“All right.”

He kissed her and left, and she listened for the click of the door. She could feel her muscles tense again, each stretching taut and stiffening under her skin. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Well into the night, she had felt little ripples of pleasure flickering throughout her body. Her mind seemed to fall away, leaving just the pictures, and even now, she could feel them wanting to swell to the surface. All she had to do was let one tiny image in, and she would find herself flushed with need.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

TWO WEEKS LATER, JOSIE SAT AT THE KITCHEN TABLE, BLUE AND yellow construction paper strewn about her.

“What’s this diorama for anyway,” she called to Katie. She picked up the shoebox.

Katie ran in. “Open House. I found some ribbon.”

“Honey, that’s for your hair.”

“So,” Katie whined.

“You have plenty of supplies to choose from.”

“I want to use it.”

“No,” she said sharply. Lately, she had been irritable and short-tempered. This morning she and Phillip had bickered again, this time about the heat in the apartment. She wanted it warmer, he cooler. It was ridiculous, but she fought vehemently, and in the end turned the thermostat up to ninety to show him what hot really was. Usually she apologized, but this morning she stormed out and sat in the coffee shop on the corner, drinking cup after cup of coffee until she was buzzing from so much caffeine she could feel her heart vibrate throughout her chest.

“Where’s Daddy?” Katie asked.

“At the restaurant. Now choose something else to make the river.”

“But it’s Monday.”

“Yes it is.”

The restaurant was closed, but she was sure Phillip was there banging pots and pans around the kitchen. He was gone when she came home from the coffee shop, and when she picked Katie up from school this afternoon, they returned to a still empty apartment.

Now Josie was even more annoyed. She did not want to be making dioramas for second-grade book reports; she did not want to be awaiting his arrival; she did not want to be here at all. Still, it wasn’t the here of the apartment, or even the glue sticks and animal stickers that she was recoiling from, it was the other stuff. At first she had thought perhaps it was just residual muck exorcising its way from her head, but it came back in an onslaught. There wasn’t a single day in the last two weeks that she hadn’t felt the sharp tip of a fantasy chiseling its way to the surface. There were times she could ward it off, force herself to think of grocery lists and unreturned library books, but lately it was becoming more difficult. At night, she would end up locked in the bathroom imagining herself writhing under some anonymous whip, and in the morning she’d be afraid to look at Phillip, afraid he could read her, and afraid she would tell. But she hadn’t told yet, and he didn’t even seem to notice, and despite the fact that this was what she wanted, it also made her angry. How could he not see all that darkness seeping through her, corrosive and blistering? It made her snap at him and hate herself.