The second time the rat returned, it hadn’t even been gone five hours. I was working on my machine, tying a rope around a bowling pin’s neck. I planned to adjust the hoisting cord until the pin swung at the correct velocity and height to hit a matchbox car waiting on a wooden slope without bashing anything else. The process was repetitive—tie, drop, pick up pieces, reset—but how else could I get it perfect?

Also, I was sexting Boy #53. My phone buzzed with a photo of his upper thigh. When I first met him on the subway, he’d joked that I only wanted him for his body.

“Guilty,” I’d said. “You have such sensual ankles.”

So, it wasn’t sexting yet, but based on the rate at which the photos moved up his leg plus process of elimination, it would be in three to seven minutes. From the kitchen, I heard a faint but grating gnawing sound.

Mainly I was distressed because it was my fault the rat came back. A website I found, Rats Are Clever Creatures, had highlighter-yellow Comic Sans informing me, “Freaky Fact: Rats can find their way back to the nest from several miles away!” This tidbit was positioned above a Looney Tunes-style banner saying, Rat’s all, folks!

I should’ve taken the rat farther away the first time I disposed of it, but I didn’t want to leave my apartment twice. It was the kind of Hallmark-gorgeous fall day that nature shoves in your face sometimes. The crunchy sidewalk leaves were a jillion unbearable shades of red and orange, more colors than the Paint by Number kits I did as a kid. I spent so many weeks on them that my parents started calling me “little hunchback” and asking if it ever got lonely in the bell tower.

The rat’s return complicated things re: the boys I brought over. They’d all ask me the same questions: What is it? How long have you been building it? Why are you building it? How will it end? I’d give my autopilot answers: A Rube Goldberg machine, about ten months, I don’t know, I don’t know. At that point, I usually hustled whichever boy was over straight into the bedroom without turning on the lights, but now, even that didn’t work. My apartment was shadowy and cluttered; occasionally, pools of blue light from the streetlights outside seeped in through the barred windows, glinting off the milky-white marbles set atop their slopes, shining on the ribs of the little metal pails poised to slide down their miniature wires. Only, since the rat was around, I had to keep the lights on because I was petrified it’d skitter over my bare feet.

With the lights on, the boys thought they had license to linger. They’d inspect the pulleys with the worn interest of a retiree docent. They’d crouch by the PVC portion, say, “What’s a, uh—”

“Rube Goldberg machine. Chain reaction.” I’d point to sections of my project. “A ball rolls through the pipe into a cup, which weighs down the cup, which lands on a seesaw, which flips to release a string, which is attached to a pulley . . . it just keeps going.”

By then, I’d be fading fast, so hyper-focused on spotting a flicker of tail or a ripple of grimy fur that when I saw a flutter over by the windows or heard a faint clicking, I’d nearly lose it, but it’d turn out to be the curtains moving in the wind or something. Meanwhile, the boy of the night would mime stumbling into the machine or tunneling his stubby beef-jerky finger through the air teasing, “I’m gonna knock it over!” I’d be exhausted at the mere prospect of having to pretend these men were remotely original in reminding me they had the power to destroy everything I’d built.

I’d say my usual, which was “No touching!” Except, I said it sexy, like a porno prison guard slapping handcuffs shut. Or, what I imagined such a woman would sound like. The porn I watched didn’t do plots, and the women definitely didn’t speak.

Then, I’d look at the boy hard, trying to recall what about him I could have found attractive in the first place. Without fail, nothing leapt out at me, and I’d know that if I didn’t act fast, I’d lose even more interest, and then I’d lose my nerve. I’d grab his belt and tow him toward the bedroom like a sled, but it was inevitable: at some point, we’d both hear it. The rat. Bustling in paper bags or flicking its wormy tail around the baseboards. I’d re-clench my fists, suck in a deep breath, and drag the boy into the bedroom, blinding him with scattershot kisses so he couldn’t see the rat and leave before I’d gotten what I’d invited him here for.

I decided to send Boy #53 back a pic of my tits for efficiency’s sake. I rearranged my lamps to create three-point lighting and flattering shadows, arguably the most practical use of my art degree yet. Usually, I avoid any evidence I have a body, slug-pink and raw like a fresh scar, but I feel weirdly peaceful after sending nudes. I’m suddenly French-braided, holding a hot chocolate mug with both hands. It’s like those olden times people who shut themselves in crates and mailed themselves somewhere far, only I’m doing it piecemeal. Actually, it’s more like the ones who climbed into barrels to careen over the edge of Niagara Falls.

I mentioned that to a friend once, when I still had them.

She said, “Didn’t they die though?”

I mean, yes, they died. Of course they nearly all died. But I can imagine a moment after waving goodbye, clambering inside, inhaling fresh wood, hugging shivering knees, and closing the lid on the world. That moment was maybe kind of nice.

I was unbuttoning my shirt when the rat shot past me like a screeching hockey puck. Truth be told, I was kinda impressed. I’d taken it six subway stops away. I held it inside a trapper cage, which I’d stuffed inside a big, yellow-striped gift box I’d been saving for a special occasion that didn’t seem forthcoming. I was so honed in that the rat’s every move inside its glittery container was amplified. I felt its scuttling. Every whisker twitch reverberated in my lap.

I only intended to take the rat a stop or two away, but this guy wouldn’t stop staring. I’d stared first because he had long, dangling earlobes like he’d taken out gauges, and it inspired me to consider incorporating embroidery hoops into my machine. But he must’ve thought I was ogling. He, future Boy #53, made a whole show of giving me elevator eyes, all the way up, all the way down. We had the not unfunny exchange re: ankle objectification, and he suggested I join him on a coffee date at the stop after next. God knows why I almost agreed—I don’t do coffee, and I certainly don’t do dates—but the rat shifted a millimeter and startled me out of my seat. I said I couldn’t, that I had an important errand, but I gave him my number.

And now the rat was back. How many miles had its spindly feet traveled to find me? Haunt me? It reminds me of that kids’ movie. Since I can’t sleep, I’ve re-watched them all: Matilda, The Parent Trap, the one where talking pets embark on a cross- country adventure to reunite with their owner. Homeward Bound, it’s called. In my favorite scene, these menacing wild dogs try to flirt with Sassy, a Himalayan housecat who takes no shit, and she’s like, “Oh, great, catcalls.”

That line. It makes me so happy. Not because it’s funny, but because I imagine the screenwriters banging this script out at 3:00 a.m., absolutely dying laughing at each other’s stupid jokes. I bet they collapsed into each other giggling hard enough they struggled to breathe.

Moments like that, and all the movies, actually, make my chest tighten. They never did when I was little; I’m not sure what’s changed. All I know is that when the owner, Peter, hugs his dog before leaving him behind and says, “I’m gonna miss you so much,” and his golden retriever, Shadow, says, “I know. I know you’re sad. I just wish I knew why,” I have to pull my comforter over my head, mash my face into the pillows, and slow-breathe until my own stale exhales swaddle me into a half-asleep state.

These quicksand moods overwhelmed me more frequently those days. I thought maybe it was because I kept accidentally walking past the good deli. I didn’t mean to, but I looked up while passing it and saw the familiar candy advertisements, sun-faded into newspaper comic tricolor, and the smiley sign saying, We appreciate your patronage, and the jangly door I used to walk through. I felt a twinge beneath my breastbone, and I sped on by.

Boy #53 texted again, because I had ignored his text asking to grab dinner.

“IDK,” I texted back. “Are you a murderer?”

“Care to find out?” he wrote, which indicated either homicidality or plain horniness. I didn’t have enough context yet to know which.

I put my phone down. Picked it up. “Not really a dinner kinda girl . . .”

I tightened the noose around the bowling pin. Swing, miss, reset, repeat. I tried to stop imagining the rat’s toenails scrabbling over delicate sections of my machine, scaring off the boys I did manage to bring back here. My phone pinged, “Pinebox tm? 8:00? [not dinner].”

I knew that bar. Their gimmick was that they were a former casket factory. All the cave-like booths were made of casket wood.

“Casket, coffin, what’s the difference?” I asked the bartender once, while out trolling for a Boy #21. I pretended to stir my drink even though he knew perfectly well it was straight gin because he’d poured it.

“Not a lot,” he said. “A coffin has a flair outwards at the top, like old vampire movies. A casket doesn’t. It’s just a rectangle.”

I said unless you were Superman-level jacked up top, a coffin was just excess real estate. I told him I enjoy coziness and don’t have much muscle mass, so a casket would be perfect for me. He said I was weird as hell, but he was into it, so I should call him when his shift ended. I killed time with a truly underwhelming Boy #21 I met in the bathroom line, then stumbled out of his place at 2:15 a.m. to make the bartender Boy #22. I thought two in one night would feel special in some way, but it was just more of the same.

I sidled around my apartment searching for a clearing with no machine in the background—my tits couldn’t take the upstaging— but there wasn’t one. I hadn’t realized how much of my apartment it had swallowed. The water wheel section commandeered the entirety of the kitchen counter space and was encroaching on the stovetop. Black suspension cords from the unfinished pulley systems hung down, tentacle-like, from the ceiling. I had a mini portrait studio in the corner with a stool and soft, cloud-printed background fabric, but I dismantled it to make space for the particle board that held up the dominoes, tin can pyramids, and glittering paper pinwheels, the most precarious parts.

Maybe it would be good to get out.

“You’re a funny one,” Boy #53 said, and based on his accompanying hairy knee picture, he was too. Maybe I’d visit Pinebox, for a little while.

I’d gotten the pin to hit its target seventy-five percent of the time, but chance wasn’t the same as inevitability. It had to be right every single time. I let the pin go again and it slammed the car’s slope so hard the pieces scattered, sliding beneath the couch, where I suspected the rat lived.

I got down on my knees to peer underneath, ready to leap away at any sudden movement. I snaked my hand through the dust, but instead of pulling out a scaffolding chunk, I extracted a glossy pink postcard featuring a beet-faced baby with a pair of silhouetted heads, my college best friend and her husband, bent to kiss its pudgy cheeks. The card had come six months before. I kept meaning to respond, say congratulations, but then too much time had passed and reaching out would’ve been weird. Except, then I couldn’t call to talk in general, because she’d remember I’d never acknowledged her baby’s existence, so I ignored her texts altogether. Now we don’t speak.

On the card, a stork clutched a banner: Welcome To The World, Baby!

I’ll never understand how people feel like they belong enough to this earth to be its ambassador. I’ve been here twenty-eight years and I barely feel welcome myself.

I sat back on my heels, inspected my machine. I couldn’t go to Pinebox. There was still so much to do, everything so far from perfect. What if the rat terrorized it while I was gone? I dug my fingertips into my thighs until they whitened.

I texted Boy #53 my address, along with a question: “1:00 a.m.?” I added a purple devil emoji.

When the rat returned a third time, I lured it into the cage with a peanut butter smear, shoved it into the gift box, and took it to Times Square. The place was intolerable—all that jostling and obnoxious wonder. I knelt on the gum-spackled sidewalk. I figured if I let the rat go underneath a hotdog cart, it’d either be so bewildered by the bright lights and big city that it couldn’t find its way back, or it’d gorge itself on wiener crumbs until its arteries exploded. I was no killer, but I was okay with being an accessory.

Unfortunately, it reappeared while I was in bed with Boy #56, a cinematographer from work who sulked when I joked that his whole job was pointing a lens in the right direction. He seemed hurt, kept muttering, but then I took my top off and he got over it. We were mid-kiss when I sensed the rat’s return. He couldn’t hear it, but I knew. The rat and I were basically one. I could feel it rustling even from afar.

After Boy #56 finished and I shooed him away, I crept barefoot into the living room. The calm I felt after sex with strangers lasted for less and less time with each visit. By then, it wore off completely before the door closed behind them.

I focused on the machine’s problem section. The ball should’ve rolled down the ramp and bumped the lip of a suspended pitcher so that it poured into a waiting cup, but I couldn’t get the pitcher to pour everything out. I tried fifteen times before I got frustrated and slammed my tools around. I texted the subway guy, Boy #53.

No Repeats was one of my rules—too much possibility they’d get attached—but Boy #53 worked coat check at a gentlemen’s club, and who else would be awake at this hour? I granted myself special dispensation.

I described my problem: “Bouncy ball not heavy enough. Tried 15x. V frustrated.”

He responded immediately, “Aw, don’t despair champ, you’ll bounce back.”

I snorted and sunk to the floor to draft a response. “For real tho, you a murderer? Kinda want u to be so u can mercy kill me cuz ur pun = v bad.”

The rat was back from Times Square in under twelve hours. I barely rolled over upon hearing it root through my trash, just grabbed my phone. My first search yielded an exterminator’s site explaining, “Rats are skeptical animals!” I pictured my rat as a tweed-coat-sporting professor complete with tiny pipe, but it just meant rats are good at skirting obstacles. Nothing breaks their patterns from x (food) to y (foraging area) to z (nest).

I had to respect the rat. I went from x (less-good deli, for dinner) to y (machine work) to z (sex with laundromat guy/laundromat guy’s roommate/the super of their building). When I ran into the super after leaving the first two guys’ apartment, I thought it’d be satisfying, like a game—sex Pokémon, gotta catch ’em all!—but it didn’t feel like the conquest I’d hoped for. The high wore off before I hit the subway platform, and by then it was late and the LED screen’s estimated minutes remaining kept scrolling backward in time and I could only wait and stare at the empty tracks.

When I finally got home, I was tired but not sleepy. I got so wrapped up in taping the hammer to the seesaw that when I glanced up and spotted the rat blinking back at me from the countertop, I jolted backward and hit my head on the couch. I didn’t scream, people only scream when we believe someone might hear, but I was shaken up. Being scared without a witness felt strange, like the gesture you would’ve made with your hands—The rat was thiiis big!—got lodged in your body somewhere. I texted Boy #53, “mr. rat is getting v cocky.”

Boy #53 suggested I’d failed to put myself in the mind of mr. rat. He proposed I show it the world—had I considered Paris? I said I could never do that to the city of love, and he said he was appalled, clearly I hadn’t seen Ratatouille, surely the rat possessed innate talents I wasn’t recognizing. Boy #53 was funny enough to merit a half-smile, which calmed me enough to set up the peanut butter trap and catch the rat again.

Instead of Paris, I opted for the Botanical Garden. Maybe I just hadn’t given the rat a good enough alternative to life with me. When I got there it was early and the gardens were empty. I shot a wedding in the Azalea Garden this summer. The bride was very woo-woo, kept insisting the flowers were “evocative of softness and femininity,” which made me gag, but it really was gorgeous, painfully so.

The ground was dewy enough to soak my jeans when I crouched to open the cage. The rat wandered out slowly, like he was equally happy inside the box and outside it. I hovered there until he scurried away into the trees.

The rat took longer to return from the gardens, nearly forty-eight hours, like it appreciated the effort. While it was gone, I got out of hand. Those days are pretty jumbled. There was Boy #56 with the enormous “Be vulnerable” tattoo. I recognized the quote from clips old friends had shared, and told him nothing turned me on like a good, informative TED Talk. He got huffy. He said there was nothing wrong with being earnest and he wouldn’t let me make him feel bad.

There was another—Boy #59?—who asked to sleep over, so I yelled, “Keep the change, ya filthy animal!” I was quoting Home Alone to soften the blow of kicking him out, but I guess he didn’t recognize it.

Then, Boy #60 who yammered about his American citizenship journey and didn’t take my hints. He said his visa labeled him as “an alien of extraordinary ability,” so I tried to pivot with “Show me your extraordinary abilities, alien.”

My jokes were rusty. I was tired. I couldn’t stop envisioning the rat toppling my machine. In the end, Boy #60 stood, kissed me lightly on the forehead, and didn’t come home with me.

On non-work mornings, I couldn’t distinguish the days. It may have been longer than forty-eight hours. It was either two days, or it was nine. I fixated on the pitcher problem. My brain was on laser mode and I was so sleepless and shaky that when the rat returned, I was almost relieved. We had our routine now.

I took him to Asbury Park Beach, reasoning that New Jersey was surely far enough away. I hoped the freezing water might shock me into getting back on track and waking up refreshed for my machine.

But immediately after releasing the rat on the sand, he scampered off in the direction we came from, like he was gonna catch the next train back. I waded in the water but it didn’t work. I was inordinately deflated. I couldn’t do a single thing right. I considered hiring an exterminator, but I read a Freaky Fact explaining that exterminators don’t physically remove rats. They gas your whole place and leave you to clean up the carcasses. The rats rot in the walls around you, turning into shriveled bone sacks, little tumors behind your mirrors. But isn’t that the whole point of having someone else there? The prospect that they’ll take away the bad and leave you with an empty home in which to start over?

On my return from the beach, I entered the good deli instead of walking past like I should’ve. I was hungry, but also, I maybe wanted to punish myself. For what, I was not sure. I spent a while running my hands over the crinkly snack packets. Eventually, I grabbed the closest item, took it to the counter, and there he was: the nice deli man.

“She’s back!” He calculated my total. “We thought you were dead.”

I hadn’t seen him since summer, before I stopped coming. I’d been obsessed with this machine step where a knife would jut forward to pop a balloon. It was impossible to get the knife to jab the balloon with the correct force. I spent weeks, months, went through endless balloons. I kept returning because the good deli sold fifty packs and the nice deli man was always there. He started recognizing me, which made me shifty, even though he was only ever kind. It’s just so hard to let people know you, like floating atop a sea of stinging jellyfish.

One day, he pointed to the balloons and said, “Gotta beat the heat!”

I wasn’t sure what he meant. He gestured out the window at a pair of kids who’d busted off a fire hydrant cap to play in the water. They were six-ish and running, arms pumping, not afraid to want something and show it. The deli man, I realized, thought I was making them into water balloons. I let my gaze linger on the children. The little boy hug-tackled the girl in her frilly one-piece, pulling her down into the water while she screeched and laughed and clawed at him. What would the deli man think if he knew why I really wanted the balloons? That I was doing the same pointless thing over and over, alone? I snatched them from the counter and speed-walked past the hydrant, careful not to get a drop on me, though August was sweltering. And I didn’t go back to the good deli. The gap between the life the deli man imagined for me and the one I lived was unbearable.

Leaving the good deli after Asbury Park, I took stock. I was still carrying the cage, I was scatterbrained, and my apartment would be empty when I got home. I squared my shoulders; I’d invite Boy #53 over. Sure, I never saw the Boys more than once, but I figured the rat would come scare him away eventually anyway. Boy #53 negotiated. He agreed to come over only if I’d let him take me to breakfast at the nearby diner. I accepted his terms. Once he got a dose of me, it wouldn’t be hard to convince him he didn’t want more time in my presence.

When he arrived, I tried waltzing him into the bedroom, but he dawdled in the living room. His eyes tracked the machine’s planned path from its start.

He turned toward me. “How does it end?” I was too aware of whatever my face was doing. Was I acting strange? Mean? Needy?

“I don’t know,” I said.

He nodded at the machine’s sprawl. “At this rate, it’ll eat you alive.”

I frowned, but he was entranced by the machine. “This must’ve taken you a ton of work.”

Making my machine didn’t feel like work to me. It was just something I had to do, had to get right.

Moving to show him the pitcher problem, I tripped over the rat cage next to the particle board with unsteady pieces, and though I caught myself quickly, I felt idiotic. I set the bouncy ball atop the incline and we watched it roll down to knock the pitcher. As usual, it poured less than I wanted.

“It’s still half-empty,” I said, pointing to the partially-tilted pitcher.

“Maybe it’s half-full,” he said.

“What? No.” I looked back and forth, touched the hook the pitcher turned on. “The problem isn’t the glass, it’s the pitcher, I—” The corners of his lips turned up just a little. “Oh.” I raised my hands to my cheeks and they were warm.

Boy #53 squatted by the couch to open his backpack. I warned him, “Oh, I wouldn’t. That’s the rat’s territory.”

He shrugged, continued rummaging. “Rats are a part of life. You just gotta get him to pay rent.” He found whatever he was searching for and cupped it. “Come here. I have a gift.”

I walked over to join him. “Close your eyes and hold out your hands,” he said.

I shook my head. “I’m the eyes-open type.”

He placed a smooth sphere in my outstretched hands. It was heavy, cool to the touch. I traced my fingertips over its orange surface, turned it slowly. A billiards ball. I sensed his eyes on me, gauging my reaction. He pointed to the thirteen on it. “I brought you bad luck.” I opened and closed my mouth like a stupid guppy. He continued, “Maybe it’ll be heavy enough for the pitcher.”

He half-stepped toward my machine. “Can we try?”

I was unused to people requesting permission. It was easier when they didn’t. “It’s not that simple, fixing things.”

“I’m a patient guy,” he said, moving another step nearer to the machine. I took one too. I could swear a few dominoes wobbled.

“It might be unfixable.” We moved closer in tandem, marionette limbs tied to the same string. “I know it won’t work.”

“How do you know if you won’t let me try?” Another step. Our footfalls were sure to make the particle board buckle. Collapse.

“You don’t think I’ve tried?” The church nearby began its chiming. The grates over my windows let in slices of sunrise. “It won’t work,” I said loudly. I only meant to speak over the bells, but it came out several registers too high. It was jarring. He stepped back, I stepped forward. If we were anywhere else, we would’ve been dancing, hips mere centimeters from the particle board. If he wasn’t careful, the board would cave in. The whole machine would come crashing down. I couldn’t take that. I just couldn’t. I wanted him out of the way. Where was the rat when you needed him most? I quieted my voice and reached for the ball. “It won’t work.” He stepped back, I stepped—

I couldn’t say which happened first. They felt simultaneous. He reached over the cage on top of which I stored the parts I hadn’t yet integrated, and at the same time, I pushed him. Hard. He was taller than me and didn’t fall, but he stumbled back, his head slamming into the wall. After his shoes squeaked against the hardwood, there was a long, long silence. He didn’t break eye contact. He refused to look away as he completed the motion he started, showing me I misjudged the arc of his arm. He set the ball down gently on the cage. It made no sound.

I was suddenly desperate, reaching out for his forearm, “I didn’t mean—” and clutching his sleeve, “I thought you were going to—”

He’d meant to leave the ball for me to solve the pitcher problem on my own.

I tried to catch his hand, stop him from leaving, but he moved aside. He spoke to me how you’d speak to a little kid, low, too- calm. He said he was gonna go.

And then he walked out.

That fucking rat. I’d never been angrier at anything in my entire life. I was on my knees behind the couch searching out its nest before the door slammed behind Boy #53. When I found it, I’d destroy it. Dump bleach on the shredded bags and hair strands it curled into at night. Smash it. Leave no home to return to. It was the rat’s fault I came back from the beach on edge and visited the good deli. I ran my fingers along the floor trim feeling for holes. It was the rat’s fault I had to store the cage there so close, hence the confusion of Boy #53 not threatening the machine like I’d thought. My fingertips’ frantic journey around the floor seam returned only dust and splinters.

Standing offered a better vantage point. Seeing the machine in its entirety, I understood how fragile it really was. The slightest wind would decimate the dominoes and a minuscule nudge would spill the water and the tiniest floor tremor would scatter the marbles and the balloon knife could easily slip and any teeth could rip the cardboard tubes to slivers and any bump would warp the strings the buckets rested on and the tracks I laid were unstable toys and the miniature cars were constantly liable to roll away and everything I built could be destroyed so quickly and I knew one thing for certain: I needed to kill that rat.

I called the exterminator. I called nine exterminators. I left messages that made no sense.

“I need somebody who’s okay with killing.”

“I can’t get it far enough away.”

“I’m a special case. Don’t want somebody ordinary.”

“My place has a precious thing; you need to be careful.”

“It’s urgent.”

“Are your guys careful?”

“I need it gone.”

“Send me someone careful.”

“Somebody help me?”

“Call me back. Call me back. Call me back. Call me back. Call me back. Call me back as soon as you get this message.”

I threw my phone down. I had to be practical. My first concern was guaranteeing the machine’s safety. Who knew if they’d send somebody careful. I needed to defend it myself. I hustled to the dollar store and bought nineteen plastic laundry baskets. I grunted and sweated hoisting the stack of them upstairs. None of the exterminators had called back. They would soon. I grabbed scissors to cut two sides off each basket to make a protective tunnel covering the machine. My scissors weren’t strong enough to saw through plastic. I walked to the hardware store. I came back with scissors strong enough to saw through plastic. I set to work.

I stared at the neon baskets so long my vision warped. The room was uber-bright. Sickly bright. My apartment was covered in the rainbow blind spots you get from staring at a light too long. I slashed the laundry baskets with increasing speed. The washing machine in the basement churned and the old building creaked as it settled and the sirens wailed toward the hospital twenty blocks away: I could hear everything. I felt powerful, like those women who get super-strength when their kids are in danger, who flip trucks barehanded and pry their babies free. My hands pulsed and itched. It was energizing to have a singular purpose. I finished cutting baskets and got to my feet. Now no one could knock over my machine, not the exterminators if they ever called back, not the boys who came over, and certainly not the rat.

I had to hurry. The exterminators would call back soon and my machine had to be safe. I raised a basket a few feet above a domino section and carefully, so carefully, lowered it, creating shelter, then another basket for another area, this time higher, lowering it slower over the pulley part, then another over the seesaw section, the safe structure covering most by now, another basket shielding the machine, though I had to speed up before the exterminators arrived, so I put down another basket, was almost done, placed another basket, covered another section, one more basket, another, I grabbed the second-to-last basket and held it tight in my hands ready to cover the pitcher problem which, yes, the pool ball seemed like it’d solve when I had the time for testing and I lowered it bit by bit over the machine and then—

And then, such a little thing, the basket’s jagged edge brushed a marble on the way down. And the machine started to fall. The dominoes chased each other. The levers flipped. The hatches swung closed. The seesaws clattered. The machine had been hit in the center, so it fell in two directions, from the inside out, like two velvet curtains. The pitcher poured and halfway filled the cup. The bouncy balls hurtled down their slopes and pinged off the walls. The miniature cars rolled away. The knife lunged blindly. The pulleys released. It was all over in a minute.

I sat surrounded by my shattered machine and waited for the rat. It took hours to come back. The sky darkened outside, then got light again. My sit bones went numb. I tried counting how many days it’d been since I’d slept. I wanted the rat to come back so I could kill it for good. Also, I thought I might be lonely.

When the rat returned, it slipped under the door like its bones were liquified and, once inside, cocked its head at me. It walked right into the cage. I hadn’t even set the peanut butter trap. I stuffed the cage in the gift box and took the subway to Pier 11 on Wall Street. There was a ferry that looped between the docks and IKEA, and it was free on weekends. I stood waiting to board the ferry, clasping the box to my chest. Inside, the rat was still. I shuffled forward with the line.

My plan was to leave the rat in IKEA. It needed a real home, and maybe somewhere in that legion of cushions and curtains and lights it could find one. But edging closer to the ferry’s entrance, trying not to bump into anybody, I realized the stupidity of my idea. It was futile. The rat would just keep coming back. If I wanted it gone, I’d have to kill it myself.

We boarded the ferry and I headed for the outside deck portion even though it was freezing and the water smelled putrid and the wind whipped my hair in my eyes and it stung. I perched the box on the railing for inspection. All the glitter had rubbed off in the course of my many trips. The once-crisp edges had worn down, exposing the pulpy cardboard underneath. It was covered in dings and scratches.

A loudspeaker announcement crackled. I turned to face the direction the voice came from, though the speaker was clearly inside. I could see him through the tinted window. A skinny guy with pockmarked skin and an utter lack of interest in his own spiel.

“Floatation devices are stored and available for your safety,” he said, pointing lazily at the windows where it was clear the floatation devices were not stored. I stared at his curly hair, the way he shifted from foot to foot. If I wanted to, I could’ve taken him home with me. It wouldn’t have taken much. I could’ve made a joke about life jackets and needing somebody to save me. Mouth-to-mouth. Etc. I watched the idle flex of his jaw as he ran through safety policies. I could’ve fucked him. It would’ve been easy. I turned my back on the cabin and looked out over the water.

The metal railing had triangle patterns. I hooked my pinky around a vertex. It reminded me of something someone, Boy #14 or #32, maybe, once said. I was describing a house of cards I saw in a store window, how it stressed me out. If I were going to make one, I said, I’d tape the apexes together for a stable hinge.

Whoever it was, he laughed so hard that little spittle projectiles flew from his mouth. He kept choking with each inhale until he finally got out the words: “That doesn’t count.”

I wanted to know why. He was laughing, but I was dead serious.

By then he was pounding his fist on the bar like a cartoon character. “Because the whole point is that it might fall.”

I looked around the ferry. Inside its cage, the rat wriggled a little, causing the box to bump gently against my arm. The only others outside in the weather with me were a little boy and his shih tzu. He had a package of green votive candles, probably something his parents hoped to return, and he was rolling them across the deck for the dog to chase. The boy pitched candles left, right. The dog pounced again and again, wild, thrilled. I felt the rat nuzzling the box’s inside corners. The candles the dog had already caught and abandoned littered the deck like lily pads.

The ferry trundled toward the docks where customers stood laden with hefty blue bags and creased mouths. The bored guy got back on the speakers to drone instructions for safe disembarkation. The water below was choppy and gray and seemed so far away. The other passengers shouldered their bags and trudged toward the ferry doors. The deck where I stood was nearly deserted now and the cabin was rapidly emptying. The metal railing was cold against my forearms. I had never been good at getting rid of things.

I felt something wet and looked down to see the dog nosing my ankles. It looked up at me and its smushed face was ugly-charming, like a snooty little Persian cat.

The cat in Stuart Little has a similar face. I just re-watched it. The Persian initially hates that Stuart is his master, but near the movie’s end he comes around. He even saves Stuart when he’s threatened by some cats perched in a tree overhanging a lake. He breaks off the branch holding the rival cats and they plummet, yelping, into the water.

“Just doggy-paddle!” an enemy cat calls to one of his comrades.

“Doggy-paddle?” the other cat cries. “I’d rather drown!”

What a stupid line. I love it so much. I bet the screenwriters who thought it up pissed themselves laughing, that they play-punched each other over such a complete eye-roller. Maybe one held the script in the air and yelled, “I went to film school for this?” and everybody fell out of their chairs laughing. Imagining it made my eyes well up, it made it hard to swallow, it made me start to cry.