She was looking like trapped meat. I’m talking about the pretentious freak of nature stuck in her mother’s washing machine down the street. It was yesterday afternoon. I’d dropped by to return borrowed eggs. I heard screaming, begging, laughter. We used to play house. I was eleven. She was ten. I was a bank teller. She was a secretary. We were sick and tired of the grind, but happy together. After a long day, she fixed me cranberry juice on the rocks, and I gave her a foot massage. It was a good marriage. Nowadays, she reads European philosophy and dresses only in Goodwill, and I tend to keep my distance. I’ve always managed to avoid the knives that come out of her mother’s mouth. I mean, that woman vomits knives. And yesterday, those knives were pointing at the trapped meat in the washing machine. So, after a pink sandwich, which I ate only because I was hungry, I left.