They’d chosen the apartment because it was located exactly between their two jobs. Alice was a nurse in an oncology ward and Elliot inspected children’s toys. When he told people what he did, they imagined him wearing overalls and a hardhat, examining race-cars and baby dolls as they passed by on a conveyor belt. In truth, he had a PhD and worked in a lab. The winter before, he’d detected a potentially lethal amount of lead in a popular play food set. Alice liked to see him dressed for work, in his white lab coat and plastic goggles.

They’d met at a wedding, a fact Alice hated. If she had it her way, they would have met somewhere more interesting, perhaps at a symposium on fireflies or a hostel in Cambodia—anything for a better story. The wedding was painfully average. Alice’s friend Heather was marrying a cousin of Elliot’s, and both bride and groom were known for being boring, to the point where it was a sort of joke among their friends. A few people had even gone in on a gift card to Applebee’s. The wedding was nearly unbearable—the Catholic ceremony was an hour too long and filled with the steady weeping of a large woman who held a silk handkerchief to her face, as if it might contain the sound. When the guests finally gathered for the apology of dinner, a sigh of disappointment circled the room when it was discovered that it would be a dry reception. What a treat, then, to find Alice. She was seated beside Elliot, who could not help but smile as her knee occasionally knocked against his. She told joke after joke, glowing like a lantern in the otherwise dreary reception hall. One man—a ruddy, balding creature with thick glasses that magnified his eyes—laughed so hard at one of her stories that he coughed a mass of green food back onto his plate, as if he were a giant baby. After dinner, Elliot mustered the courage to ask Alice to dance.

That was more than two years ago. Now he struggles in the comfort of their bed—really her bed, brought over from her apartment upon the agreement that hers was more comfortable than his—his hands clasped around her perfect throat. When he lets go, she whimpers. He knows it is the sound of everything he loves coming to a close.

After a moment of paralysis, she scrambles from the bed and runs to the bathroom and shuts the door. In the dark, Elliot sees only the strip of light coming from the bottom of the door and the shadow of her feet moving on the other side. He pulls himself from bed and goes to the door. He knocks.

“Go away,” she says.

“Alice. I was dreaming.”

“I said go away.”

“Please, Alice. There was a mallard—it was suffocating me.” He realizes how ridiculous this sounds. Why mallard? Why not duck? “I would never hurt you.”

There is only silence, and then the sound of running water. Unsure what to do, Elliot goes back to bed, where he pinches the skin on his arms over and over again. Without meaning to, he falls asleep.