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“—which is completely understandable, but—”
         “Oh.”
         “What is it?”
         “Oh, nothing. Go on.”
         A fly has just landed in my bouillabaisse at the Café de la Rose Blanche. I dip the spoon as if nothing is amiss, but the fly is content to die among the garlicy shrimp and mussels of my appetizer. I try casually scooping it from the broth but it drains off my spoon and sinks beneath a bay leaf. In the spot where it once was, a tiny bubble pops. My stomach roils.
         “You know what I’m saying?” Lisa prompts.
         “Oh yes, completely.”
         “I don’t think you’re listening.”
         Groping for words, I study her. We’ve been dating for a month-and-a-half and her boldness continues to surprise me. Sometimes I’m not sure whether it is an attractive or unattractive quality.
         “You’re right,” I confess. “Sorry. Start over, would you?”
         The waiter arrives and takes her empty bowl.
         “Still working on yours, monsieur?”
         I sit far back in my chair and raise both hands. “No, thank you.”
         “Is it not to your satisfaction?”
         Lisa says, “You haven’t touched your shellfish.”
         “It’s great,” I tell my two accusers, “but I won’t have room for my main course if I finish this. Perhaps you could put it in a to-go cup. Would that be strange?”
         “A to-go . . . ?”
         “Yes, I take home.”
         “Ah, oui, okay.”
         Our wine glasses are refilled and I drink mine as though parched. The waiter carries my soup away.
         “Are you all right?” says Lisa.
         “Yes.” I shrug, as if to say, ‘What more do you want from me?’ “Yes,” I insist.
         “Okay. So as I was saying . . .”

Sometimes I wonder if I have sociopathic tendencies. Lisa and I are on her couch, her tongue in my mouth one minute, mine in hers the next, and then like a switch I am mentally and physically losing interest. Thinking, Why?
         Why do this? We’re not country kids in a backseat. We’re single young professionals in a high-octane city. And we’re pushing it on the young part. There’s no longer the sense that you have all the time in the world to waste, no longer the sense that the time for real work is far off and you’ll be ready for it by the time it comes.
         No, everything leading up to now has been fleeting.
         I detach from her mouth and hold her by the shoulders.
         She’s put on light jazz, something I would never listen to on my own, but I don’t find it offensive any more than she finds my Bob Dylan offensive, which is to say not at all—I like Lisa’s music and she likes mine. Nadine and I never saw eye-to-eye on our musical preferences, and it was part of what killed us.
         “What’s up with you, Rich?”
         “What do you mean? Nothing.”
         She slips a tiny remote off the coffee table and kills the jazz. “Granted I don’t know you that well yet,” she says solicitously, “but I can tell there is something off.”
         “I don’t know.” I search for something honest to tell her; she always seems to respond well to honest confession. The silence of her apartment pressing down. We can hear car horns on the street far below. An ambulance siren wails. “I think that French food was off.”
         “I feel fine.”
         I clutch my stomach. “No. I don’t feel good.”
         “I feel fine. I thought you liked your food.”
         “It was good.” I think about that fly and how as we speak it’s cooling in her fridge at the bottom of a Styrofoam to-go bowl. I wriggle away from her. “Ugh. I’m sorry. I think I need to use the restroom.”
         “You know where it is.”
         It started out a convenient excuse for my behaviour—this mysterious nausea—but now that I’ve invited it in and cleared it a space it rushes inside of me like a hungry ravager. In some solaced fraction of my mind I am proud to note that I don’t feel good was the most honest thing I could have told her.
         Oh, the stabbing pain. I clench as I mince to the toilet.
         I know she can hear me. The walls are too thin, the fan isn’t loud enough, and she’s shut off the music. I cling to the toilet like a weathered tree to rock, every muscle in my body a tense gripping root, and relax my sphincter to a degree that will allow the gentlest of passage.
         No use. My contorted face unspins into a mask of shocked violation; wide-eyed and slack-jawed I am debased as the demon rips through me and a cold waterbomb explodes hard against my bare ass and retracting testicles.
         The jazz music recommences.
         “I’m sorry,” I whisper to I know not who as another wash descends. I am burning from the inside out, my forehead shining with sweat. I peel off my shirt, not too mindful of the buttons, and drop it at my feet.
         This foul thing is not yet done with me, but I wipe once, reach back and flush. The toilet gargles my offerings. The whirlpool spins and spins and dies and the tide rises. I look down between my legs.
         “Oh, my God.” I leap to my feet, nearly tripping over the pants wrapped round my ankles. My mess rises to the lip of the toilet bowl and pauses, shudders there as if considering its options. “Oh, Jesus.”
         Slowly it begins to drain as another cramp wracks my body. I consider using the bathtub, but at the last possible second I determine that the toilet water has reached an acceptable depth for use, and I turn and fall back to it and sigh in relief. I barely even notice the splash back.
         Evidentially there’ll be no early flushings. I am slave to this thing that has taken me over. I am a second-hand observer to a horror movie where the only respite is to shield my eyes and view the proceedings through splayed fingers.
         I want to die. If that’s what’s going to happen—death—let it happen now.
         But then Lisa would have to find me like this. No. Let me live, then. And my God, let the toilet flush.
         With the squirt of my next gaseous push I sense a certain finality. Yes. Yes, even my body temperature is returning to normal. Whatever demon beset me has passed, been vanquished as with all the ceremony its unheralded little visit demanded.
         There is no telling how long I sit in devout wait upon the toilet, pale face in hot hands, praying.
         A tap at the door and I am jerked to sudden life.
         “Rich, are you okay?”
         All right. We may have been dating for only a month and a half, but I know she is not some shallow wench. One of the things I like best about her is her empathy and compassion.
         “I’ve been very sick.”
         “I can tell. Are you okay now?”
         “I think so.” I assess the tepid pool of filth swimming just inches underneath me. But I’m concerned the toilet won’t flush. No. Do you have a plunger? Hell, no. Is your toilet prone to clogging? Because . . .
         “Can I get you anything? Some Imodium or Pepto?”
         “I think I’m fine now.” In the following silence I quickly add, “Thank you, sweetheart.” I’ve never called her that before and the term has left a gluey residue in my cheeks.
         “Okay.”
         Warn her about the toilet.
         “Hey, Rich?”
         “Mhm?”
         “. . . I’m sorry you got sick. I’ll leave you alone.”
         Tell her now.
         A minute goes by, and another. I wipe delicately. I fold up thick wads and dab-dry my hindquarters and stuff the soiled paper into the wastebasket. As long as this flush takes, I’ll pinch the wads back out and flush them away in small sections.
         I’m on my feet and I put my shirt back on. “Be good to me.” The water in the bowl has drained relatively low and there is some moderate room left for mischance. I take a deep putrid breath and flush as I exhale.