Dinner. Two big salads in oversized bowls. The baby kicking in the bouncer on the floor between them. They chatted flirtatiously as two candles burned in the center of the table. She told a joke and he laughed. No telling what she had said, exactly, but it got him pretty good.

“Did I make you laugh?” she asked him. She looked pleased with herself.

“Yeah, baby. That was a good one.”

“It doesn’t happen very often.”

“Oh, that’s not true,” he said, wagging his head back and forth. “These last few years, you’ve made me laugh at least twice… probably even three times.”

“Oh, shut up.”

“I’m serious.” He looked at her with a dweebish smile and reached for her leg under the table. “You’re sexy when you tell dirty jokes.”

“Don’t touch me,” she recoiled, pulling away from his hand and scooching back in the chair.

He moved in a little closer and mimed tickling her, his hands like spiders’ legs wriggling in the air. “Stop it,” she said. She was smiling, but there was now a hint of seriousness in her tone. He didn’t seem to care. He kept advancing. The tickle fingers crept closer and closer.

Seeing he wasn’t letting up, her face pulled down. She grabbed a fork from the table, palm gripped it, and rammed the tines into the flesh over his ulna. “Stop,” she commanded as the metal hit bone.

“Fuck!” he said. “Jesus Christ what the fuck!?” He pulled his arm back and blood spurted out. A spray of crimson drops cast across the baby’s face. She stopped kicking, looked confused. The bouncer slowed to a stop.

“Don’t upset the baby,” she said.

“What the hell are you talking about?” He pulled the fork out of his forearm and threw it behind him into the kitchen. It ricocheted off the dishwasher and clanked onto the ceramic floor, leaving a splatter of blood on the lower cabinets and tile.

The woman called out: “Housekeeping!”

On command, the dog, who had been cowering under the table during all this, waddled into the kitchen and started cleaning up the floor. The man put pressure on his pulsing wound with a kitchen towel and looked over at her as she took a thoughtful bite from his bowl. The baby resumed its kicking. It made a velociraptic screech.

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