Rabid by T K Kenyon

hetero men like lesbians and why women become fag hags. They can relate.”
    “Leila, let’s sit down. You’ve had a lot to drink on an empty stomach.”
    “I’m fine.” She couldn’t make him understand because it scared him. He was terrified and mocking her and she should shut up. Leila’s head swam. The digital clock on the stove said six forty-five. Jody would be there soon. “You’ve got to leave.”
    “I can’t leave you like this.” He sighed. “You’re distraught.”
    “Just another word men use to make women seem weak.” The room swayed so she held onto the kitchen counter.
    “Okay, then you’re drunk.”
    “Am not.” She reached for her drink, and Conroy moved it farther down the bar. Asshole, just because he was taller, he could win at keep-away. “Jody is usually early. You should leave.”
    “Will you stop drinking?”
    “Fuck, no.”
    “I’m worried you’ll choke to death on your own vomit.”
    “Oh, attractive, Conroy.”
    “Okay, here,” he said and he handed her back her glass, but it was filled with water. She drank it anyway. His vacant, recessive blue eyes crinkled at the corners with laughter. “Besides,” he said, “you’re forgetting something in your drunken, feminist theory.”
    “What,” she said.
    “Keep drinking the water. Men put little energy into making gametes and make millions of them. It’s in our reproductive interest to spread our genes far and wide, hope a few take root.”
    At least he was listening, even if it was only to get his way, to keep her from drinking. “But—” she said.
    “Not done,” he said. “Women put so much energy into making one egg a month and then nine months gestation, and then eighteen years of child rearing, that it’s in their best interest to marry a guy who’ll help raise their offspring. That’s male competition and female choice, sexual selection. Darwin.”
    “Old theory,” Leila said. “Victorian era theory. Most men don’t have the opportunity to spread their sperm far and wide, so they find one egg and guard it and the offspring that they think is theirs. Most men don’t have sex with thousands of women.”
    “Rock stars do.”
    The alcohol buzzing softened as her liver chewed the ethanol in her blood.
    “Salmon exception,” she said.
    The doorbell bonged.
    “Crap. Jody’s here.” Leila tried to figure out what to do.
    “Salmon, like omega-three fatty acids?” Conroy asked.
    “Salmon, the fish that spawn.” Leila went over to her door and looked out the peephole. Yep, Jody was dressed in spangles and sparkling scales that confused the peephole’s fisheye lens. She yelled, “Just a minute!”
    Jody called through the door, “If you’re not dressed, that’s fine with me.”
    “Getting my purse!” Leila went back to the kitchen and Conroy. “Nope. Missed the point again, Con-roy.” She handed him his vodka pine-screwdriver, took his rough hand, and led him through her kitchen.
    Enough ethanol laced her blood that Leila was too sharp, too clear, and she knew all the ways he was wrong.
    So many ways, starting with fish evolution and ending with fucking Leila.
    She led him to her hallway and said, “Male salmon come in two types: normal and rock star. When resources are scarce, they all turn into little male salmon that swim like hell upstream and have the energy to get there, and they find one female salmon, and they spawn exactly once and die.” She tugged his hand and pulled him toward her closet. “When there are a lot of little male salmon around and competition for the females gets hairy, a few males grow bigger, shinier, redder, with big hooked jaws and canine teeth and can barely make it back upstream. Testosterone poisoning. They’re too big, too heavy, and the bears can see them. It’s risky. They’re rock stars, and if they make it, they get all the chicks.”
    “That doesn’t happen.”
    “Look it up.” Leila shoved him into the dark closet between her hanging