Your wife has invited me over for dinner tonight. She seems manic. Do I bring wine or something harder?

I stepped back into my office and closed the door. Ha! Jolene was manic. I’d been tiptoeing around the house for days hoping not to be yelled at. She got like that when she was close to finishing a book. Everyone and everything was an inconvenience to her.

Is it for her or us? I texted back.

Ha! Us, I suppose.

Then get the good stuff and we can be too drunk to notice.

She sent the thumbs up emoji.

I liked our chemistry. She was easy to be around. I’d pegged her as a psychopath the first time I met her, which meant that she was charming and agreeable and that seeking out our affection was part of the game. She wouldn’t always be this easy. A psychopath eventually always came apart at the seams, but for now she felt like an ally. Someone to be in cahoots with against Jolene. Sometimes I felt guilty about villainizing my wife … she was in essence a better person than I was, but in the end humans needed to feel connected … supported. And Fig was my girl. Fig had a sort of grim obsession with Jolene. She wanted to be her and hated that it didn’t come easily. Their relationship was tenuous. Fig, on almost every occasion, tried to one-up my wife, to which my wife with no malice allowed her the winning trophy. It made Fig angry. If she won she wanted there to be a war.

A text came through from Susan Noring. It was a picture of her tits. Well, well, well. I had been wrong. And who would have thought she had a rack like that? Finally a scuff mark on her Keds. Well done, Susan.

Wowzer, I texted back. Those are beautiful. I sent the picture to my e-mail, deleted it from my phone, and opened the door for Lesley.

There was a lawsuit. It had the potential to shut down my practice. I couldn’t believe it really. How had I gotten involved with someone who’d sue me over a broken heart? Women, as it turned out, were undeniably insane.

I thought of the fish tank in the reception area, and the overstuffed grey chairs that Jolene had chosen when we were first setting up the office, and imagined them gone. It made me sick to think of it. Everything I built—gone. All because of the weak accusations of a bitter girl. Macey Kubrika had walked into my office the first time smelling of pussy. She’s just fucked herself, I remember thinking. Probably out front in her car. I wanted to smell her fingers to confirm. I had initially been attracted to her because she was vulnerable with big tits, and she liked to lick her lips when she talked. It had taken work to focus during her sessions; I kept imagining her sitting on my face. She was a teacher and she had been born with Amelia, a birth defect that resulted in a deformed limb. I hadn’t noticed at first that she didn’t have a normal right hand. She wore baggy sweaters and pulled the sleeves past her fingers on her left hand. It wasn’t until she brought it up in therapy a few weeks later that she pulled the sleeve back from her pink cardigan to show me what she called her stump. She told me she was grateful her parents hadn’t aborted her.

“Your parents are pastors,” I’d said. “What makes you think abortion crossed their minds?”

“It didn’t. Just if I’d been given to another family maybe they would have.”

True.

She felt lucky to be alive, it was a quality we all needed. I told her that a missing appendage didn’t diminish her worth, and something lit up in her eyes. Our affair started once Macey grew comfortable enough with me to ditch the sweaters. She started coming to her sessions in low-cut tops and sheer blouses through which I could see the outline of her dark nipples. Then one day while wearing a skirt, she sat in the chair opposite me, spreading her legs so that I could see her pink panties, and asked me to meet her at a hotel nearby. I’d grown so hard it had been painful. I had thought Macey and I were on the same page: we met, she fucked like a contortionist, we texted pictures in our time apart—wet fingers pushing, a hard dick in my hand—we had fun. I’d not thought about the fact that she had one hand. Her pussy was tight, and she moaned like a whore while I pounded into her. And then she ruined our fun because she wanted more than fucking. I’d never mentioned more. What was more anyway? A relationship? A child? Nights at home watching our favorite shows on television? I had more. I wanted the extra. I should have known better, a woman who lived her life feeling inferior and broken found a man who she thought was able to look past her deformity and desire her sexually. When that man rejected her it was like waking up every insecurity she owned and forcing her to consider the fact that she was indeed too ugly, too broken, too deformed to love. My bad, all right. When I told Macey we couldn’t see each other anymore, she hung up on me. The rest of her threats came through text. I’d canceled my appointments, sent my secretary home, and paced around the office trying to decide what to do. A dead fish was floating in the fish tank, belly up. It felt like a bad omen. I scooped it out and flushed it before anyone could see.

I’d considered blackmail. Macey was the daughter of a prominent pastor, how would it look if it got out that she was fucking a married father? But, before I could throw the gauntlet, she had, filing a malpractice suit against me. I was playing with someone who valued revenge over her own reputation. All the papers had been sent to the office and Jolene had yet to find out. But, it was just a matter of time, wasn’t it? It felt like my life here was almost over. Tick tock. I thought about Mercy, how much I loved her even though she wasn’t mine. I’d been willing to raise her as my own, and I was certain that was what made Jolene fall in love with me. I had been there for her birth, her birthdays, and every moment of her tiny little life. I’d named her Mercy because that’s what it felt like being with Jolene; I had something I didn’t deserve, but oh god—I loved them both so much.