“See, Melissa could even make a dog go against its own nature! I’m telling you, there’s something about her that makes you just want to do the opposite of what she tells you.” Nathan listened for a moment to the noncommittal sound of his brother paying no attention, the intermittent crumple of a newspaper. “You just have to disagree with somebody like that, right? Don’t you?” Nothing. “‘Fucking kill it, you mutt,’ and the dog drops the squirrel. I mean, you basically have to drop the squirrel; it’s the only reasonable response. Let me ask you,” he said as though what he was about to say was a new thought, one that had just come to him, “can you believe I stayed married to her for almost four years?”

“Who, the dog?”

“What?”

“You were talking about the dog, and then you said, ‘Can you believe I stayed married to her for almost four years?’”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Nathan said, peering into the fridge. He was going to make himself some eggs. Fuck the way he’d been living, Pop-Tarts thirty times a day. Fuck Melissa and fuck Renée too, for that matter, signing up for an online dating service, him having to run across her self-satisfied face on his computer screen at three o’clock in the morning.

“You were talking about the dog, and then you said, ‘Can you believe’—”

“Could you shut up? You got any awareness of how backward you are? I mean, you’re my brother, but you can’t even follow a simple conversation.” The last egg in the carton had something dark green smeared across the shell. “This is just great,” Nathan cried. The pan clattered in Stephen’s ear. Stephen turned the page of his newspaper. War, war, and more war. He heard the sound of Pop-Tarts being fed into the toaster.

“How many of those do you eat a day?” he asked.

“Why don’t you come out here and cook for me, you ignorant fucking nerd?” Nathan shouted into the phone, so loudly that Stephen shrieked in response. It felt like someone had stuck a tuning fork directly into his ear canal.

“Nice high-pitched scream,” Nathan said, laughing meanly.

When the dog had set the squirrel down on the grass, the squirrel flipped over and then vanished; a microsecond later it stared down, panting, from a high branch. It would be temporary, a few months, until they were sorted out.

“All right,” Stephen said. “Send her.”