Their first job was to take out the brain. They would need it saved for next semester, when the class moved on to the nervous system. A small rotary bone saw was used to cut through the top of Mr. Green’s skull. She reached into the cavity, and the brain filled her hands. A section was darkened and compressed, and as she pulled the matter out, there was a trail of blood. Even through the rubber gloves she could feel the texture, the weight steeped in experience. She thought of Mr. Green driving a car, brushing his teeth, eating a salad, putting on his socks. She thought of him reading books, trying to remember someone’s name, shouting out the answers to Jeopardy! She placed his brain on the tray and it held its shape, like a Jell-O mold. Then she turned and quietly fainted.

Fred closes the book. He slides his hand underneath her shirt. “Is this okay?”

She likes that, his asking.

The snake arrives in a pillowcase. Fred releases it in her bathtub. She watches the animal maneuver itself up and down the length of the porcelain. Brown stripes cross its back, brightening to red at the tail. Inside each marking there are two white ovals perched on either side of its spine. Fred’s landlord won’t let him keep the boa in his apartment. Would she mind? She wouldn’t.

They set up the terrarium on her bookshelf. Heat lamps, thermometers, a tree branch for climbing, and a small bucket turned upside down for a hiding place. He warns her to always keep the cage door locked. On the kitchen table, in a small carryout container, there is a mouse, scratching against the cardboard with its nails. Later, she watches the rodent being eaten, still alive but limp, as if it knows its fate and is resigned to it.

Fred paints her nails black. He traces her lips with eyeliner, leaving a dark, severe border that makes her face look like a puppet’s. He brings bagels in the morning and stays all day, stretched across her bed in the sunlight. His steel-toed boots are on the floor, his belt unbuckled and his face in her pillows. Across his back are tiny moles and she licks them, sliding her mouth from one to the other, making a trail.

Fred is a conceptual artist. He is vague on details. It is something about being an outsider, belonging nowhere. There are tiny hairs circling his nipples.

“I’m a secretary,” she says.

“I don’t believe it.”

She takes out her silk blouses, her navy skirt suits, her sensible shoes, her pearls. She suddenly wants to show him everything. He picks an outfit, and she tries it on for him, the control-top panty hose cutting into her waist.

“You look like an idiot.”

She has been so alone.