44.

Toby’s half of the bedroom:

Posters of bikini-clad girls, muscle cars, muscle men, and Bud-weiser. A bed. A stereo. A weight bench.

Always grunting, the tink! and clank! of the barbells, the musky sweat, the wet flatulence, the phone calls to his meathead friends (the hookup is mercifully on his side).

She saw him naked sometimes. She tried not to look at the bobbing piece of flesh between his legs. It was out of place, a transplant. It didn’t belong.

He was a beast behind that curtain, all growls and breathing, his laughs like mouthfuls of mud, caveman-ing to his buddies, Huh huh huh, Uh-uh, Yup, Fuck, Nutsack, Rrrraaa, Feel the burn, Shit. He raged, slapped his skin with aftershave, slathered his hair with gel, made a swamp of the room. Strutted around in muscle shirts that read, Your birthday suit would look great on me.

McKenna’s half of the bedroom:

As sparse as a prison cell, exactly the way she liked it. Bare walls. A low bookshelf at the foot of the bed. A dresser, a portable radio, a dozen neatly arranged cassettes. She never competed with Toby’s stereo. She preferred her own thoughts. She had a window where she could sit and read with her feet propped on the same sill where she and Audrey, years ago, had made breath-faces on the glass. There was a desk with a typewriter, a digital clock, a basket for papers, and a reading lamp.

“Don’t you want some color in here?” Misty used to say. “You’ll go blind with blandness.” She giggled an actual giggle. Unreal coming out of her mouth, like if Snoodles giggled. “Don’t you have any interests, Mac? Decorations can show the world who you are.”

“I don’t need to hang my personality on a wall.”

“Certainly not.”

“Or hide it in the basement.”

“No!”

“Or wear it on my body. Big, disgusting bulges.”

“That’s not you.”

“Or in my pretty, pretty hair and eyeliner and pink dresses.”

“You’re absolutely right,” Misty nodded encouragingly. “But sweetheart, where do you keep it?”

McKenna scratched at a broken vein of wood on the underside of her desk.

“Mac?” Misty asked. “Inquiring minds want to know.”

Early 1990.