Carush, my serious paramour, the future CPA and reader of Freud, Jung, Skinner, and Bettelheim, believed in me. His faith was devastating. I had only to open my notorious yap and wag it with sufficient solemnity for him to bow down with the weight of my nattering. His legs were tapered, finely boned, an elegant and restrained bit of work. He liked me, but had a wide eye for pretty girls. Jealousy burned in me terribly, that ghastly disease.

At a birthday party that I had arranged for Carush—a successful surprise, to the degree that he wandered around the crowd for twenty minutes before he realized that it was all in his honor—he enjoyed himself too much. I had invited all his favorites among my female acquaintance. Emma was my favorite, too. Small she was, and fluffy. She scratched her incredible poems on the tapes from the cash register at the grocery store or threw them out as a counterfeit of conversation in her perpetual confusion at parties. I suppose we could have been friends but we were too prickly for each other. But there she was, her tiny hand elevating her glass like a lucid bite of Christ, her head poised oddly above her shoulders, and he leaning toward her, leering, rapt to her every move.

I went into the bathroom and sliced my wrists with his razor. It was crass of me to do it at the party, especially a party where there is only one toilet. I sat on the side of the old chipped tub and sawed away, first at the left and then at the right. It hurt. I didn’t go very deep. The blood seemed thinner than I had expected, but it moved in a satisfying way, sheeting out of the long cuts and filling my palms with warmth. I ran hot water into the sink and rested my hands deep in it, covering the cuts so that the blood curled out into the water and clouded it red.

A knock at the door. Somebody waiting to puke or pee.

“Sorry, it’s busy!” I called.

The cuts didn’t hurt, really; there was only a precise sting at their edges.

“It’s urgent!” a voice cried.

“Esta ocupado! Go outdoors!” I yelled.

A new knock came right away.

“Busy!” I said.

“Sally?” It was a girl whose whisper I recognized from my humanities survey class. Clara something.

“Couldn’t I just come in for a minute? I’m flowing all down both legs. I’ve got to insert a tampon.”

“Clara, I really can’t let you in. Go out in the backyard to do it!”

“Sally! For Christ’s sake! My dress is gory already!”

“I’m sorry.”