Implicit Plot Story

Corners.

I was swabbing the little corner where the faucet meets the sink when I started laughing. I couldn’t help myself—it was funny. Granted, my husband didn’t think too much of it, but I didn’t care. If he thought I looked sexy, swabbing the bathroom in a cocktail dress, he wasn’t showing it. I’d seen an ad in a magazine once, D & G or something like that. There was this thin little pterodactyl of a girl on her knees, a min skirt hiked up past her thigh—plunging a toilet. I don’t even remember what was being advertised. Maybe the real joke was that she got enough money to continue her coke habit while I was getting nothing but an empty stare. I didn’t want to look him in the eye, so I started dabbing at the base of the sink.
“You don’t think it’s funny?”
I’d already swept up the Lalique I’d knocked off the back of the wash stand. One of the pieces had nipped my finger. I chewed on it.
“Don't know why I bother.”
There were little hairs too, and plaster. The bigger chunks I’d picked up by hand. He shed like an animal. It got on my nerves. They collected in the corners of things, or right next to the baseboards, and I had to go in with the edge of the broom to get them out. Vacuums wouldn’t work, the suction couldn’t get into those edges. I’d be using the vacuum now, but I didn’t want to wake the neighbors. Not that they hadn’t already gotten used to his yelling. I’d already turned off all the lights. I’d been cleaning the whole time in the dark. I felt silly.
Now I don’t want you to get the wrong impression, that I stay home all day cleaning, that I agonize about picking up after my husband, that I’m trying to relive the Fifties out in Livermore or something. Far from it, my husband’s the one who’s usually picking up after me. And he’s the one whining when I come home late. Getting upset when I complain about a client, instead of complimenting the cheesecake he’d spent all morning preparing.
He’d certainly paid back in full. I’d spent my entire Muni ride home from the APA gathering coming up with adjectives for whatever concoction he’d prepared for me this time. Instead I had to deal with this. I’d have to get a contractor to fix the walls, and I couldn’t replace the furniture downstairs, I’d have to get a whole new set designed. I was surprised no one had heard his tantrum and dialed the police. Guess they couldn’t be bothered.
I certainly didn’t want to be. How was I going to stay in business if it got out that I couldn’t keep the head straight on my own husband? I’d be stuck filling prescriptions at Rite Aid, getting leered at by geriatrics as I handed them their Viagra. I sat down next to the tub, the corner where the wall met the basin pressed against my spine. It was cold. It made me shiver. We stared at each other over the rim of the tub. He was giving me that same cow-eyed look he’d always given me. I would’ve thought that his eyes would look different somehow, like something was gone. But they didn’t, they looked exactly the same.
I ran my finger through the water. It’d gone cold. There was a trace of warmth in it when I’d first found him. Now it was gone. My finger came back pink. I cursed inwardly. Couldn’t he have used pills or something? Couldn’t he have been less messy?