Nobody is hungry, but Nina cooks surplus pasta anyway.  Nina chops onion, and salad, pours vino.  Stirs pans, pours vino.  Sighs.  Sonny looks out across distant hills.  A hazy sky.  Tomorrow it will rain.  Probably.  Tomorrow, Sonny thinks, I will go.  Pack my bags, go abroad; Spain possibly, if I can find my passport.  But cannot stay, cannot stomach malicious gossip, nasty small-talk.  And now Nina knows.  Now his guts squirm.  His cock shrinks.

Food. Nina says.

Not hungry.

As you wish, says Nina and shrugs.  As you fucking wish.

Sorry.

That word.

Sorry.

Sorry for two small things.  Sorry I do not want pasta.  Sorry I was caught looking.

Not so sorry, thinks Nina, for abnormal cravings.  Not sorry to bring havoc to Nina’s world.  In outwardly lax administrations, such things flourish with abandon.  Sonny looks long at icons of dissipation; nothing is off limits to a thin bald man with roving digits.  His cock tics; paroxysm.

But browsing history rats him out.  Slipshod fool.

Only looking . . . No harm said Sonny. 

But shit hits fan.  Nina storms; ballistic.  A typhoon of crazy fury.  

Only looking?

Only a child.

Nymph in Sonny’s mind.  And asking for it.  A tantalizing nymph.  So many, many nymphs if truth is told.

That poor child. What harm man inflicts with his cranky cock.  Nina drinks.  Sonny sulks.  Nina cannot pardon him or acquit him of culpability.  Will not pardon him.  Will not acquit.  Who would?  You?

But this worm turns, from taciturn anguish at his own affliction, and sly incapacity for guilt, Sonny’s bastard mind distorts.  Pivots fault.

Nina.

Cold.

Harpy.

Old.

And frigid. 

Slamming doors, finding fault, carping on.  Antagonistic up-tight bitch.  His fist tics; a spasm. 

Nothing is normal now. 

Night falls.

Pasta grows cold in glass bowls.