“You’re a murderer and a rapist, and there may be no hope for you,” Winnie says to Ryan on a rainy afternoon at the end of the story. “But if there is, I will find it. I will remake you.”

Ryan doesn’t reply. He didn’t know he was a murderer and a rapist until very recently, so there is nothing to say. Nothing except the obvious words: It was only because I loved you, but Winnie would probably respond to that by breaking his arm, so he does not say it.

Instead, he stares at the rain dripping through a broken place in the roof. They are in an old warehouse down by the river, a place he bought yesterday. He paid for it with a check from his leather-covered checkbook, probably the last one they will let him write.

After buying the building, Ryan took the bucket of ashes out of the trunk of his green Lexus. With a shaking hand, he scattered them everywhere, over the floors, the walls, the windowsills. The ash rose up in great billowing clouds, choking him, mingling with his tears to make a gritty paste that he licked off his lips.

And now, after everything, he and Winnie are both stretched out on a stained mattress that they found by the back door, drinking from a bottle of vodka with a torn label. She looks just as she did when he first met her, immense ass and too-tight tank-top and all. Gone are the gray silk suit, the perfect teeth, the vacant stare. Now she just is what she is, nothing more or less. She has won.

This is where the story ends, but it is not where it begins.

The story begins on Ryan Ceres’ 40th birthday.

Ryan Ceres’ birthday is the 40th anniversary of what has been, and promises to continue to be, a perfect life.

He is a real-estate developer. He drives a green Lexus and he listens to adult contemporary rock. His fingernails are manicured and his hair is the color of fresh honey. His eyes are as blue as the sun shining through ice.