Violetta didn't know. She had left, she had come back, she didn't know what to do. He had lost his appeal, yet the musky smell of his unshaven face in the morning was one of the many reminders of the years she had spent with him. The good years. She knew she couldn't erase them from her mind. The slightest reminder triggered her useless, as though she was constantly stuck in a nostalgic coma, inescapable of the past.

"No, no. No. I never, ever understood that. If Looper wanted to get Rex to notice her, she wouldn't have set his house on fire."

Laugh tracks in sitcoms never amused Violetta. So artificial, so robotic, she thought. She didn't even know why she was watching this rerun of "Crazy Girls", probably the worst of the worst, the scum of the sitcom. Modern television had taken away all of its dignity. These girls, wearing little more than nipple tassels and invisible skirts, what did they bring to society? Perhaps starting puberty for boys and lesbos early. That's about all. That scum.

Ted liked to watch sitcoms.

Ted was thirty four. His thick head of black hair was like a jungle, needing to be tamed each morning by three sturdy strokes of his pinewood comb. Pinewood always left a smell in his hair. Opening her eyes, Violetta smiled as she saw the familiar. A half naked Ted came out of the en suite, his body in the best shape it had ever been. "Breakfast at Jo's?"

The metallic taste was back. Blood across half of her face. No one would have guessed that a simple coffee pot could wreak so much havoc. Jo's wasn't an option anymore. Violetta just wanted the pain to go away.