He puts his finger in her face. That's good; that means he cares. About something. That's a fact she can use. He's angry; she likes that. "You should be taking better care of my baby," he says, and she pulls another face. "What's the point? I can't live with this level of stress, it's killing my baby anyway. I'm Dead Mom Walking." She laughs. Just tell me a fact, a single definite fact, a definitive thing I can know and fear and walk to the door holding it in my hands and say, "This is a leap."

"When am I going to end up in a landfill," she asks. She begs. For a fact. For some measure of control, of choice. He holds her life in his hand, and it's worse than dying. He gets in her face; he's angry, she likes that: "I haven't decided." He's back on top.

She shakes her head and pulls the gun out of the drawer, muzzle pointed at her abdomen, holding it out to him. Decide, now. Make a choice. Dead Mom Walking or Daredevil Girl. And somewhere in there she's thinking, "White lady's having a time!" She's thinking that sometimes when she acts out like this, when she screams loud enough, when she gets self-destructive and crazy enough, somebody relents. They laugh and say it was all pretend, life isn't really this bad. She's thinking, what does she have to do to scare him badly enough that he'll love her again. She thinks there's a thing she can do. If she didn't, she'd already be dead. Houdini breathes out and the bubbles go up and he's chained down to the floor and nobody could mistake it for a leap.

"Decide. Go ahead. Do it." She's terrified, shaking. She's begging for it to end. She's not a daredevil girl and it's not a leap. She just wants it over, one way or the other, and she's stopped caring which. She made arrangements. "Decide."

Esteban stares her down, and takes the gun, pulling her hair. She nods to herself. This might be love; their love began with a spanking. Maybe she's scared him into loving her again. He forces her to the table, with her hair; she reaches back for a kiss, putting his face next to his, and he pulls her away again, forcing her down. "Okay," she says, getting it. Getting it, she thinks. Their love was always rough. This is how it goes. She doesn't mind, she's never minded that. She's always liked it. She's back on top.

He holds her down against the table and fucks her, hard. It's not good, it doesn't feel good, but that was never the point either. To feel something, that was the point. She felt something for him, and he loved her. "Aqui," he says: here. She nods, getting into it. Yeah: There. Right there, like that. On top.