I saw the look in her eyes—like a net she’d fling in any direction, at anyone, just to get what she wanted: the clear sauce, the warm silk of it down her throat. I thought about that word drunk, its funny vectors—as if she had been the one consumed, sucked down, polished off. Her lips were brittle as corn husks.

She had a hangover and a bad case of the shakes. Her mouth was so dry it hushed her voice. “It’s like my throat is stuffed with moths,” she whispered. I was coming to learn that she always had a clear picture of what could happen inside her body, even when she was hurting it: tumors clustered like blueberries in her breasts, liver flushed and spongy from toxins, liquor trickling through her veins like an old man’s urine. She had a language. Her words were ugly, but they were the ones she meant.

I went to a grocery store to pick up food and bottled water. I asked the woman at the cash register, “What’s the vitamin for detox?”

She gave me a look like I was crazy.

“I’m sorry.” I fumbled for my credit card. “Never mind.”

“Hold on a sec.” She picked up her intercom. “Paging Freddy.” Her voice boomed loud. “Freddy, counter sixteen.”

A man showed up a moment later. He had big hands and a pistachio-shaped scar beneath his eye. He’d come from the meat department, according to his badge, and his smock was stained with blood.

“Freddy,” the woman said. “This girl wants to know about a detox vitamin?”

He folded his arms across his chest and looked at me kindly. “That’s B1 you’re looking for,” he said. His eyes were full of pity. “Good luck.”

I sat in my car in the parking lot and couldn’t bring myself to turn the ignition. I thought of our motel room—Tilly on the bed, not knowing what to say—and I felt tired and taxed, ridiculous. I pulled out my cell phone and stared at it for a long time, flipping it open and closed again. I wanted there to be someone, anyone, whose name came easily to mind.

Louis picked up before I even heard the phone ring. I wasn’t ready for his voice.

“Stella,” he said softly. “I thought you were moving.”

“I have,” I said. “I am.”

There was a pause. I could hear honking and then the wail of a siren, the sounds of those streets.

“How are you?” he asked.

“I’ve been better.”

“The thing is,” he said.

He and his wife, they were having a baby.

Just past midnight I woke up to flushing. The bathroom door was open. Tilly was sitting on the toilet, her cotton shirt clinging to her body. “I had a dream,” she said. “You wouldn’t believe.” There’d been a dog, she said, pawing at her arm like it had buried bones beneath her skin—as if her bones were its bones, buried away—and now it was digging them back up. “My whole arm was shredded like string cheese,” she said. “That’s the last part I remember.”