She moves the candelabra in front of her husband. She says, I like aggressive men. I say, I like aggressive women. She dips her spoon into the mushroom soup. But this is delicious, she says. Vermouth, I say. On the way back from the liquor store a plastic bag of fierce yellow slapped against my shin. I peeled it away, meat juice coursing in the wrinkles like a living beast. It clung just as viciously to a telephone pole when I let it go. There was a poster on the pole just above the bag, Jessica Connolly at Fat Cat’s. A band of men behind her. She looked resolute and charged, just like twenty years ago when the three of us would crush ourselves into a change room in the mall, forcing our bodies into the smallest-sized jeans we could find — she and Louise and I, twisting on the balls of our feet to see how our bums looked. I like aggressive women too, she says. That’s because we’re both aggressive. I put my arm around Louise and squeeze her. I like you anyway, Lou, I say. Jessica says, Oh, she’s passive aggressive.
