Mark had a healthy appetite. He really knew how to cook. On a good night he would wander into a dinner party and charm your shirt off. He liked to tell stories. He liked to delight. He wanted to be watched. He was a charmer, a boy’s boy. He had a nasty cut. Mark had a problem. He read strange books. He had a few too many. He had a good time. He had an eye for art and an ear for tongues. He had a few drinks, a few pink parts.

Randi was a nice girl with a less than rosy life. She had color in her cheeks. She didn’t have to lie. She didn’t want a suitor with a bouffant. She wanted a big house. She wanted the best. She wanted a red-blooded, blue-eyed heir. A guy with a stable, a member of the club. He came for her in the afternoon. He stopped the earth. Randi wanted to linger, but she couldn’t take him home. He would have liked to have seen her true colors. She brushed him off and walked alone along the train tracks.

Would you ever date a rich guy? Randi asked one night, pouting in a crowded club without a man. Mark said,

Tell me everything, slurring all his consonants. (He pretended not to know the things he knew.) At night, in their separate rooms, in the separate cities of their minds, each wondered how it felt to be a fox.

Those hunters, did they . . . Mark and Randi were a kind of bait. They lay in wait. They laid in the cut in the thick of night. They were cunning and quick. They were nimble and sly. They each had a plan and a mask and a hunger. All this, and a pink shirt.