Mrs. March took advantage of the toast and the ensuing merriment to slip out of the living room and into the kitchen, where Martha bent over the island, swaddling the leftovers tightly in plastic wrap. The cook had left already, the waiters had moved on to serve digestifs, and it was now time for dessert.

The strawberries sat in the colander in the kitchen sink, washed and ready. Mrs. March placed them, one by one, on a porcelain platter, marveling at their freshness, their dewy porosity. She asked Martha to prepare the cream and moved to take the strawberries into the living room, in the hopes that they would be admired beforehand.

Just as she was about to cross the threshold to the hallway, a clear, impassive female voice made its way to her from the living room:

“Do you think she knows? About Johanna?”

Mrs. March stopped, one heel in the kitchen, the other in the hallway. There was laughter, in the midst of which Mrs. March was certain she could discern George’s hearty guffaw, followed by shushing and scattered giggling.

Dread rippled through Mrs. March. Her ears rang, then seemed to clog. Her arms sagged, and the platter she was clutching drooped. The strawberries tumbled in a scarlet hail all over the floor, rolling into corners and under furniture (some would not be found until weeks later).

She stood there blinking, until Martha made a little noise behind her and her thick, blotchy hands appeared to pry the platter from Mrs. March.

“Oh, dear, I—what a mess. I’ll get cleaned up,” said Mrs. March in a strangely drowsy sort of voice, as Martha kneeled to pick the strawberries off the floor.

Mrs. March stumbled past the living room and into her bedroom, pacing in circles before entering the adjoining bathroom, where she closed and locked the door. She sat on the edge of the bathtub and fumbled the silver cigarette case out from her bra, stopping to caress the engraved initials before unlatching it with a little click. She took out a cigarette and, hands shaking, lit it with a match from a matchbox in one of the bathroom drawers. She smoked one, then two, then three cigarettes, sucking in the foul air greedily. She tipped the ash into the bathtub and left the cigarette butts in the drain. As she finished what she promised herself would be her final cigarette, a black blur scuttled across the floor. Her eyes followed the sudden movement and she identified—a dark veil of horror settling over her—a cockroach running across the tiles. Mrs. March yelped and ran out of the bathroom, slamming the door behind her. She pressed a hand to her mouth to keep from screaming, and another to the wound behind her ear. Then she snatched the pillows from the bed and placed them to block the gap between the floor and the door.

Drained, she sat on the bedroom floor, resting her back against the bed. She considered briefly the prospect of not returning to the party, but custom dictated she make her way back. Perhaps she could feign a terrible illness? But people would talk. They would see her absence as confirmation that Johanna was based on her, and more pitifully: that she cared.

“Did you hear about Mrs. March?” she pictured George’s private banker saying to his wife. “The poor woman. She now spends her days locked up in their apartment. Terrible shame.”

She then imagined his wife (whom she hadn’t met, and who may in fact not even exist) pitying her, this pathetic ugly stranger (the banker would have rushed to describe her as plain) whose husband despised her so much that he based this dreadful character on her. “What character, exactly?” the wife would ask as she dried her delicate hands on a kitchen towel.

A smile would play on the banker’s lips, and he would describe Johanna, the whore, and how no one wanted to sleep with her, even her regulars. “The book’s really rather good,” he would say. “There’s talk the clever bastard will win the Pulitzer for insulting his wife.”

They would chuckle somewhat guiltily about it, and the wife would remark what a pity the whole thing was, as she had thought the Marches were a happy couple. “Well, I guess now we know the truth.”

Mrs. March wondered how other women would suffer this humiliation if they were to find themselves in her position; surely Patricia, the simple-minded baker, with her frizzy hair and stupid, dumpling face, would find it hilarious that her husband had based a sad whore on her. She wouldn’t give a damn about anybody else’s opinion. But was this the type of woman Mrs. March wanted to be? The type of woman who couldn’t care less about her image, about how the world might see her? She attempted to picture how Gabriella would take it. But this would never happen to Gabriella, she concluded miserably. Gabriella, without a doubt, would be portrayed as an attractive, vulnerable yet resilient goddess, someone the male characters would duel and die for. A less profound character, most likely, less “realistic” (what was it about realism anyway, that people praised it so?) but much more likable. Of course, Mrs. March’s problem wasn’t so much that Johanna herself was unlikable. It was that there seemed to be no doubt in people’s minds that she was, too.

Had the guests even noticed she was gone? Or were they relieved? She considered changing her stupid dress, wearing something simpler, sexier, but everyone would notice, would judge her, would write her off for caring too much. She yearned for some sort of revenge, and although stealing Gabriella’s cigarette case—which she had returned to her bra—had somewhat soothed this itch, they deserved worse. She should poison them, she mused—with arsenic. In Victorian days, George once told her, every household was equipped with poison. Arsenic was sold, unregulated, to anyone, and used in pigments in wallpapers and dresses. She could bring out another dessert—poison them all with a dish of toasted cheese and opium. She pictured them falling all over her living room, then the silence, an odd peace after such a boisterous party, and herself stepping over the bodies in a stunned daze.

She was jolted out of this fantasy by the realization that the party had gone silent. What if the guests had left, urged by a still-giggling George, because they had upset his oversensitive wife, you know how she is, fragile, can’t bear this sort of embarrassment, you’ve read the book?

She stood up from the floor, went to the bedroom door, and opened it a crack. The party—its music and noise and laughter still alive—trickled down the hallway. She took a deep breath before stepping out and walked, with hesitation, to the living room, holding on to the walls with her hands as she ricocheted in slow motion from one side to another. Something crunched underneath her feet. She glanced down at a winterberry twig, as several little red berries rolled across the floor.

How silly, she told herself, to assume that anything would stop on her account. The party continued on with the clinking of glasses, the record spinning on its turntable, the grandfather clock ticking in the foyer, its red-cheeked moon face smiling down at her. Everything was as she had left it.

On a side table the last of the strawberries lay scattered on the platter, some splotched with cream, some drowning in it, others bleeding red. Mrs. March contemplated them with a small sadness before sinking back into the party, as if she were submerging in water and looking up at the other bathers’ limbs from the depths.

She approached a group engaged in conversation. “The book,” they were saying, and “talent” and “his generation.” She smiled and nodded at them, but they did not acknowledge her presence so she turned away, her smile frozen in place as she wiped a drop of sweat from her temple. It was then that she saw Gabriella standing next to George in the middle of the room, the two glowing under their own self-made spotlight, leaving everything—and everyone—else dimmed. Gabriella was pressing one hand on his arm while she covered her mouth with the other, as if laughing were a social faux pas, like a yawn or a burp. Mrs. March watched them, drinking from a random glass of room-temperature champagne she had picked up near the strawberries. George stood beaming—that irritating smile of his, detestable in its false humility—until a friend of his approached to introduce himself to Gabriella.

Cheery under the influence of the alcohol (and the attention, no doubt), George spotted Mrs. March and steered her by the elbow to introduce her to two women, a blonde and a brunette, who, George explained with pride, had been among the last of his students before he turned to writing full time. Mrs. March hadn’t invited either woman—presumably George had invited them himself without telling her, although it was unclear how he had resumed the relationship after all this time.

“Professor March—”

“Oh, please, you’re not my students anymore. Call me George.”

“Okay … George,” said the brunette, giggling.

Mrs. March stared at the women, unsmiling. They couldn’t be much older than thirty, she guessed, but she wasn’t sure if that made sense. When exactly had George stopped teaching? She tried to recall the year.

“Aren’t you just so proud, Mrs. March?” said the blonde with yearning, as if she longed to be asked the same question someday.

“Oh, my wife is quite tired of me, I think,” said George, smiling at Mrs. March. “It’s a lot, putting up with a writer.”

The pair giggled again, then sighed, as if the giggling had drained them. Meanwhile a small commotion had broken out across the room. Gabriella was in search of her missing cigarette case, aided by willing volunteers—all of them male and on all fours—who were peering under furniture and between cushions. Mrs. March could feel the case pressing against her breast as she made a show of looking for it on the shelves.

The party didn’t last much longer, as the walls were thin and the neighbors were known to complain. By the time the last of the guests stumbled merrily out the front door, Martha had already left, boxy little purse in hand, as had the caterers—coats buttoned over soiled uniforms—leaving everything as neat as possible.

In the master bedroom, Mr. and Mrs. March undressed in silence.

Standing near the bathroom, he sniffed at the air. “Have people been smoking in here?”

Mrs. March swallowed, then pinched herself. “George,” she said, hoping he’d mistake her unsteady voice for drunkenness, “did you base that woman on me?”

He blinked. “What?”

“Johanna. Did you base her on me?”

“She’s not based on anyone, she just …” He gestured with his hands, looking for the right word, which turned out to be a disappointing “is.”

“Why did you laugh, then, when that woman said so?”

George frowned, peering at her over his glasses. “What woman?”

“That woman! The woman at the party! She said, she implied, that Johanna was based on me!”

George seemed to consider this. “Well, it hadn’t even occurred to me. Honestly, I hadn’t thought of it like that when I was writing. I suppose you may have certain things in common—”

Mrs. March scoffed. “Oh, really, oh like what, George, tell me. Which lovely part of myself do I share with the whore?” Even through her rage, she spoke at a controlled volume, fretful the neighbors might hear.

George sighed. “Now, I think you’re taking this the wrong way. Johanna isn’t based on any one woman, although I suppose she is a mixture of qualities from many different women that I’ve known over the years. I no doubt could list traits she shares with several women who have influenced me, and yes, you would be among them. That’s what fiction writers do.”

“Do it, then.”

“What?”

“Sit down and make a list. A list of traits.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes!” she said. “I want to know all these women who have inspired you. I want to know where I stand with Johanna.”

“Where you stand …? She’s a fictional character!”

“Then why does it feel like she exists and I don’t?”

This last question, posed at a volume that could only be considered by one of Mrs. March’s measures as yelling, echoed limply in the now-silent room. She didn’t really know where it had come from, wasn’t sure what sentiment she had been trying to convey, but it was solid enough to leave a bitter taste on her tongue once uttered.

George frowned. “I don’t want to get into this. I think you’re—well. You’re tired, we’re both tired. Let’s try and get some sleep. We can talk about this in the morning.”

“I won’t sleep now. Not if you’re here,” said Mrs. March, hugging her waist.

George sighed. “I’ll sleep in the study.” He picked up a wool throw from an armchair in the corner. “Good night,” he said, not even glancing her way as he walked past her and out the door, which he closed behind him.

When he’d left, Mrs. March stared blankly at the white paneled door. She locked it, then slowly backed away as if bracing for someone to smash it in with an ax. Swaying on her feet, she walked to her side of the bed, the one nearest the window, and sank into the cold linen face-first.