The perfume was the last small knife.

I had bought it for her.

I had stood in a department store the previous spring and chosen it because it smelled like her, like my friend, and now she was wearing it to come to my husband, in my building, six minutes after a summons — wearing my gift to betray me, the way she wore my friendship to rob me.

She used everything I gave her.

That was, I would come to see, simply what she did with the things I gave her.

When she saw me, she froze.