His footsteps on the hardwood floor of the dining room, hard and loud. His hands were in animation, it was the way he was when agitated. He turned to look at her, one hand running through the brown hair listing into silver gray. She was still sitting, thumb and finger wrapped around the delicate stem of a wine glass. Slender trails of red running down the inside of the glass and she was sitting, looking at him and not looking at him. Agitated. And drunk.

"Don't," she said. "Ethan." Finger and thumb closing.

He calmed for a moment and looked at her with blue eyes. She looked back at him and then, with her free hand, she pulled a loose strand of hair back behind her ear and followed the motion along her chin, her fingernails sliding along the cheek and then falling away, falling down. Her eyes traced the movement and then looked past her hand, delicate and limp at her side, and smoldered at the floor.

"What," he said.

Katherine lifted her glass to her lips and spoke at the same time, the glass muting her voice.

"What," he said again.

"You're drunk," she said, putting the glass down.

"I'm drunk," he said. "Yeah, okay, but you, you're." Ethan stopped, his emotional inertia coming to an impossible wall. "Fuck it," he said, and took a deep breath. "I need some air."

The spell inside her. A coldness took hold of her in moments like these, a coldness, a distance, as he said. The paths she could take unraveled themselves in front of her and she knew she should stop him and she knew at least she should tell him it was okay and she knew all the things she should do but she did not: she did nothing. His words were a ploy a gambit a gamble a feint words she should respond to with an openness but instead her inaction forced his hand. He went into the bedroom and came back out with a coat, pushing his arms through the sleeves and the muscles around his eyes tense and unreadable. Katherine remained in her seat, breathing in silently and exhaling with tense bursts through her nose. She could not remember what she had said to him. It didn't matter he was drunk. It did matter. It was not too late. She could catch him as he moved toward the door she could catch him as he was opening the she could and then the door shut behind him quietly and she saw herself throwing it open and taking off down the street after him saying look I but we and but the door was still closed, her thumb still moved up and down the stem of the glass, Ethan was gone. She wanted to vomit.

Instead she stood and collected the dishes from the table and took them in to the kitchen. The house was quiet without him. He would be back. But the house was quiet without him.

There arose in her a vicious anger at his selfishness as she turned the faucet on and let the water warm up. Your problem is. Her lips pressed together, contorted into a sneer. Your problem is. She poured soap onto a sponge and scrubbed the first dish and then the next and then the one after that, her eyes narrowed at the invisible enemy, trying to discern the next assault. Your problem is. She drowned her hands in the large pot, scratching away with the rough part of the sponge at the burnt pieces of onion and garlic along the sides. The water had grown almost unbearably hot and the steam was clouding her vision. She turned the faucet off with her elbow and cleaned the last of the burnt matter from the pot and turned the faucet back on. She said what your problem is she said what your problem is she said fuck it she said, enough then. Enough. She rinsed the pot and put it upside down over the plates and shook the water from her hands, the drops making dull sounds in the metal sink. The faucet on cold, she let the coolness wash over her fingers, wash the dirt away, the pain.

It was ten or almost. Ethan was out walking. She was alone, in a small house. Anger like that, it always surprised her. And especially: the leaving. This instinct to flee, and for him to be the one telling her she had a problem, she was distant, she was cold. She was in the kitchen, he was gone into the night, probably kicking at loose apples on the ground and pissed off. Cursing. Katherine went back into the dining room and poured herself the last of the wine, and she sat down in one of the hard wooden chairs, thumb and finger back on the stem of her glass, her other hand beating out a little rhythm on the table, a simple rhythm, one two, one two, one two, the time passing, the pulse of her, the minutes until he might return.

Katherine drank the last of her wine and he was still not back by the time she had rinsed the glass and set it upside down to dry. Distant, goddam you. She went into the living room and sat on the white couch with her legs underneath her, the beginnings of sentences drifting through her mind, the anger drained from them now and only words. The television was opposite her, its screen vacant. It was not what she wanted to do but she turned it on, knowing the moment the screen blipped into life that it was wrong. A transient face in the room and then gone as she turned the power off. It was what she had said that had done this, or maybe it had been the small laugh at a bad moment, or it was what she had not said, what she had intended to say but held back from. Her body language. What she had intended to say was. The wine had made her lethargic. She stretched her arm out, feeling the loose joint in her shoulder pop out of its socket. The pain made her bite her lip. She put her left hand on the shoulder and gave it a hard squeeze but it only grew more painful. She pulled at her arm and the pain intensified, a palette knife between her bones, prying and scraping. Normally the joint went in and out, momentary pain, nothing more. A chronic condition from an early fall. Normally her shoulder came loose and then worked its way back in. Right now it wouldn't go back in. Right now it was extremely painful and the sensation was waking her up, was cleaning the loose strands of thought from her mind with its distinct clarity. Was pain. Just pain.

She could move her arm but it looked wrong. The bones in her shoulder were pushed up and the angle of her limb was askance, strange. She bit the inside of her cheek with her molars and saliva gathered in her mouth and with her left arm she yanked on her biceps with as much strength as she could, but she couldn't get the leverage she needed and another painful twist went through her. Katherine looked down at her right hand and it was foreign, an object, not part of her. The pain was making her cry, making the room distort. Okay so what now. Ethan was gone, if he was here he could help her. It was wrong for him to be gone now, when she needed him. She expected him any moment. She needed him. He was walking down the street now, kicking yellow leaves out of his way and cursing her, thinking of all the things he would say to her, how he would put it in a low, calm voice, exactly how he would put it, what he would say to her, but when he came in and saw her pain he would help her. He would forget his words and only see what she needed. Katherine stared at the door. He would be welcome now, his presence, even if he was mad. He would forgive her or he wouldn't but she needed him, she needed him, she needed him. He wasn't there. He wasn't. There.

So okay, she bit her cheek again, rose from the couch, walked over to the door. She made sure the deadbolt was locked so that the door would not fly open when she yanked on it, and then she took hold of the handle with her right hand, pressed her lips together, and pushed off with her legs away from the door, hard. There were two bumps as the end of her bone slipped over the socket, pain lancing into her. She staggered away from the door, clutching at her shoulder with her left hand, massaging the flesh, trying to ease the pain away. She felt sick, she felt the path of the lancets of pain in her stomach, and she stumbled into the bathroom and dry heaved over the toilet, still with her one hand on the shoulder, still in pain.

The sensation slowly began to subside, and after a few minutes she felt strong enough to get up. Her knees had started to ache from being pressed into the bathroom floor and her shoulder still hurt and she was suddenly exhausted. She found some pain medication in the bathroom cabinet and washed it down with several handfuls of water. Then she walked into the bedroom and collapsed onto the comforter, her last sensation the embrace of it, the feeling of it shifting gently to accommodate the shape of her body.

A rapping at the window pulled her out of sleep. Katherine forced the weight of her eyelids open, forced her eyes to look out. The rapping, again. She pushed herself up on her right elbow and collapsed in dull pain back onto the bed. Ethan. Ethan was at the window. She slowly sat up, nodding slowly. He was at the window. Okay.

"Look," he said, through the glass. "I don't, I didn't mean for it to. Look. Just let me in."

Katherine put her palm on the cold glass, blinking. He was at the window. A gauze in her mind but the cold glass giving her a sudden chill.

"Katherine," he said. "I'm cold, okay? Let me in. We can talk - I can go, I just need, I can just - just get a few things, then, okay, all right."

Her shoulder hurt again. She backed away from the window and sat down on the edge of the bed, staring at him. He threw his hands up, backed away. Then: the suddenness of recognition. The deadbolt, the door.

"I'll get the door," she said, and walked slowly into the living room to undo the deadbolt for him.