The sky over Oakhaven was the color of a bruised plum. June sat on the porch of a trailer that leaned precariously to the left, watching a stray dog dig in the dirt. Her husband, Gary, was doing a five-year stretch in state prison for a botched robbery. He sent her a postcard once a month, usually with a smudge of grease on the corner and a promise that things would be different when he got out.

June didn't believe in "different." She believed in the price of eggs and the leak in the roof.

Lonnie came along in the third year. He was a mechanic at the local garage, a man whose fingernails were permanently stained black and whose breath always smelled of cheap beer and menthol cigarettes. He didn't offer her poetry; he offered to fix her water heater and to sleep in the bed that had grown too cold.

"I ain't much," Lonnie had said, leaning against his rusted truck. "But I'm here. And I can keep the lights on."

June said yes. It wasn't a romantic decision; it was a survival strategy.

For two years, they lived in a state of exhausted truce. Lonnie was a loud man, a man of sudden anger and sudden apologies. He didn't understand June's silence, and she didn't care for his noise. In the bedroom, he was clumsy and hurried, a stark contrast to the memory of Gary's intensity. She spent most nights staring at the water-stained ceiling, wondering if the loneliness had been better than this.

She began to hate the sound of his boots on the linoleum. She hated the way he chewed his food. She hated the way he looked at her—not as a woman, but as a piece of furniture that came with the trailer.

Then Gary came home. He had been paroled early for good behavior, though "good" was a relative term in Oakhaven.

He walked up the porch steps, his eyes scanning the scene with a slow, predatory precision. He saw Lonnie sitting in his chair, wearing his old flannel shirt.

Gary didn't start a fight. He didn't have to. He just stood there, a larger, harder version of the man June had once loved. He looked at Lonnie with a flicker of amusement, the way a wolf looks at a stray dog.

"You've been taking care of my things, I see," Gary said.

Lonnie stood up, trying to puff out his chest, but he looked small. He looked like a man who knew he was outclassed. He looked at June, hoping for a sign, a word, a gesture of loyalty.

June didn't look at him. She looked at Gary. She saw the same cruelty in Gary's eyes that she had seen in Lonnie's, just a more refined version of it.

"Get out, Lonnie," June said, her voice flat and devoid of emotion.

Lonnie left without his things. He didn't look back.

Gary stepped into the trailer and closed the door. He didn't hug her. He just went to the fridge, opened a beer, and told her that the roof still leaked. June sat back down on the porch, watching the dog in the dirt, realizing that the only difference between the two men was the brand of the cage they built for her.

*** Objective Tensor Code: [OTMES_v2: M1=7, N2=0.9, K1=0.7, TI=38.2, theta=270deg]