Catherine, at the table, looks like a magpie.

“Smells good.”

“He could have stayed to keep you company,” she says, “even if he’s had enough of me.”

“If he had stayed, you’d have driven him out. You’d have found some way.”

I spoon stew into plastic bowls, place her bowl before her, sit down with mine.

“He always brings you to some lovely place, and you start acting like a fool again. Even I’m embarrassed for him, and you know it takes a lot of shit to embarrass me. I think you want to go back.”

“I’m no Gwendola.”

“We’re all Gwendolas, one way or the other.”

“I’m not that brave.”

“I don’t call it brave.”

“Well, not even the honey badger goes for its own.”

Remember Robert Ruark? Remember The Honey Badger?

Catherine gave me that book to read when she learned my story, or thought she’d learned it. His description of women. They’re (We’re) like the honey badger—they (we?) go straight for a man’s groin. Of course at the time I just asked, “What?”

She stares into her bowl.

“You know I don’t want to go back.”

“I don’t know.”

She sniffs at the stew.

“Did you know human bites could kill?” she asks.

“Yeah, I know.”

“You know?”

“Don’t worry; your bite won’t kill him.”

“I can’t stop.”

“The hell you can’t! You’ve got a fucking soul, don’t you? You’ve got a fucking will? You’re a fucking human being, aren’t you?”

She sniffs at the stew again, then takes up a spoonful.

She swallows, then purses her lips together.

“Yeah, I’m a fucking human being. What did you mean when you said that erotic perversion was the negative side of love?”

“When did I say that?”

“One of your characters said it.”

“I can’t remember what my characters say.”

“What did you mean? I kept reading it over and I couldn’t make out what you meant.”

“You, kiddo. You’re one weird bitch.”

She looks frightened. Her eyelids thicken. The space between them jumps together.

“No, I’m kidding. I’m just kidding. To tell the truth I don’t the fuck know what the fuck I meant. To tell the truth.”

She rubs her upper lip, hair at the corner of her lip bleached light brown; she rubs at the hair like she’s trying to erode it.

“Try electrolysis,” I say.

7

Speaking of weird bitches, there’s this woman Catherine knows, this white woman she went to art school with, or some shit. No, she met her at one of those artists’ colonies. They take writers up there too, but I’ve never applied. You’re supposed to go there and work. I can’t get shit done around other writers. I can drink, but I can’t write. I can drink myself under the fucking table.

But anyway, I met this one weird bitch when I went with Catherine to Toledo because they were showing some of Catherine’s work at the Toledo Art Museum and she wanted to also go see this woman. The woman was supposed to—about ten years ago—have been a big deal in the New York art world; people were claiming she was the new female Dali or some big shit like that, only more erotic.