Muscarine is a nerve agent found in many mushrooms, including fly agaric and the ivory funnel. Though it does not deliver the surest death, it is the quickest. A headache sets in after as little as fifteen minutes. The ivory funnel is sometimes also called the sweating mushroom, but victims cry as well, and drool. Usually an asthma attack, then, or several. As the heartbeat slows, and the blood vessels widen, blood pressure drops, and circulatory shock sets in. Death can arrive within nine hours.

It was hours before I got Agnes alone again. Every time she stood, there was something. Arthur’s hand on her arm, another question she could not seem to walk away from, Arthur’s voice demanding, “Where are you going?”

When she came, finally, into our bedroom, I was waiting. My back against the headboard, my legs crossed in front of me. I thought of my body like the swaying curve of a charmed snake. Agnes was pale and tired. I held the ivory funnel up to her in both my hands, stroked my thumb along its stalk.

I saw the moment that Agnes knew what I meant, when some sleeping animal in her mind turned over and cracked a pupil. “No.” She held one hand up, and took a step away from me. “Geb.”

The ivory funnel is a meaty white mushroom, with a head like the face of the moon. Chopped up and cooked, one white mushroom could look much like another.

“Bury that,” Agnes said. “Geb, you’re supposed to bury those.”

If you ever find yourself in a situation like this, I will tell you that at least you’ll learn from it. How quickly you come to a willingness to kill, and how quickly your lover will believe it of you. There are so many ways to find out what you will do when there is no one else to help you.

“He saw you.” There are things I think Agnes has always failed to understand. Lack of kindness being one of them, and also that a person can both behave kindly and mean harm.

Agnes’s hands flew up. “And?” She lowered her voice, leashing the bird of her anger. “And you think that means we should kill him?”

I nodded, and her hands went up again. Like they were trying to escape her body. “No!”

“He saw you.” I didn’t know how to make her see danger when she didn’t perceive it. When she gave herself to the danger, and let it in her home, when she spoke to it about mycology. I wanted to take her by her shoulders and snap her like a whip. I wanted her to understand.

“What do you think he’s going to do?”