At some point he’d made it out to the patio. At some point he’d pulled both his head and the vodka out of the freezer. At some point he’d finished the beer that’d been in this empty can, in his cold, chapped hand. He set the can down, stomped it flat, then squatted to shim it under the loose patio stone. One way to get things steady, restore balance, now that it was too late to join his friend, grab the spare axe, and swing. With his knees against his chest, he’d folded his whole body into an earthbound cannonball, and in this position he allowed the coil to twine around his entire body, even tighter now, hotter now, barbed and scalding. Shame compressed him into a singular urge, an impulse to destroy.

A set of headlight beams swung in and stunned Henry, who was still squatting on the patio, incubating his freshly laid egg of remorse and fury. Blinded by the glare, he heard a car door open, a sludgy chuckle. The clap of the door restored his vision, and he caught a glimpse of a Mustang backing out and peeling off. Michelle was a windblown twig, eyes glazed over and gone, shuffle-swaying toward the front steps, seemingly oblivious to Henry on the patio.

“The fuck you been?”

Her head sagged in his direction. Freewheeling in mode two, she swiped at the air as if to scrub him out of sight, before staggering up the stairs and into their home.

The front door slammed shut behind Henry. He barked her name. When he ordered Junior into the bathroom, the boy stayed on his mattress and armed himself with two long, sharp Legos.

Henry and Michelle began screaming in unison as if by cue. Their voices snarled and churned into a molten ore, spattering fiery blurts of demands, insults, and accusations. Even through the smokescreen of his rage, he kept a crosshair locked on his primary objective: to make her feel as wretched and worthless as possible, before breaking the news of the layoff. He wanted to drive her down so he could climb on top of her, above her, to bellow and gloat. He wanted to scream and stoke all his labor and sacrifices into a wild blaze, next to which her miserable, rat-like proportions and disgraceful behavior would be torn from the shadows, finally floodlit and indisputable.