I got down on my hands and knees in the shower with a toothbrush and some baking soda paste. The web site said if the drain had a musty smell that was mold, but if it was more like a rotten egg smell, that was biofilm. After brushing for a while it went from mold to eggs and back again, so I dumped more baking soda in, a whole box full, then vinegar, glug by glug, until it formed a series of thick, gray-black bubbles that hung for a while before they popped.
Charlotte only talks about getting a new phone, what happened when she was on the phone, or other topics all relating back to phones.
Lily was having a down day so Dawn took her for a drive. There was the sound of crying or laughter in the house somewhere, someone talking to someone on the phone, or a recording of someone talking that might have been live or replay.
The dog had a cone on her head from the surgery and leaned against my ankle so the plastic on the cone bent and her chest rose as she dreamt. And as she did, I thought back to a dream where I imagined myself flying and how it felt on the edge as I dropped down and lifted up, then sailed over a wide body of water.
Outside the fox glove blooms were all bent over sad, like they knew it was time to go: some yellowing with blooms on the ground like deflated balloons. The party was over for spring, and with summer here now, each day we’d lose a little more light.
I played my music on my laptop, but this time it was all native, local files: no cloud-based stuff. And how intimate it felt, the knowledge that these were all local files. How we’d been reduced to that, the new warmth in digital media, “local.” Like I had more control over what I played.
I thought back to a time I could remember feeling more, being actually thrilled, even animated, by the sound of music, and how sweet it felt. And the newfound distance from that, that filled other parts of me with a space that was more empty than it was open, or something you would call deep. A descent down the quarry with the hopes of something more meaningful at the bottom.
At the airport bar I watched two fighters on the screen, one 25, the other 39, wanting badly for the older guy to win but knowing he didn’t stand a chance.
