“Oh,” Agnes breathed, and her face relaxed into gentleness. Of course she did not hate it. Agnes has always liked hurt things. I scraped the sofa stain with my fingernail, and dirt bunched up thick against my cuticle. “What happened?”

“Stepped on a nail,” Arthur said. He made a pained face, his eyes bright and large. He extended his foot.

“You poor thing.” Once I found Agnes a sick rabbit. Limp-legged from an infected bite. She fed it with a syringe. Holding its shocky body close to her chest, wrapped in a towel, her thumb braced at the hinge of its jaw to force it open. Animals do not want to take the things they need. Agnes rocked that rabbit so, so close, stroked the soft puffball of its skull. Rabbits are one of those animals that can die of fear. When we were eating the stew that night, I asked her if she ever wanted to have a baby. It seemed like she might.

She knelt on the floor, took Arthur’s ankle between her palms, held him steady as a doctor would while she examined the sole of his foot. “How deep was it?”

Arthur shrugged. “It was a big nail.”

Agnes hissed air through her teeth, and she rubbed her thumb over the heel of his foot, stopped at the arch where the bandage was just beginning to pink. “You poor thing.” Again. “It might’ve hit bone.”

Arthur lolled his head against the back of the couch. There was a line between his brows, as if he had a headache, or was considering something deeply. “It might have,” he said. “I think so.” He laughed low, and pushed back a strand of hair sweat-stuck to his cheek. He had the kind of hair that makes a man look like a dog, tawny and lying close to the lines of his face. “It hurts like a motherfucker. What do you think?”

Agnes shifted, curled her hand to better support his ankle. Some people are very earnest. Agnes was sometimes so earnest that it was like being stupid. She wants everything to be all right for everyone. She touched even that joint where he was not hurt with such tenderness. “You should really see a doctor.”

“What’s your name?”

“I’m Agnes.” She reached to shake his hand. Agnes’s hands were small and rounded, like the hands of a doll. Wrapped in anyone else’s, even mine, they disappeared. With the other, she pointed at me. “That’s Geb.”

“We met.” Arthur directed a broad, warm smile at me. There was sweat, still, standing out on his forehead, making his skin look slick. “What sort of name is that?”

“My name.”