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In the short time I've been here, I can already see that Mary's troubles are more in the loneliness department than the rat infestation department. Maybe a little of both to be fair, so when she finds out I'm staying for a bit to lay traps and fix the smoke detector, she beams and offers me a plate of cookies that look like Santa hats with marshmallow trims and puts the kettle on for tea.

It's a funny thing, loneliness. It's something I'm only learning about recently—the might of it—the things it makes one do.

It's dusk now. "I'll Be Home for Christmas" hums from behind the door of unit 106 as I walk back to my empty studio apartment across the lot. The sleet has turned to a soft snowfall, and my body aches with a grief I can't articulate.

Before I open the door to my apartment, I see the light on in the small rental office next to my unit. It's where I give poor new saps rental agreements to sign and where most of the paint and cleaning supplies are stored. Besides the owner, I'm supposed to be the only one with a key, so I must have left it on or left it unlocked.

When I push open the door, a man is there. I leap back with a frightened yelp, but then I see that he stumbles and falls against the wall and then laughs.

"There's my Kitty," he says. "I was looking for you. Meow." The guy is so drunk I can smell him from the doorway, and he clearly has no idea where he is.

"You can't be in here. Get lost."

"Aw, Kitty isn't nice anymore. Your hair's different, too," he says and grabs me, pressing all of his weight against me.

I try to pull away, but he kisses me, holding the back of my head with both his hands and sticking his tongue in my mouth before I can even react. I scream and try to push him, but he's huge—a head taller than me with a thick neck and a beer belly the spills over the waist of his oily jeans. He starts to shove a hand down the front of my pants, but he loses his footing. I sidestep him, and he falls to the ground in a hard thump.

"The strip club's across the street, dude. I think you got lost. Out. Seriously." I kick the bottom of his boot with my shoe.

"Show me them titties again, Kitty cat. Titty cat." He laughs hysterically at his attempt at a joke, and then...silence.

"Really!?" I yell and kick his boot again. He's out cold. Son of a bitch. I think of how badly I want to crawl under my heating blanket with the rest of my brandy and not have to call the cops and stand in this freezing office explaining it all to them before they haul him off to detox or whatever they do these days. Maybe I just leave him. But the file cabinet and tenant records... I can't have some crazy have access to everyone's credit card info and unit numbers and all the spare keys if he wakes up, and it turns out he's a total creeper.

I sit on the office chair and blow out a hard breath, thinking through my options. And then I notice the wedding band on his finger and feel the tips of my ears go hot and my heart speed up. He's married. This married guy is out trying to get laid during the holidays.

I think about his wife. Is she home with their kid, playing Chutes and Ladders at the coffee table with Home Alone on in the background? Are they eating popcorn balls and peanut brittle? Is the floor still littered with wrapping paper from the day before? Is she looking at her phone every ten minutes wondering when he'll be back from a holiday party at the Mad Hatter to join them—the one that she was supposed to be at with him until the sitter canceled, never knowing he was actually with the sitter at a Holiday Inn instead.

Maybe she threw a Miller Lite at his head and told him to get out of her face and go to the strip club for all she cared, like you see on an episode of Cops, but it doesn't matter because either way he's a cheater. And I want to punish him with all my might. He shouldn't be allowed to get away with this.

I don't know what makes me think to do what I do. First, I take out his wallet and look at his ID. John Bradwick. Forty-seven, lives on Ashbury Court across town. A few small photos are tucked inside. A big-haired blond woman with round cheeks is all gums as she smiles at the camera with a scowling toddler on her lap...and this man, John, posed behind them like a sort of weird Glamour Shots photo. On the back in faded ink it says John, Peggy, and Levi 2011. A phone number is actually written in pen inside the leather of the wallet. I could call it, but it would probably ring to the cell phone in his pocket, so there's no point. There's eighty-seven dollars in cash. I take it.

Then, I don't know, I just do it. I dig through the drawer for a tube of lipstick I've seen rolling round in there—not mine, but whatever—and dab the hot red hue onto my lips. I take off my top, but I keep my bra on because I'm not a pervert, and I lay down next to the giant on the floor. I leave lip marks on his cheek and swing my leg around him and take a few selfies of us.

I roll his head my way, and it heavily falls into my neck, looking like he could be kissing me, and I snap another.

Then, I go next door to my apartment, drag over my heating blanket, and curl up in the office chair. I look up Peggy Bradwick, and after I find enough of what I'm looking for to set my plan in motion, I watch Netflix on my phone until the idiot wakes up.