Ernest looks impatient, butters bread.

I stir hard, scrambled eggs. Mushrooms, cheese, green peppers.

“Tell Amanda about when you were a boy and used to hunt foxes,” says Catherine, scratching the inside of a nostril.

“Amanda doesn’t want to hear about when I used to hunt foxes,” says Ernest, impatient, glum.

“To look at this mature, worldly, urbanized intelligent gentleman you wouldn’t believe that he was a rural farm boy from . . .”

“Minnesota,” Ernest puts in between bites of buttered toast.

“I didn’t know Minnesota grew Black boys, did you?” Catherine acts up. “Tell her about when you used to hunt foxes. Tell her about how you catch a fox. This is neat. There’s a strategy to it.”

Ernest parades the story in monotone. “You catch a fox by sneaking up behind it and grabbing it high up on the tail. You have to grab it high up on the tail, because that locks the spine and it can’t spring around and bite you. The first fox I ever tried to catch I didn’t grab it far enough up on the tail and it sprang around and bit me.”

Catherine raises up his shirt sleeve and shows me the fox bite—a nasty, ragged bite near the tender skin inside his elbow.

“Useful bit of knowledge, isn’t it?” Ernest says sourly.

“That’s how you catch a woman too,” says Catherine, looking into her empty plate like she’s trying to read it. “Grab her high enough up on the tail so she won’t swing around and bite you.”

“That’s a more useful piece of knowledge,” says Ernest, brightening. “So how does a woman catch a man?”

“She doesn’t,” says Catherine.

“I thought it was always the woman catching the man,” he says.

“That’s a myth; it’s not true, a woman never catches a man. Never can,” she says.

“An old wives’ tale?” asks Ernest, and winks at me.

I brighten under his gaze, then glance away, look at Catherine, who has spit on her finger and is gathering the last flakes of dried scrambled egg into her mouth—the same finger that had scratched inside her nose.

“Anyway, a woman could never possibly grab a man high enough upon the tail,” says Catherine.

“It depends on the woman,” says Ernest.

“Aren’t we forgetting?” I put in. “Human beings don’t have tails.”

“Speak for yourself,” mumbles Catherine.

“Does that mean we always bite each other?” Ernest asks, the sour look again.

I stare into a stream of sunlight hitting the table, dust particles jostling each other.

“I saw a picture of a human being that had a tail once. In the Police Gazette,” says Catherine, reading her plate again.

“She means ordinary human beings, like us,” says Ernest. “We always succeed in biting each other.”

“Why don’t you just show her? You’re clamoring to,” blurts Catherine, her tongue like a sliver of pink moon.

Ernest raises up the other sleeve. This time the bite is human. More vicious—deeper, wider, darker. Catherine looks at it like one might look at a trophy.