Kiffany was the best-looking, the smartest, the best dressed. She had gone to Harvard. A lot of people go to Harvard. I didn’t. They hired Kiff in marketing at the radio station where I worked, the second-biggest station in the city. She got the job through a connection. I’d been there for four years, and I was the chief engineer. It takes about ten seconds to tell whether you like a person, and when I saw her that first day, in that dress, I thought I could learn to love a woman like that. She was tall and skinny, she wore cool clothes, her chestnut-brown hair was cut short and fresh. Look at that face. Her cheeks were smooth, and the tiniest white hairs stood out against her tan skin. She had big, pink gums that were evident when she smiled. And tits that were full and moved as though they were either very firm or sheathed in leather. Go ahead, I thought. Why not? We could become friends. She had just moved here from somewhere else, and I’d show her the town.

I found, upon reflection, that she fit my idea of the supreme woman. Why? Who gives a shit. I felt love.

We went on a few dates. I got to see another side of Kiffany, away from the station. She cared about people. She helped at a retarded-kids’ sporting event; there were photos and T-shirts to prove it. Soon, we never spent a minute apart. We were a couple now—a thing.

Then we hit a rough spot. Someone was always on the defensive. After a while, we couldn’t watch TV without that dead silence between us, making everything tense. The weeks went by, and the weeks turned into months and then into a year; soon it was Halloween, with New Year’s right around the corner, honking at us like a paper party horn, and we stuck it out a little longer. We stayed apart for a while, the misery died down, and we got back together again. It was easy—and at the same time it sucked shit. One night I locked her cat out of her apartment. It meowed at me through the window, and I gave it the finger and left it out there.

I told Kiff, the day I bruised her forehead, “I love you. I’ll do anything for you.” I wanted to take her somewhere private and apologize and fill her with my cement.

“As long as you get your rocks off, right?”