“I’ll get Beaner inside and get her settled,” Trevor murmured to me. He turned, without greeting Jessica, and clapped his hands at Kelli. “Shake that booty, Big Bean! Maybe we’ll get some cookies happening, eh?”

Jessica watched as he hustled Kelli away. She had stopped walking about halfway up the driveway and was now simply standing there, taking the three of us in. It was only after Kelli and Trevor had disappeared inside and the screen door wheezed shut behind them that she started moving toward me again.

“What’s up?” she said. The question contained multitudes, but was, I knew, mostly about what she had just seen. But I didn’t want to talk about Trevor.

“Did you,” I began. And I had opened my mouth with every intention of uttering a complete sentence. It was going to be straightforward and inflectionless and I would keep my emotions under control. But just a few words in, I felt my face begin to throb. Blood whooshed like the ocean in my ears, making me forget what I wanted to say. Jessica’s eyes widened as she looked at me.

“Karen, what’s —”

And I slapped her.

The only person I’d ever slapped previous to this was a weedy, drunken architecture student at a Halloween party, back in university — I’d been dressed as Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, and he’d taken my low-cut costume as an invitation to plunge his hand deep into my cleavage. I couldn’t tell if I had hit Jessica hard or not and I was immediately worried about it. I stared at my palm and clenched my hand, thinking if I had really smacked Jessica a good one, my palm would be stinging from the impact, like it had with the architecture student — but I was so adrenalized I couldn’t tell what my hand felt like exactly. I peered at Jessica’s cheek to see if any kind of welt was forming. I could hear myself apologizing, as if from another room. Jessica was holding her face just as the drunk boy had, gaping at me, and I wished she would take her hand away so I could see if there was a mark or not.

“Did it hurt?” I asked.

“What is happening?” said Jessica.

The back door of Jessica’s car flung itself open and now the man who had given me the good house thumbs-up came rushing toward us, scowling like Beethoven, his silver hair flowing behind him.

“Excuse me,” he said. “Excuse me. Oh my god.”

“It’s all right, Nate,” called Jessica, holding out her arm as if to keep him at bay. Nate stopped and seemed to hover in the driveway, vibrating like a hummingbird.

“Do you want me to call the police.” This was a question, but said like a statement, a very emphatic statement, loud, slow, and deliberate, as if every word was followed, in his mind, by a period. He stared straight at me. Jessica turned to him.

“It’s ok, Nate. Please wait for me in the car with Jason and I’ll be right there.” Jessica had been holding a kind of glazed eye contact with me but now she blinked a bunch of times and jerked her head toward Nate. He walked backward a few steps, still scowling. He had been holding his phone in his hand, I realized, but now he pocketed it and went back to the car.