Megan looked ill. Or drunk. There was an odd bluish tint to her skin. But her eyes were brimming with a bestial fury I had never seen before. She meant business. The strawberry curls that I used to admire dangling along her cheeks were soaked and matted to her scalp. Her clothes were drenched as well, like she just jumped in a lake.

I looked down at Darwin and didn't like the way he was craning his head towards me (when had I last fed him?), so I set him down on the sheets and watched him drag his whip-like tail across the bed to my nightstand, knocking over an empty jar of Vaseline. I turned off the stereo.

Megan was silent. She just stood there looking like she wanted to bite the heads off of a dozen chickens. She shot a hard glance at Darwin, picturing him, I think, skewered over a bed of hot coals. Never had she looked so angry. What could possibly have driven her into such a frenzy? Was it something I did? Did she lose her lovely job at the TV station that she had worked so hard at when we were going out? I wanted to know. I decided to say something to crack the concrete silence between us.

"Is it raining?"

Megan's eyes widened into two shiny white orbs, like turtles eggs, bulls-eyed by her icy-blue irises. Her lips wiggled away from her teeth like lizards.

"God damned you!" she screamed.

"Whaddidoo?" I stammered, picking through the footlocker of my mind for some memory fragment that might help me piece together why she was so enraged. I fell back onto my bed and yanked a pillow over my waist.

"Don't lie to me, you shit. You asshole. This was the final straw." She pointed to her drenched, disheveled state. "My bathroom is ruined, my car's wrecked, my career may be over. Is this what you wanted?" she asked rhetorically. "You've been torturing me, Peter. And now I'm...I'm gonna..." Then she broke apart. Megan collapsed onto her knees, falling back against the wall like a discarded Raggedy Ann doll, and then let go with deep, lung-stretching sobs as if someone had been holding her head under the water for the last three minutes. It seemed she had prepared some kind of climax; some intricate soliloquy that she was going to deliver once she kicked in my door. For a moment I thought it was unfortunate that I would not get to hear the whole teary thing. I was taking a devilish pleasure from seeing her this way, though I could never show it.

To be honest, I was extremely glad that she had come. Furious or no, just having her back in my room after six agonizing months was like a dream come true. I had been terribly lonely since she left. My life had basically jumped off its tracks.

I lost my permanent job as the manager of an Avis Rent-a-Car store down on Gladstone Avenue. I guess I let the place go to hell. There was money unaccounted for (I didn't steal it, maybe one of the cleaning guys did, I don't know), we ran out of brochures and I forgot to restock them (Big fucking deal. I mean, they were useless anyway, no one ever took them because they thought they'd need the information. They always took them because they were there. It was just a big waste of paper), and the regional manager paid us a surprise visit one day while my two assistants and I were smoking dope in the back of a sky-blue Pontiac Grand Am.

So now I work temp a couple of days a week. I basically go into this dreary office filled with chain-smoking, overweight secretaries and build callouses on my fingertips from pushing the print button on the Xerox machine. It's kind of miserable, but I get $6.25 an hour.

But maybe things were going to get better. Megan was back. I just had to be very careful handling her, as if diffusing a bomb. I grabbed a pair of blue boxers strewn on the floor, slipped them on and moved close to her. I put my hand on her shoulder and she recoiled slightly. She looked like one of those pictures of tattered street gamins occasionally seen in advertisements in liberal news magazines.

She looked defeated. And beautiful. Something stirred deep within me, some feral beast driven mad by the release of potent juices into my bloodstream. Just the image of her, fetal on the floor of my room, opened the sluices with such vigor that restraint was hopeless. I inhaled a small cloud of her moist and sweet scent - a mixture of perspiration, Chanel and puddle water - and moved close to kiss her.

She wrenched herself away from me and rose up, having found a new well-spring of strength. Then she was standing over me, fists balled into little hammers pressed into her sides. Her earnest breasts loomed over me like Capitol domes. My veins became foamy tunnels of gonadotropical surf.

"I can't fucking believe you!" she roared. Like Alice just after the magic of the mushroom wore off, she seemed to grow before my eyes, swelling to such proportions that for a moment her body seemed too big for the room. I cowered within the shadow of dominance cast by her figure. "I know it was you, Peter. I fucking know it like I know my own mother. I came here because I want you to know that I'm going to make you pay. I don't know how, but I will. I'm going to find a way to get back at you for all of this. I'll get my dad involved." The last comment took me off guard it was so ridiculous. She seemed to regret saying it, and I took strength from her error.

Her dad was a lawyer who worked in titles: land claims, that sort of thing. Throughout the time we had been going out he took little interest in our relationship. He'd given up, he said, trying to understand our generation with our MTV, drug addictions and renouncement of a good education. Even if she could convince him I was guilty, he'd probably figure all this stuff was just part of the typical shenanigans that kids did these days. I knew, and she knew, he wouldn't get involved.

"Megan, what are you talking about?" I said in my best innocence-dipped voice. "Would you please calm down and explain what's going on? I've never seen you so insane." This seemed to affect her. I could see that some of the knots in her muscles loosened. My voice softened to a cottony whisper, "Megan, sit down, please, just for a moment. Please, just assume I wasn't involved and tell me what happened."

I didn't move to touch her, but opened my palms as if to prove to her that I was unarmed. My forehead crumpled into many ridges and valleys of compassion and understanding. The blaze in her eyes subsided and she slumped into one of the cushioned wicker chairs, usually piled high with dirty laundry, that I keep by the door. She motioned to cross her legs, but stopped and crossed her arms tightly instead. Then she spoke in a choking, unsteady voice, looking down at the floor.

"Three weeks ago, I went out to my car to drive to work. I was late for a story shoot, so I didn't notice that all the tires had been punctured. But that didn't really matter because as I pulled out of the driveway, my car stopped. Just stopped dead like someone shot it. I had no idea what it was, so I called a tow truck out. I missed the story, and when I talked to the guy at the station that night," here she paused and her eyes glared at me; I could see the fire getting stoked. Her mouth tightened with bitterness, "he said that someone had poured sugar in the gas tank."

My eyebrows leapt like grasshoppers. I knew how much she loved her little car. It was her prized possession. We even had an argument a month or two before we broke up where, during one of our long drives, she had refused to let me drive it. At the time, I was pissed.

"But that's just the beginning." she continued, holding me in her tight gaze, aware, I think, of every quiver and shift of my body. She tried not too show it, but she was searching me, frisking my eyes for some peg of evidence on which to hang her conviction. She didn't need much because she was very nearly convinced I'd been involved in this frightful treachery.

Behind her, the door was still ajar, and a brown, furry snout pushed its way into the crack, delivering a few curious sniffs before it disappeared. I quickly got up and shut the door.

She continued, "The night after I got my car fixed, David was over, and we were just hanging out in the TV room watching a movie. There was a noise outside like someone was prowling around, and I was so scared because of what happened to the car, I asked David to go look and see. Whoever was there had been watching, because as soon as David walked out the door, all the lights went out and the window behind the TV was thrown open. Something was tossed in the room, but I had no idea what, until David came rushing back in and found the fuse box. When the lights came on, the whole floor was crawling with roaches, big black ones. Huge, awful, crawling, disgusting beetles. Oh, God, it was so horrible."

Megan hated bugs worse than any woman I'd ever met. I mean, I've never really met a woman who actually liked bugs, but for Megan, they were a curse. We used to spend many of our weekends together camping in the Shenandoah forest, pitching the tent beside a stream and hiking tall peaks during the day. But she was never without her repellent. And any time we'd come across some big insect, she would cringe from it like we'd stumbled upon the devil himself. A room full of roaches. That must have been just terrifying.

Megan seemed to be more composed now. She had this uncanny ability to change her emotions as if they were underwear. Her skills as a stand-up TV reporter were seeping back into her, giving her the courage and distance to finish telling me what happened.

"I screamed and ran out of the house and stayed out for hours, just walking alone in the street. David spent the time killing them and getting them out of the house. I just thank God that David was there." I'm not sure if she added this last sentence just to gore me or not. The mention of the name David pierced me with stings of jealousy. I remembered the first time I met the guy, Megan's old and current boyfriend.

She and I went to watch the new Schwartzenegger film that I wanted desperately to see. She hated him, Schwartzenegger, that is. She thought he was an arrogant, muscle bound German Nazi. I told her he was Austrian, not German, but she said there wasn't any difference. I told her there was a big difference, and proceeded to explain it to her. But as usual, she didn't get it. She then said something about how all his films have no plot, just ridiculous action for men with over-active adrenal glands. No plot? I demanded. Did you see Twins? Or Kindergarten Cop? Those had plenty of plot. What did you expect, Our Town with Arnie?

The argument lasted probably an our or two, like many of our petty squabbles. Once we kept the bitter talk going for almost two days over a bottle of spaghetti sauce. She wanted some chic bottle of stuff imported direct from Italy, and said she wouldn't eat Ragu, which was on sale. But since we were splitting the cost of the groceries we were buying for dinner, I said I wouldn't pay $3.00 for a lousy bottle of spaghetti sauce. What the hell difference does it make? I demanded. She told me I had no taste, that I was a slave to commercial culture and, besides that, I was stingy. I told her she was a spoiled daddy's girl who always got what she wanted by whining long enough for it, and that I didn't like to be held hostage to her expensive tastes.

Sometimes this was the sum of our relationship, these arguments. Oh, there were tender moments, like the cozy winter evenings at my parent's cabin in Snowmass. We would snuggle next to the fire, listening to the crackle of crisp logs being consumed in flame and inhaling the sweetness of our love for each other that hung like incense in the air. But more often we'd face each other like two medieval warlords bent on destroying the other in a bloody match without rules. Many times in the heat of argument, I hated her so much I wanted to tear her apart with my teeth, to rip her to shreds like a rabid cur who just got hold of a tender white rabbit.

I think about it now with a curious fondness. There is something about this kind of savage loathing that really brings people together.

I digress. Let me get back to David. Megan and I were waiting for the start of the Schwartzenegger movie, sitting comfortable in the third row. Megan was on the aisle. We were holding hands and munching popcorn when she quickly slid her hand out of mine. I didn't think anything of it. Maybe she had an itch. Then this guy walks by, tall and blond, but with a quirkiness to his face, like it was slightly of kilter or something, that made him look goofy. Megan first noticed him coming down the aisle and as he walked by, she called out to him. He looked past me without any acknowledgment and when his eyes settled on Megan, they took on a warm familiarity that was almost brotherly.

"Hey, look who's here. Megan, how've you been?"

"Oh, just great, David. It's so good to see you," she said her voice saccharine and drippy.

"Yeah, you too. What've you been up to?"

"Oh, working mostly. I've been very busy at the station. It's been so hectic lately." She jogged her eyes a little bit in that you-know-how-it-is way. They continued to talk over me as if I were a coffee table or a napping dog. My head went back and forth, blandly following the conversation like I was watching a tennis match. I held a foolish grin on my lips.

I try not to give much thought to what it was she saw in him. I've done that before with other guys and it usually leads me to conduct painful personal inventories that promote my already shaky self-confidence. I've spent a lot of time, however, trying to figure out what it was I saw in her.

In beauty, wit, talent, and grace, she wasn't at all extraordinary. Nor, for that matter, am I. But while in some cases I may put on an arrogance as if I possess a surplus of these qualities, she always maintained a cold confidence in herself. To her, there were no question she was all of these things. I think the difference is key to understanding what destroyed us. Arrogance is a sort of weed rooted in the soil of insecurity. The arrogant person knows deep down that he's weak, and so has to exaggerate himself to conceal the fact. But her unbridled confidence was another thing. It was rooted in self-delusion. She honestly believed that she possessed these qualities, despite the fact that she had never accomplished anything worthy of mention to show that she did. I always wonder which one is worse. In my arrogance, I was lying to others. In her reckless confidence, she was lying to herself.

She had that confident look about her now, and it annoyed me. I got up to put Darwin back in his cage as she went on with her story. As I was sitting back down, I absently snatched a fountain pen off the nightstand and twirled it in my fingers.

"Two days after the beetles, a package came in the mail addressed to me. It had a return address on it from Connecticut, but no name, so I figured it was from Tabby." (Tabby was one of Megan's former sorority sisters who danced in Hartford with some artsy-fartsy local troop. I never liked Tabby, or Tabitha, as she like to be called now that she considered herself professional. But the two of them occasionally sent gifts to one another.) I waited until after dinner to open it, and when I did..." Poor Megan's throat seemed to fill with bilious dread. The memory had obviously already been suppressed and bringing it back was like trying to pry a nail from a two by four with your fingers.

"What? What was in it? Megan?"

"Some kind of explosion," she uttered feebly. "It blew up and covered me with...with a horrible, horrible goo. I don't know what was in it. It was disgusting. All over me. Thick with...shit, I think. Dog shit or something like that. And blue ink. All sticky. It was like the whole thing had been made from a...a recipe." Megan pinched her eyes shut like feeding sea anenomies and then succumbed to convulsions of sorrow. She sat there for a minute, letting go with quiet little snorts. But now I knew why her face had that odd bluish color. I bent closer to her skin and could see that in areas it looked chaffed, almost raw, like it had been continuously scrubbed.

"Oh, Megan, who could do such a thing? Who could hate you so much?" I begged to know.

"I thought it was you. I thought you hated me that much. After we broke up, after you found that I was..." she didn't finish the sentence, but oh, how I wanted her to. What! After what? I thought. After you jumped into the sack with your high school sweetheart? And another old boyfriend and God knows who else? After you lied incessantly to me when I would ask if you've been disloyal, looking up at me with your pathetic, fraudulent smile, and then getting upset with me because I dared push the questioning further, as if you were the victim of some wretched interrogator? You bitch. You lying, miserable, cold, self-satisfying slut.

"I am so sorry." I said. "But you got to believe me. I would never do anything to hurt you. I'm still crazy about you, Meg. I 've slept hardly a Z since we split and when I do, I dream about you."

I knew I sounded desperately foolish, but I wanted to shake her loose. I wanted to drive her back into tears. I didn't like the way she had shored up her emotions and seemed to put them away in cold storage. She kept that reporter's steeliness about her. I inched my face closer to hers and peered fondly into her discerning eyes, "Megan, I love you."

How to describe the expression that snuck across her face at that moment? There was a grimness to her lips, her nose twitched slightly as if checking for the faint foul odor of lies, and her eyes searched me like two lanterns, plumbing the depth of my resolve. I knew that the power game had come to a head. This was fourth and goal with two seconds on the clock. One play left. If I blew it now, I would lose her forever.

Looking humbly down at my feet I said, "I know we've had it tough. I know we don't always get along that well. But, when we get along, those are the happiest moments in my life. This whole terrible thing that happened to you, I'm sick that it happened. But I'm glad it has brought us together again. Maybe we can put our heads together and figure out who it was, who could do such a shitty thing to you." A thin smile of pained understanding sliced across my face. "Megan," I asked, "How bout it?" Then my fingers slipped and sent the fountain pen spinning to the floor where it cracked and began to ooze dark blue blood. I plucked it up quickly and began wiping the mess, spreading the blueness around in a small oval, like a face.

Her next words were eerily calm, spoken in a tone one might use to read the ingredients off the side of a box of Cheerios. "Goodbye, Peter," she said, and then walked out the door leaving it standing wide open, like my mouth.

A month and a half later I was lying on my bed half asleep, listening to Darwin eat his dinner. I could hear the juicy crunch of a black carapace being chewed. The phone rang. My friend Erik was on the other line, and his voiced sounded thin and strained, like a rubber band pulled to its peak of tension. "Pete, man, meet me for a drink."

"E, it's two in the morning, what's up?" I said groggily.

"The bitch dumped me, man. She was over tonight, told me she cheated on me and then she just got up and left. I'm miserable. Come on, come get drunk with me." He had already had some drink, I could tell. His words kind of stuck together.

"I don't get it. You guys were doing great. I was so jealous of you after Megan and I split. What the hell happened?"

"All I know is that I hate her and right now I really want to get back at her. I'll tell you about it over some JD."

"All right. I'll meet you in an hour at Pluto's."

"Cool." Click.

I slithered out of bed, snapped on the light and pulled on my jeans and T-shirt. It would only take me 20 minutes to get to the bar, and I was basically ready to go. But before I cruised out to my car, walking beneath the sparkling canopy of the night sky, I remembered something Megan had said. I sat down at my desk, took out a piece of paper and began to jot down a recipe.