Hominy is waiting for him to come, but he will not. Not tonight or the next night. When she’s waiting for the new husband (which is all the time), Hominy moves about aimlessly, pretends to look for her cellphone, pretends to find it. She picks it up. The battery is down to seventy-nine percent. In case the downstairs neighbors are listening, Hominy pretends to call someone. She pretends to have someone to call. She pretends to hang up. Hominy moves slowly, not picking up her feet, bare feet sliding from here to there, a sound like sandpaper.

When Hominy is waiting for the new husband she walks to the living room, which is also the bedroom. Past the convertible couch/bed, past the television, and then she passes a framed photograph, a dying plant, many piles of books. The room is rectangular. The ceilings are high. Hominy moves toward the kitchen, then changes her mind, turns back toward the living area. She sits on the radiator. The couch/bed is visible from her position, unmade, and the floor is like a sea of discarded clothing.

Then she decides; Hominy moves definitively to the kitchen, ten steps away from the couch/bed. She counts the steps. She thinks of Toni Braxton, her low register and her mumbling. She looks at the corner where the ceiling meets the adjoining walls. She looks at the windows, at her hands, and down at her long ashy legs.

When she’s waiting, Hominy grabs the knife. She sits at the kitchen table. She cuts and deseeds twenty-four green chilies. Inevitably she touches her nose, her upper lips. She rushes to pour milk into a bowl, to dip her face into a bowl of milk. Her hands burn; her fingertips burn. Hominy is submerged in milk.

Hominy and the new husband begin to sound alike, to smell alike. They begin to sweat from the same areas: under their arms, from the bridge of their noses, down their lower backs. They wear the same deodorant, the same lotion, the same perfume, conditioner, shampoo, and the same hair oil. His beard smells of her scalp, and her scalp smells of his pubic hair. Their penmanship becomes identical—Hominy’s miniscule writing meshed with the new husband’s leaning letters. They borrow things from each other. They sign each other’s checks. They use the same vocabulary: fuck that, folks, unbelievable, true, pigs, good riddance. Hominy can no longer remember to whom the words belonged in the first place.

Hominy takes the whispering from the new husband. He prefers it. Even when she’s alone in the house, even when the customer service representatives plead with her to do so, Hominy does not raise her voice above a whisper: Ma’am, the customer service representatives say, please, please use your diaphragm to provide your card information.