He was tall and solid. Strong, healthy. Standoffish and untrusting with people, bordering on impolite.

“A man ahead of his time,” he’d said once, reading the cover of a book by Ballard. “That’s what they’re going to say about me.” And she’d nodded, enchanted. She was sure it was true. Because he was smart, the smartest person she knew. And that’s why it was good for him to frown all the time, or to be obsessive and severe, to hold categorical opinions. She loved his categorical shoulders, his categorical mouth, his straight, cruel nose.

He was also a man who kissed firmly, like Orson Welles in The Lady from Shanghai. And she was the femme fatale who toyed with him. Those were their roles. He called her “the pretty face” to annoy her. She asked him if he cared about looks and he said no, but that they didn’t hurt. In the beginning they’d played at that.

Today I found two boxes of dental floss in the drawer of my bedside table. I remember buying them over four years ago, when I’d just left my mother’s apartment. I’m sure I thought I would need dental floss, the kind of product an adult should have. The first things I owned were an extension cord and dental floss I bought two for one. I don’t know how they’ve lasted so long—the extension cord got lost or broken—or why I brought them back here in the first place. I can’t imagine having them in my hand and putting them into a bag when I was packing, thinking that this time I really would need them.

She sank back into the water so she could hear what the neighbors were yelling—sound is transmitted better by water. Slamming doors and then a masculine voice yelling, “I’m going to kill you.” She stayed as long as she could underwater, but she didn’t hear anything more. When she surfaced, she wondered if she shouldn’t call the concierge to let him know about the fight. Who could say something like that? Then she thought maybe it was okay, that if someone told you their intentions then at least you knew what to expect. Maybe shouting could have saved her and the man she’d lived with. Insults would have made things easier, but they said nothing and then he left.

He didn’t ask questions. He looked at her e-mail and her Facebook chats and then he looked at her with hatred, but he didn’t say anything. And she knew he read them, but she didn’t reply to the absent questions.

“The other day I read Wilhelm Reich,” said one friend she still had, “and I realize why you’re more hysterical than me.”

“Why?” she’d asked, laughing.

“Because your dad was more violent.”