"That part was simple. I brought him home when I knew my house would be empty and made dinner. On the way there he told me how wrong he'd been to leave, how much he'd missed me. I knew his words were empty, the empty husks of beetles long wandered off, the shell game I always lost. Still I let him touch me. Gentle now, I said.
He had his problems. Disappearance wasn't the worst of it, nor was the plight of the innocent fat ladies. Fred couldn't control himself. He was what Florence, my godmother, called bad news.
He's a natural disaster and you're trailer city, Florence rasped, then took another drag of her cigarette. He's an itchy rash, a pimple under the skin. He's a toothache and you're just numbing the gum, girlie. You need to pull his mean self out and toss it away.
But I love him, I said in the smallest voice those words could afford.
Oh girlie, Florence said, That's the worst of it."
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