“To make what point?” Elizabeth snapped, annoyed at his intrusion. His role as a mate was not to suggest, not even to encourage, but to stand well out of the way while she took her work from idea stage to final execution. Surely she never made suggestions for any of his creations, which were all unfathomably crafty and commercial, but seemed to satisfy his impulse to make things. When he created his skunk salt and pepper shakers, she never said, “Why not badgers instead?”

The phone rang and she jumped up to get it. At last, the MacArthur Fellowship was calling to offer her its “genius” grant.

It was the New York City Ballet, offering a discount on tickets for their winter season. Elizabeth hung up the phone in disgust.

The HGTV couple had decided against the last option, a pink stucco bungalow with a questionable thatched roof. They decided against the brick house on stilts, too, and went for the safe, tired apartment with the “amazing” parking-lot view.

Elizabeth dunked her thumb in maple syrup and licked it. “I’m not sure how long I’m staying.”

Tupper felt more nauseous now than he had the morning after karaoke night. Elizabeth’s presence had always done weird things to him, but he’d allowed himself to forget how it felt. He didn’t want her to leave. He wanted her to take off her clothes and get in the bathtub so he could look at her long bones and bring her things. But then there was the constant feeling of impending doom. She was here now, but would eventually leave.

Of course, this was the game they’d always played. Elizabeth liked the tension, the thrill of things being not quite right. It was the disquiet that excited her. She used the French word for it: frisson.

“Did you hear about the accident? This morning, before dawn?” Tupper asked because he knew if he didn’t contribute to the frisson, she would leave immediately.

“What accident?”

“A guy in his flashy convertible. He overshot the turn off the BQE onto Columbia Street. Half flipped the car. His exposed head hit the guardrail with such an impact it was knocked right off, severed completely.”

“Oooh.” Elizabeth’s enormous gray eyes widened in delight. She grabbed a pen off the side table and a junk envelope from the huge stack of her unopened mail. “Let’s draw it.”

She sketched a car with the top down and a driver wearing Ray-Bans, motoring happily down the highway. Then she drew a bunch of arrows and a sharp exit turn with guardrails on both sides. Next, she sketched the bottom of the car, upturned against the left guardrail so the driver was obscured. In the sky she drew a soaring head wearing Ray-Bans with a seagull flapping by.

She was so brilliant. If Tupper tried to sell the sketch on eBay, it would probably fetch a fortune.

“Have they located the head?”