“I’ll be banging somebody else by this weekend.”

“Good. And Carolyn will be with me. Everybody wins.”

“Fuck you.”

“Very original, Jimmy.”

Carolyn retrieved a garbage bag from the kitchen. She began rifling through drawers, tearing clothes from hangers. She was crying. I hoped she was crying at the unexpected violence and not because she was sad to be leaving. I didn’t want to think that she might, on some level, still love Jimmy, that she might somehow miss him. It was hard to imagine anyone missing him, or being with him, for that matter.

“Hey,” I said. She looked at me. “Slow down. Everything’s fine.”

At that, Jimmy decided he’d seen enough. He swung while my head was turned. I instinctively ducked when I felt his body jerk, and his fist grazed the top of my head. Carolyn shrieked. He swung again, this time missing completely. The force of the punch spun him around, and I wrapped my right arm around his throat, then tightened my grip by placing my hand in the crook of my left arm. A rear naked chokehold. I had full control. He couldn’t breathe. I dragged him out of the bedroom and into the bathroom. I must have outweighed him by thirty pounds. I let go and thrust him forward by shoving my foot on his ass. He sprawled forward full length, crashing into the side of the tub. I slammed the bathroom door shut. It was the kind that opened outward. I swiped a chair from the kitchen table and placed it beneath the doorknob. It wouldn’t hold him for long.

I went back into the bedroom. Carolyn was trembling. I put my arms around her.

“I don’t like this,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t like this at all.”

“I know you don’t, but it’s almost over. You have to be sure you get everything so we don’t have to do it again. You get it all and then it’s over.”

She nodded.

“But be quick.”

I carried the filled garbage bag into the living room and set it beside the television. When I walked back in, a second bag sat on the bed, half filled.

“I think I have everything in here,” she said.

“Is there anything I can help with?” I asked, carrying the second bag out and placing it beside the first. The bathroom knob jiggled one way, then the other.

“No.”

“Where are the cat’s things?”

She sighed. “His litter box is in the bathroom.”

“Of course it is.”

She walked out of the bedroom carrying an oscillating fan.

“Leave the fan here,” I said.

“What, why?”

“Because I don’t want it.”

“But it’ll help drown out the trains.”

“I don’t care,” I said, not bothering to explain.