, but she couldn’t then explain, say, No, remember? The comment about seeing me from across the room? because that would make her look insane. No, she would just have to move on from it, to prove her recall in some other capacity. She offered to buy him a drink and he said he would get the first one, that he would put it on the room tab, which he admitted he’d always wanted to say. And then he said she could get the next round or Venmo him. And she wondered if maybe she’d misjudged him. She hadn’t expected Venmo to come up, at least not in the first two minutes of their romantic evening.
In the pictures, he looked like her ex-boyfriend: protruding chin, narrow-set black eyes, small crowded teeth. This excited her and turned her stomach. Her ex had destroyed her, and four years later, she still dreamt of him regularly. The dreams were always the same––she held him as he cried. In her heart of hearts, she knew this was why she’d swiped right on Peter, the uncanny likeness beckoning her like a great big neon sign that read Do Over! In person, the similarities were overwhelming, he even rolled his tongue after saying something that he thought particularly erudite. She wondered if this man would also disparage her for her incorrect use of cutlery (fork in right, until she had to cut, fork switched to left, knife in right, slicing away, barbaric the ex had said).
They sat next to the record player and drank. A moony child kept coming over to stare at the LPs spinning around, and when she swore while telling a particularly animated story, the boy scowled at her. She and Peter had talked about children in their text conversations. Ann was honest, said she wanted them, the biological urge was there, even though she’d read the United Nations report. Well, she’d read a headline in the Times and the first paragraph of the summary of the report, and she knew just how irresponsible it was to reproduce, but damn it if she didn’t want to anyway, and he said while he understood the urge and sometimes felt it too, what he really wanted was a revolution.
The boy sat below them and went about pulling the records from their sleeves. He spun them around on the slate floor as if they were tops. The sound was grating, like a metal zipper moving up and down. His parents were nowhere to be seen. She had waited for this night for so long, and here was this interloper, sabotaging it.
Excuse me, where are your parents? she asked the boy.
He stuck out his tongue.
Jesus, she hissed. She turned her attention back to Peter. See, this is what I really worry about with having kids. You could be a wonderfully nice person, you could have all the best qualities, and still end up with a complete asshole.
Peter took an uncomfortably long sip of his drink.
I disagree. If anything, children need to be given more, not less, freedom. More autonomy. When it comes down to it, a lot of the polite rules of society are really just mechanisms in service of capitalism. From an early age, we’re taught to respect authority, that the only way to get ahead is to stay in line.
Yeah, I guess I could see that. But I think there’s value in setting some boundaries. You know, discipline.
Discipline is just another form of social control, he said very seriously.
It was not a love connection. From there, she never regained her footing. The ease with which they’d texted, batted jokes back and forth, wasn’t there. She strained to be funny. He talked too much. She had been with men like this before, men who paced naked in front of hotel windows, in full view of other guests, dick shriveled, discussing socialism. The men she was attracted to were always socialists, and she probably would have been one too, if it weren’t for all the talking. She wondered why all of the socialists she knew were middle-class academics. Now, he trotted out the same slogans she’d heard on countless dates: bring out the guillotine, eat the rich. Her heart sank as she thought of all the time she had devoted to this non-relationship. She’d left in the middle of card games with her family, feigning exhaustion to lay awake for hours, face glowing from the luminescence of her phone.
Since they were on the subject of capitalism, she asked what his salary was.
Why? he asked hotly.
Just curious, she said.
She wanted to point out his hypocrisy in being cagey about what he made. Weren’t these types always arguing that sharing one’s salary was an important act of transparency? Did this only apply to coworker relationships? Couldn’t it also benefit a romantic one? Knowing how much he was worth could say something about how much she was. Maybe she was selling herself short. Maybe she always had. Maybe their educational differences weren’t really the problem. Maybe confidence was. Sheryl Sandburg’s face flashed into her brain, and she winced. She didn’t want to be more like men.
I’m comfortable, he said finally.
When he excused himself to the restroom, she googled the median salary for tenured professors at Ohio State and was shocked to learn it was double what she made. She imagined how “comfortable” she would be if she made even 40k a year, let alone 60.
Needless to say, she would not be venmoing him a goddamn cent.
She ordered another drink, the most expensive on the menu, made with muddled persimmons and clove-infused bourbon. It came with an eye dropper filled with oil made from all-spice. It cost $18. Ann tentatively squirted some oil in the coupe glass and the rusty droplets floated, reminding her of the last few days of her period. Though it tasted how she imagined a Yankee Christmas candle would, she needed to be less sober. She drank it down swiftly, burning her throat. By the time Peter returned, she felt warmer, loose, even a bit giddy.
Despite the problems, the class differences, the lack of a rapport, she still found herself wanting to impress him. Her ex’s parting words were heavy in her gut (I can’t do this anymore. Sara was right). She was nervous, had been nervous since he booked the room, probably because she’d been out with seemingly harmless guys before, guys who didn’t seem like they’d hurt her and were able to precisely because of that fact. It was too much pressure, the fancy hotel, the room tab, and the bar was so open that she could see everyone in it, and they could see her, and somehow this visibility made her feel even more isolated. She worried she would see someone she knew as she had on so many first dates over the years, at the wine bar and the dive bar patio with the twinkling lights and the gay bar with the drag shows, and she would have to again suffer the looks of pity, the snide comments about her serial dating––evidence that she was unlovable. And then he put his arm around her and squeezed her shoulder and whispered that she smelled nice, and she worried she wouldn’t see someone familiar, someone who could intervene.
◆
He asked if she wanted to order some food, and though she hadn’t eaten all day and was starving, she was too nervous to eat in front of him and said she’d had a late lunch. He ordered the salt and vinegar chips with sour cream dip and a half dozen oysters. It seemed he never tired of fish. He ate sloppily, crunching the chips loudly between his canines, grunting with approval after slurping down each briny oyster. He offered her bites every few minutes, but her hunger had receded by this display. On the other side of the bar, a glass shattered. She looked over to see a petite brunette gingerly plucking shards from the carpet. The hostess shooed the woman away and set about sweeping up the glass. Ann turned her attention back to Peter, who was still talking. This time about next year’s election. He hadn’t noticed the broken glass or Ann’s momentary inattention. She imagined grabbing the biggest shard and pressing it against his throat, demanding his silence. She smiled and swept her hair behind her ear.
Something funny? he asked.
She thought up excuses for getting out of the original plan. She was tired, she had to feed her cat, she had an early meeting the next day. But each of these excuses was easy to poke holes in, even for this man, who, in reality, barely knew her. She had casually mentioned the latte she’d had just before the date and how she typically avoided caffeine after noon because it made her wired. She didn’t have a cat, she was allergic, and he knew this as well. And of course it was Saturday night, she wouldn’t work again until Monday. With each flimsy excuse, she felt more trapped. Intellectually, she knew she could simply say that she wasn’t feeling it, the chemistry wasn’t there. How could he disagree with that? She would thank him for the drinks and slip out the door, walk the few blocks to the bus stop. She’d be home within a half hour, where there was a bottle of red wine and a microwavable mac’n’cheese dinner waiting for her. She wished she could do it, just get up and leave, but what if he protested, demanded a reason? What if the reason she gave wasn’t good enough? What if he followed her home? He probably wouldn’t do any of this. But he would think she was rude. He would be offended. He would tell his friends about the cock tease he went out with over the holiday, who stuck him with the drink tab, the bill for the room, without even a fucking kiss. And this reality trumped all the other ones.
She kept drinking. She mixed alcohols. This did not make her more confident, but more artificially brazen, and he didn’t know her well enough to spot the difference. Eventually her hunger was no longer something she could ignore. There was one glistening oyster left on the plate, nestled in slivers of ice. He spooned champagne sauce over it, but before he could pick it up, she snatched it and slurped it down. It was delicious, silky, creamier than she’d imagined, with the perfect amount of tang from the sauce. She regretted that there weren’t any more. She grabbed chips by the handful and double dipped her way through them until they were gone. She forgot where she was. She forgot she wasn’t alone. She pressed on the chip crumbs with wet fingers and lapped at them one by one.
So you were hungry. He smiled, crossing his arms.
She blushed. I don’t know what came over me.
He reached across the table for her greasy hands. Should we order more?
She was pleased by his tenderness and lack of judgment, so different from the ex. Maybe she had been wrong about him. Maybe the rest of the night would go as planned. Maybe she had, for once, manifested something good.
She was still hungry, but they could order room service later.
No, I’ve had enough, she said.
◆
He led her to the elevator. Elevators had always scared her because of her fear of heights and her mild claustrophobia. Despite the cardio required, she preferred the known quantity of stairs. But she didn’t want to be difficult. She kissed him as they went up, soft and slow, a timid hand on his chest. He let her move her tongue around his but didn’t do much with his own, and she wondered if he was even enjoying it until the elevator lurched and she brushed up against his erection. It felt for a second as if they were suspended between floors, and she panicked, imagining the six-story plummet to the basement. She’d once read somewhere that depending on the velocity of the free-fall, a person could break bones or be decapitated or at the very least, lose control of their bowels and shit their pants. She honestly didn’t know which would be worse for her.
But she didn’t have long to worry about that because soon the car moved again and he started kissing her back, at first gently and then rougher, teeth gnashing against hers, and suddenly one arm was pulsing, wrapped tightly around her waist, while the other hand grasped at her neck. She shivered with fear. But hadn’t they discussed her attraction to dominance? Hadn’t they discussed her desire for someone to take charge? Hadn’t she called herself “a dom in the streets and a sub in the sheets”? He took her by the hand and led her woozily into the hallway where he kissed her again and put his hand on the small of her back, and it was thrilling, wasn’t it? Standing in the middle of a hallway kissing? It had been years since anyone touched her in public. No one was around, but she could sense that if there were, Peter wouldn’t have pulled away, he wasn’t ashamed of her. He wanted her and now, finally, she wanted him too.
◆
His tongue was fat and creased down the center, like a butterflied pork chop. In the bed, he kneeled above and dipped his head down to kiss her, sometimes hard and knocking into her forehead, and at other times he stayed just out of reach so she’d kiss his chin or neck. Withholding. The ex was like this too. In the year they dated, she hadn’t met any of his family or friends. She thought that if she waited long enough eventually she’d be worthy, a welcome addition to his already full life. Within a week of their breakup, his status changed from single to in a relationship, and Ann had scrolled down the page to find a picture of him and Sara, sailing on a boat.
Peter pushed her down on the bed and held her wrists above her head. She couldn’t find the words to tell him to slow down. She felt she could only stop it if she got ahead of it, like it was some kind of PR nightmare she’d have to answer for if she didn’t, and it was, in a way, a headline she’d had to face in the morning so many times before, so she pushed him off of her and got on top, and he said are you sure you’re a sub, and she bit his lip. After a while she asked him if he had a condom. He said no and sprang from the bed. He picked through the dry bar, through the teas and condom-shaped and non-condom shaped things.
They usually keep them here, he said.
They? she said.
Yeah, you know, the staff stocks them.
And she wondered how many times he had done this, come home to visit family for Christmas and taken strange women to this exact hotel and pawed through the dry bar for the condom that was usually there, and she felt so stupid in her blind trust in his projected sincerity, she wanted to dress and leave, but she couldn’t. He’d paid for the room, for the drinks. Minutes passed and she tried to look sexy and drape the sheet over the parts she didn’t like as he kept searching for the condom, though he didn’t really seem to be looking at all, until she finally got up and took her purse from where she’d hung it on the back of the chair and pulled out the Trojan she’d brought for this express purpose, and she wondered why she hadn’t gone to Harvard or Berkeley or at least applied, for she was smart and could solve problems, even though they were problems that shouldn’t need solving.
She didn’t bite the condom wrapper because she wasn’t an idiot. Nor did she tear the wrapper with her hands because she’d decided long ago that men could do that work, that they should, so she handed him the condom and he threw it to the side and grabbed her shoulders but before he could push her, she motioned for him to get on his stomach, and he did so gladly. She straddled him and chewed on his ear lobe. This move had always driven the ex crazy. She wondered if there was any way he and Peter might actually be related, maybe he was a distant cousin, not like she’d ever met his family anyways. The ex was married to Sara now. Soon they would adopt a dog, have a child. They’d do home remodeling projects on the weekends and host their families for Christmas. The ex was moving forward, doing the things adults were supposed to do, and she was stuck here, using the same moves on the same type of man. She gently turned Peter’s head to the side and tongued his jaw. He grunted, and she slid her hand back under his groin and felt his cock hardening.
He was sweating now, he’d cautioned her about that in their exchanges––he was a sweater––and his sweat smelled like popcorn, the buttery movie theater kind that she loved, the kind she couldn’t resist even if she wasn’t hungry, even if she was late and the movie had already begun. She licked her lips. The ex had once joked that the only thing Ann was good for was not burning popcorn bags. She would fold the corners of the bag so it wouldn’t press against the walls of the microwave as it expanded. It was a simple solution, and at the time she thought his observation was one of admiration, praise of her common sense. Only later did she understand what it actually was: an insult.
She pressed her knees into his back and moved down to his neck, gently sucking. At first, he moaned. He was pleased, stammered, You like it rough. Feel how hard, how hard I am, and he was, until she bit down and he bled onto the sheets. He yelped and tried to buck her off, but there was no muscle memory to guide him, the adrenaline was useless. For a moment he was quiet, and she relished the silence. For much of the night, she’d tried to focus on what he was saying about Engels and Trotsky, to understand, but the harder she tried, the harder it became to latch on to any of it. And now, he was saying what’s happening, what is this and for the first time, she felt like she knew something he didn’t. What what, he stammered again, and she felt vindicated. Language was failing him the way it had failed her all night. He screamed and and she cupped her hand over his mouth, wondering about the thickness of the walls. She listened for the pattering of feet, voices coming towards the room, but there was nothing. He screamed again and tried to prop himself up, but she went for his neck once more, just below his hairline, a neck she had admired in pictures, dreamed of touching, the soft, freckled, once-fat neck. He grew quiet. She had drawn more blood. The blood pooled and spread onto the fabric like an ink stain. His body went slack beneath her. He lay flat and stiff, and her muscles strengthened, blood rushing to the knees pinning down his back, pulsing in her hand at the base of his skull. His breathing grew shallow. She shook him, and repeated his name, but he didn’t respond. She hadn’t seen a person faint before, but after he told her about his blood phobia, she looked up the signs, the causes, the treatments on WebMD. She reasoned it was possible, if all went well on their date, that she’d one day have to contend with this health issue of his. She even dreamt about the possibility of his fainting two nights before. They were hiking through a forest blanketed in snow when he got caught in a bramble bush and a thorn pricked his finger. He dropped to the ground like a sack of rocks, and she knelt beside him. She knew then as she knew now that as long as he kept breathing, he’d eventually come to. She sat at the foot of the bed and waited.
Her stomach growled and she glanced at the mini fridge, the plastic pouches of over salted peanuts, the little individually wrapped chocolates, cans of Coke and La Croix. None of it appealed to her. The thought of eating the overpriced food made her wretch into the waste paper basket. The vomit looked milky, like water from a faucet when it’s first turned on.
She flipped Peter over and dipped her ear down to his heart. It was beating so faintly and slowly she wasn’t sure if it was actually beating at all. She sat up and waited another minute, as if to cleanse her auditory palate. She listened to the sounds of the hotel. Jazz pumping up through the floor, a room service cart squeaking down the hallway.
She bent her ear back to his chest and held her breath. This time, she was sure of it. There was no heartbeat. She turned him back over and saw how much blood there was. How much blood was still coming. She could no longer see the puncture marks from her teeth, just thick red strings webbed to the sheets. His cheeks were still rosy, though the color was draining by the minute. His bare chest was slick with sweat, shiny and pink, like a glazed honey-baked ham. She had never wanted something so much.
She mounted him again and began chewing through the cartilage of his ear. It tasted a bit like calamari, chewy and tough, and she realized she’d picked the hardest part first. She rolled the left lobe in her mouth like a runty oyster. She tore off what remained of the left ear and then the right, and chewed around the gristle this time. The neck was much easier and there was no comparison––she had never tasted anything like this before. She licked his blood from her lips and assessed what to try next. She set to work on the back, the flesh above and below the ribs. It got easier as it went, some parts were tough and fatty like steak, others, like the meat of his fingers, were lean like venison. Once she knew how many chews it took, she sped up, her stomach a seemingly empty pit. She worked at his soft pink gums, until some of his small crowded teeth came loose. She spit them out, hard and yellow around the edges like unpopped popcorn kernels. She spit out his lips and then his tongue, still rolling from all the points he could no longer make because she’d eaten his brain, which, to her chagrin, was the tastiest part, rich and creamy and warm. And she felt how she imagined a mother must feel when an intruder lunges for her child, the rage, at first sharp and fixated, bubbling up from some secret unknowable place, until the intruder collapses from the gunshot, and the mother keeps kicking and kicking, not even to be sure, because it’s clear he’s dead, but because she just can’t stop.