In his brief and somewhat unsatisfying moment of orgasm, Ed Walsch's desperate thrusting caused his lover's middle-aged ass to bump into the dresser with such force that the scant items resting atop it were thrown off their usual, dutiful stances and upset like annoyed guests at a cocktail party. Snapped forth from a testosterone-fueled stupor by the sound of breaking glass, Ed halted, looked over Diana's moist, hair-plastered shoulder, and then pulled himself out of her with an unpleasant squelch. He ignored her confused look, side-stepped her wide hips and untoned arms, and examined the damage. The overturned water glass was probably the culprit of the sound, but on further inspection it was whole, just on its side. He began to right the few knick-knacks and cheap plastic photo frames until his hands rested on the only thing that looked as if it was worth any money in his whole flat—a brilliant black volcanic glass frame, which was tipped crudely onto its front, toppled over onto the bronzed bullet casing someone had pressed into his hand after his father's twenty-one gun salute. The bullet had caught the glass just wrong, and when Ed tipped the frame back up, the glass was broken, spidered into a dozen shards.

His own face, only three years younger but seeming a dozen, had escaped any harm. The three other pairs of brown eyes in the photo were slashed, licked as if by lightning of God.

Ed half turned toward Diana, who was still panting with pinked cheeks from their pseudo-passionate fuck. “Go, please.”

They usually hesitated when he asked them to leave—waiting longer according to the length of their relationship facade—but Diana just pinked further, flared her nostrils and grabbed her clothes unceremoniously. He didn't watch her slam the door.

Only for a moment did Ed abandon the photo, long enough to find some Scotch tape. For the rest of the evening it was in his calloused hands, the thumbs of which ran repeatedly over the smiling faces, smoothing the tape until it was practically part of the glass.