In the bathroom, Dee turns on both the taps. She can hear him waiting for her behind the door. His distress, his animal breathing. She’s aware, in great detail, of her own body; her skin, so strong in some places, like on her heels and her callused fingertips, so thin in others, like her eyelids. She feels the delicate hair that stands up on her forearms, the soft globes of her eyes; her long tongue and throat, her purpled organs and muscled heart, which pumps the red blood through her. It is pumping fast, now. All these vulnerable things, which can be broken or punctured: the blood can spill; bone can become a cracked white edge; eyeballs can be burst by the pressure of two thumbs. She looks for a mirror, to reassure herself that she is whole, unharmed. But there isn’t one above the basin or anywhere else in the dim, dirty bathroom.

She flushes the toilet, washes her hands and opens the door.

“Could I have a drink of water?” she asks. “I’m parched. Is it always so warm around here? I thought this place was known for the rain!” He turns without a word and lumbers into the kitchen.

She looks about her as she drinks. “Do you hunt? Fish?”

“No.” After a moment he asks, “Why?”

“You must freeze a lot of stuff,” she says, “to need two freezers.” Only the small combination fridge-freezer appears to be in use. The other—an old, industrial chest freezer—lies empty and open, lid resting against the wall.

He looks embarrassed. “Olivia likes to sleep in there,” he says. “My cat. I should have got rid of it when it broke, but the thing makes her happy, you know? She purrs and purrs. So I keep it. Dumb, I guess.”

She looks inside. The box is lined with soft things—blankets and pillows. On a cushion she can see a hair—it is brown, or reddish-brown. It doesn’t look like a cat hair. “Does Olivia live outside?” Dee asks. She can’t see cat bowls for food or water anywhere in the kitchen.

“No,” he says, offended. “Of course not, that would be dangerous. She’s an indoor cat.”

“I love cats,” Dee says, smiling. “But they’re such assholes. Especially as they get older.”

He laughs, a startled stutter. “I guess she is getting older,” he says. “I’ve had her a long time. All I wanted, when I was a kid, was a cat.”

“Ours used to sleep in the dryer,” she says. “It gave my dad nightmares. He was so scared he’d mistake her for a sweater and…” She mimes spinning, makes the face of a horrified cat, staring out through glass.

He gives another little choked laugh and she adds a kind of dance, like the cat paddling in the swirling laundry.