We didn’t have any pets. We had full ashtrays on the counters and empty gin bottles around the sink. The walls were bare. There was a crack in the bay window where the glass had been caulked cheaply. The cold slithered through with a sardonic whistle we pretended not to hear. My mother bought us a snake plant. She repotted it and said it needed water once a week but we never gave it any. It became a cactus.

The next day, same place, the same moment, I found him, still struggling, yet with another slice. It flew through the space and descended on the floor at the foot of his stool. He bent to seize it and placed it back on his plate. A small frown appeared on his forehead with a grimace. I smiled at his demeanor of discontent; he resumed with the incisions around the edges, in the middle, this way or that until a puny piece, was forked again between his frontals. “Bloody hell!” he swore under his breath. “Why is it so hard to cut a piece of bread?

The West Coast Boyfriend has dated models. I am not a model. So I’m going to pedicure my toes and manicure my fingers and wax my eyebrows and my mustache and my armpits and my legs and my pussy and my asshole. I’m going to shoot toxins into my forehead and under my eyes that force my muscles to stop working so there aren’t any more wrinkles.