Greg, his face red, looks like he’s about to cry. One of his hands clenches, drawing her attention. Carmen suddenly realizes they are alone in the room and Greg is between her and the door. And that this man is deeply emotionally unstable right now. At the completion of that thought, Carmen splits into three personas: one of whom is scientific and calm and giving a mini-lecture on the physiological fact that men have 50 percent more muscle mass than women, and due to their muscle fibers being larger, their muscles are pound for pound stronger as well, and that even a flabby guy like Greg is probably much faster too, because men’s sensory frame shifting and reaction times are quicker, their grips larger, their weight distributed better for fighting and capable of producing far more power per movement, and all that is because beneath the veneer of civilization women like me have been mating with men who are good at killing other men and slowly breeding a weaponized sex to protect us and now here I am paying the price for that sexual selection that all my female ancestors enjoyed . . . while the second part of her is becoming itself violent, a heated demon, a cartilaginous message, a bone spear losing language in its flight and fear and reactivity. The further third, which is being shunted all the emotional intelligence, becomes a flirtatious psychologist, a concerned matron with the whiff of sex, a pretty face with big eyes.

“Hey, Greg,” she says, smiling at him, tilting her head, feeling herself adopt a posture with her chest out, entering a standing lordosis, one leg crossing behind the other. “I didn’t mean to interrogate you. But I need to know: what exactly happened? That’s what I want.”

“Why do you even care?” he cries angrily, gesturing. “Who made you a detective? I know what you’re doing by the way. Everybody does. Carmen’s little crazy project. Or is it just a way to flirt with Kierk? Because both you and Alex seem to be fucking in love with him for some reason. Everyone who isn’t in love with him hates him, just so you know. And for the record I didn’t have anything to do with Atif’s death.”

“It’s not a secret what I’m doing,” Carmen says defensively, even as she surreptitiously thumbs Kierk’s number on her phone, stealing a glance at it as Greg turns around as if he’s searching for something—words, emotions, it’s unclear—but when he turns back he continues as if she hadn’t spoken. Carmen’s phone is back in her jeans, but still on, hopefully ringing.

“You got the email from his mother too, okay?” Carmen says. “Don’t you care at all what happened? Don’t you want to know?”