He cautiously peeked around the doorjamb, playing it up for comic effect. “Give me the knife,” he said.
“Awww,” she said, handing it over, butt first. He set it down on the dresser, then hurried back to the bathroom.
“Haven’t you read all those books?”
Alan grinned. “What’s the point of a bunch of books you’ve already read?” He dropped his boxers and stripped off his T-shirt and climbed into the tub, sloshing gallons of water over the scummy tile floor.
When I was two years old,
(she said, later, as she reclined against the headboard and he reclined against her, their asses deforming the rusted springs of the mattress so that it sloped toward them and the tins of soda they’d opened to replenish their bodily fluids lost in sweat and otherwise threatened to tip over on the slope; she encased him in her wings, shutting out the light and filling their air with the smell of cinnamon and pepper from the downy hair)
When I was two years old,
(she said, speaking into the shaggy hair at the back of his neck, as his sore muscles trembled and as the sweat dried to a white salt residue on his skin, as he lay there in the dark of the room and the wings, watching the constellation of reflected clock-radio lights in the black TV screen)
When I was two years old,