I know your address/I ring the bell/ I  bring you flowers and a .22 with shells
 
                                                   -Barenaked Ladies, "Straw Hat and Dirty Old Hank"
 

 It never occurred to him to worry as he rang her doorbell, roses in one hand, small package, wrapped, beneath his arm. It was only a game, and she wasn’t stupid. Just confused. Slow. But not stupid.
 
The door swung open grandly, Suzanne behind it, looking cute and bovine in her blue-checked blouse and jeans. "Entrez-vous, monsieur," she said in the same French accent she always used to make him laugh. He laughed the same thin laugh he always used to humor her and stepped inside.
 
He hated this place without knowing he hated it, its gaudiness a whirling Vegas slot machine. The orange walls she had never bothered to repaint glared at him menacingly, making him feel as if he were trapped in an ever-melting igloo of sherbet. Above the brown-flowered couch hung a poster from the Orson Welles movie A Touch of Evil, which he had never seen, only knew Welles had made it in his intensely obese period. The table in front of the couch was pock-marked, bare except for a framed picture of the two of them together, his arm around her but not actually touching her, hovering a pencil-width from her shoulders.
 
"I got you these," he said, thrusting the flowers forward like a small boy bringing a tin-foil wrapped daffodil to his first grade teacher. Suzanne was not a teacher, but she had wanted to be one, once. She had settled instead on an associate’s degree in business and a junior underwriting position at Developers Diversified, too lazy to go any further.
 
"Ooh!" She squealed her approval and bustled off to the kitchen to get a vase. She had told him on their last date, the one that ended with the two of them in bed, that no one had ever brought her flowers, and he had taken it into account. No one had ever given her anything, that’s what she had told him. No one but him. She had fallen madly in love with him, and that was the plan all along.
 
It hadn’t taken him very long, either. He had met her at the Wendy’s between their two office buildings, had accidentally spilled catsup on her, and had ended up with her number. They had gone out only five times since then, each time for a bit longer. He wanted to romance her, the old-fashioned way. He wanted to kill her with kindness, with gifts.
 
It was the gifts she loved the most. No one had ever, ever given her gifts, she told him the first night he had brought her something, a small charm in the shape of a cat. She loved cats, but she was allergic—that’s what he said on their first date. By the second date, he had the charm. She almost cried when she saw it. That was how he was going to get her, then, he knew, and the gifts began to pile up.
 
She returned now with the flowers, floating unceremoniously in a Care Bears glass from Pizza Hut, an aspirin dissolving at the glass’ heart-bedecked bottom. "My good vases must all be dirty," she said, chagrined.
 
"That’s right," he said. She nodded and sat, staring dimly at him. Lovestruck.
 
This was what he hated most of all. The silences. They had always been there, hovering, closing in on them like her apartment’s sherbet walls. Pushing them together. She always leaned in close to him during them, begging to be kissed. But that wasn’t what he was here for.
 
"You’re not wearing your charm," he said with feigned disappointment.
 
"Oh!" She leapt up, clutching at her neck. "What was I thinking? I’ll go get it."
 
"Suzanne—"
 
"I’ll be right back." She darted for her bedroom and he sat back, fingering the package he had brought lightly, toying with its bow. He had had his girlfriend wrap it for him, said it was a joke for one of his friends. She didn’t know about Suzanne.
 
"How’s that?" she asked, returning to the room, charm flapping against her chest. "Better?"
 
"Much." She beamed and sat down with him again on the couch, closer this time. He could smell her now, her Windsong perfume and gum-sweetened breath. "I like to see you use the things I buy for you."
 
She smiled even wider now, impossibly wide, every white tooth showing. "They’re all here," she said, gesturing around the room. And so they were—the charm, that had been the first. The stuffed bear he had given her on their third date sat across from him in an overstuffed chair, facing the cut-glass bowl he had given her on their last meeting.
 
"I see." She flipped on the television and rested her head on his shoulder, nuzzling it. He turned it off again abruptly.
 
"What’s wrong?" she asked him, her voice tinged with terror. He smiled. She thought he was going to break up with her. "What did I do wrong?"
 
He knew he had chosen the right girl when he saw her in Wendy’s that day, hovering lamely over her food, alone. She had that aura about her, the one he needed for the game to work. The one of absolute desperation.
 
"Nothing, nothing!" He smiled jovially, patting her head, a master with his puppy. "But don’t you want to see what I brought you tonight?"
 
"Ooh!" She squealed again, her high-pitched glee puncturing his eardrum. She wriggled her fingers in anticipation as he set the gift in her lap.
 
"It’s heavy," she said, pondering the box, shaking it.
 
"Go ahead. Open it."
 
She took great care in unwrapping the parcel, saving each strand of ribbon, folding it gently before setting it on the table. He was in agony as she attempted to remove the wrapping paper without ripping it, wanted to snatch it away from her, rip the paper to shreds. The wait was worth the look on her face as she opened the box.
 
"It’s a gun," she said matter-of-factly.
 
"That’s right."
 
"It’s a gun," she repeated, turning it over in her hands.
 
"Do you like it?"
 
"What am I supposed to do with it?"
 
He turned to her then, his eyes filled with emotion, and grabbed her gently by the upper arms. "Do you love me?" he asked.
 
"Of course I do."
 
"More than anything?"
 
She did not hesitate. "Of course, more than anything. I love you."
 
"And you would do anything for me?"
 
"I don’t understand what this is all about," she said dubiously, laying the gun on the table.
 
This was the end of the game, the moment he had been waiting for for months now, the game he had wanted to play since his earliest memory, the game of absolute power.
 
"I want you to kill yourself," he said, without frills, without emotion.
 
"What?" She shook her head, leapt away from him. "No!"
 
"I’ll go next," he said. "There are two shells." He opened the gun to show her. "One for you, one for me."
 
"No!"
 
"Suzanne—if you loved me, you would do this for me. If you really loved me." He looked at her, at the gun, at her again. "But I guess you don’t. I guess you’re not the woman I thought you were. I guess it wasn’t meant to be."
 
"What?" She took a few steps toward him. "You’re not making any sense."
 
"Never mind," he said, standing up, brushing his hands on his pants lightly. "Forget I said anything about it. I’m just going to get some water and hit the road."
 
"Please—"
 
"Forget it." He went into the kitchen, leaving her to wring her hands in the living room. This was more fun than he had expected, more exhilarating. He would have to do it again. He drank his water slowly, anticipating the look on her face when he returned in a few moments to pick up the gun and leave her garish apartment forever.
 
He dropped his glass when the gun went off a few seconds later.