Chomp. Wheeze. Slurp.

How gross, she thought. How can he eat with his mouth hanging open like a slobbering animal?

He guzzled his can of Budweiser and sat back on the kitchen chair. "Buurrrp...Aahhh..."

She sat across from him, the plumber's wife, wondering why she ever married this man. What did she ever see in this man? Whatever it was had been dead for years.

The one thing he loved to do was eat. "What's for dessert?" he asked, letting loose another long burp.

She had been daydreaming, thinking about what could have been. "What did you say?" She shook herself out of her reverie.

"I said, what's for dessert? Whatsa matter with you, you stupid cow? You dreamin' about your dumb romance books again?"

She looked up slowly, watching the gravy dribble down his chin, until he swiped at it with his shirt sleeve. "Rhubarb pie," she said with an uncharacteristic smile. "Fresh from the garden."

"Yeah, gimme that," he said. "That's the only thing you're any good for, you make a damn good pie, at least."

She got up from the table, thinking about the world of difference between her reallife and the fantasy lives of the romantic heroines in the books she read. Sure, she liked romance novels,but her favorites were actually mysteries. That started her research about poisons. Years ago, botulism gave home canning a bad name. She used to can alot. But the symptoms were often delayed twelve to twenty-four hours, and the results were unreliable. Household chemical weren't as deadly as they used to be, and detectible after the fact, so you had to be careful. Now, her vegetable and flower gardens were filled with potentially dealy ingredients, like foxglove and rhubarb. She had read that the leaves of the rhubarb plant were poisonous.

Her husband loved rhubarb pie.

She put a large piece of pie in front of him, then went into the kitchen humming a tune.

As she washed the dishes, she heard the crash of the chair being knocked over and the retching sounds and please for help coming from the next room. As silence descended, she rinsed the remains of the pie down the garbage disposal and called 9-1-1.

When they asked what happened, she just shook her head. "It must have been something he ate," she said.