“You know, too many people selling the same thing. Can’t transport the meat as fast as some others. What about you? Any men in the picture?”

“Nothing serious. How is your knot feeling?”

A small silence.

“It’s been acting up,” she says. “You know how it is. It comes with time.”

The pain she hides radiates through her voice. I can feel it coming for me. I can feel it breathing down my neck, my terrible ancestor.

IN THE BAR, BOTTLES LINE THE MIRrored walls. I catch a glimpse of my eyes between their necks.

A man sits next to me. His nose is sharp, his eyes are deep green, his hair brown. His smell is my father’s same smell: sour, sweet, a thin layer of meat at the base of it.

“Hello,” I say.

“Hey there. You come here often?” he asks.

“No, I usually just stay home and cry in bed,” I say.

He lets out a laugh.

“What do you do?”

“I type the company notes every day,” I say. “What do you do?”

“I’m a law man,” he says. “I deal with the laws.”

“Oh.”

“Does that impress you?”

“I guess.”

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a handful of gold coins. He sits them on the bar. I smell him again, that deep smell, and I want his hands on me.

“Does it now?”

“Sure,” I say.

His hand finds my leg and squeezes. I let it happen, I want it to happen, I follow that feeling with him, out into the night, then into my apartment.

IN THE DIM LIGHT OF MY SMALL KITCHEN, he puts his hands on my shoulders. I keep my mouth on him. He tastes sharp.

“You smell so good,” he says into my skin, into my shoulder. His hands slide down my arms to my waist, where they discover my knot.

“Wha...” he asks.

“Oh, it’s just... I was born with it.”

“What the hell is it?” he asks, his fingers digging into the curves.

“It’s just this thing... my mother has it too, it’s a knot...”

“Your body is a knot?”

“Well just... my stomach, yes...”

“Show it to me, right now.”

I step back and lift my dress slowly, until his eyes can take it all in, my warped body.

“Look, you’re great. You are. But I don’t... I don’t think I can do this,” he mutters. “This isn’t for me.”

I drop my dress back down over the knot. I nod.

“It’s OK, I understand.”

A succession of sounds: Doors opening and closing, the car engine starting, tires kicking up loose rock from the asphalt, then the silence again, always only silence for me.

“YOU WERE LATE THIS MORNING,” THE boss says, standing over my desk. “I came looking for you and couldn’t find you.”