She goes back to the club, sits in the same booth, drinks the same weak vodka tonic. The band is different, bearded. They harmonize. One of them softly plays the bongos. The crowd is wearing browns and oranges, ponchos and sandals. She puts her feet up so no one will sit next to her.

Mr. Green had a family. A wife and two daughters. When she was still in school, she looked up his file, using the hospital database. Two years before his death he’d broken his leg while trimming the branches of an apple tree. He fell from the ladder, dragged his body to the car, and drove himself to the hospital. The doctor who set the bone had written in his notes: Strong tolerance for pain. But what had killed Mr. Green was an aneurysm, a blood clot to the very brain she’d been holding in her hands. A better student would have been able to tell just by looking at it.

The snake finds somewhere else to feed. This is the first sign of trouble. She comes home late from work—two heavy brown paper bags in her hands—one full of Indian takeout, the other containing two white mice left over, the pet store owner has told her, from a high school experiment. They are slightly stunned from running mazes. She calls out to him sweetly, flipping on lights, walking through rooms, and finds him curled up on the sofa, fast asleep, a suspicious lump in his midsection.

She draws up a list of his favorite things—silk pajamas, hamsters, the small indentation around the drain of the bathtub—then does her best to provide them. Wears silk pajamas for days until they stink; adjusts her faucets so that a continuous stream of lukewarm water maintains the level of moisture in the hollow of the drain; keeps an extra hamster in a cage underneath the sink; concentrates on the positive.

When this doesn’t work, she plays hard-to-get. Ignores him for days and then gets angry when he doesn’t notice. She decides he needs punishment. She locks him in the cage without food for two weeks. Then one day she pretends she has just discovered him there. She says, Who did this to you? And Poor baby! Then she springs the hamster on him. He takes hold of the animal, unhooks his jaw, and begins to swallow. She thinks about what it must be like to take yourself apart and fit anything inside of you, no matter what size, and still be able to put yourself back together when it’s over. She waits until he gets the lump halfway down, then sings him a Marvin Gaye song. At night, she slips into bed quietly and waits for him to come to her. She checks to see if he is back on her ankle. She tries hamster number two.