20

Pella realized she’d been asleep for a very long time. The clock by the bedside—by Mike’s bedside—read 1:33, and daylight streamed through the uncurtained window. It was pleasant and scary both, to think about where her mind had been for the past twelve hours or so. She wished she knew exactly what time she’d fallen asleep, so she could record her accomplishment, quantify her journey: I slept for this long!

Mike was nowhere to be found, and she remembered nothing of his departure. She hadn’t taken any sleeping pills—just half a bottle of wine, barely more than doctors recommended. She headed to the bathroom, which was surprisingly clean, at least compared to the rest of the house. She peed and, for kicks, opened the cabinet above the sink: it contained nothing but a stick of deodorant, an athlete’s foot ointment, and a tube of toothpaste. Amazing creatures, men. She yanked aside the shower curtain and found, inside the elegant old claw-foot tub, a battered beer keg, the metal top clouded with mildew. At least they had a shower curtain.

It would have been nice of Mike to leave a note—“ Back soon!”—but she hadn’t seen one in the bedroom, and there wasn’t one in the kitchen either. Ah, well. She could live with the omission, given how sweet he’d been to let her, a near stranger, pass out in what had no doubt been the exact center of his little bed, so that he had to scrunch his big body against the wall.

On the kitchen counter, behind a scatter of sticky notes and tented-open books, sat a coffeemaker. The glass pot didn’t contain any egregious mold. She decided to brew a fresh cup and drink it here, before heading back to her dad’s place. He’d probably be pissed; she hadn’t told him she wasn’t coming home.

In the pantry, among economy-sized boxes of cornflakes and gigantic tubs of something called SuperBoost 9000, she found filters and a five-pound can of generic coffee. Everything in bulk: that appeared to be the Mike Schwartz philosophy. The Affenlights, on the other hand, were coffee snobs. She peeled back the plastic lid and sniffed at the coffee, if you could call it that—it was the pale-brown color of woodchips but not as fragrant. It would do.

She dumped the old coffee into the sink, where it diffused in the cloudy water, cascading down over the lips of stacked dishes. So far so good. But when she tried to rinse and refill the glass pot, she couldn’t work the lip underneath the faucet. She tried to shift the dishes to make the faucet more accessible, but they were stacked in a precarious, Jenga-like pyramid, glasses on the bottom, and she was afraid the whole shaky construction would collapse with a ringing crunch.

The thing to do, really, would be to wash the dishes. In fact, she was feeling a strong desire to wash the dishes. She began loading them onto the countertop, so that she could fill the sink with water. The ones near the bottom were disgusting, the plates covered with water-softened crusts of food, the glasses scummed with a white bacterial froth, but this only increased her desire to become the conqueror of so much filth. Maybe she was stalling, because she didn’t want to face her dad after not having come home all night.

As she squeezed liquid soap into the stream of hot water, an objection crossed her mind: What would Mike think? It was a nice gesture, to do somebody else’s dishes, but it could also be construed as an admonishment: “If nobody else will clean up this shithole, I’ll do it myself!” In fact, some version of that interpretation could hardly be avoided. She turned off the water. Even if she and Mike had been dating for months, unprovoked dishwashing might be considered strange. Meddlesome. Overbearing. Unless she’d dirtied the dishes herself: that would be different. Then the dishes should be done, and the failure to do them might pose its own problems.

But the dishes weren’t hers, and she and Mike weren’t dating. They hadn’t even kissed. Therefore the doing of dishes could only seem weird, neurotic, invasive. Mike’s roommate—Mr. Arsch, from the mailbox—would take one look at the order she’d imposed and say something penetrating, something along the lines of “Dude, is that chick psycho or what?” And Mike would shrug and never call her again.

She looked down into the white bubbles. Steam rose off the water, brushed her cheeks and chin. Her hand rested on the four-pronged hot-water knob, which felt warm to the touch. She really, really wanted to wash the dishes. Once, late at night, not long after she’d moved to San Francisco, she’d really, really wanted to cut up a slightly mushy avocado and rub the pit in her palms. It was an ecstasy-type desire, though she hadn’t taken ecstasy. She made David drive her to three supermarkets to find the right avocado. She told him she was craving guacamole—a more acceptable urge, if just barely. Luckily he’d fallen asleep while she was rolling the slimy pit in her palms, pretending to make guacamole. In the morning, having buried the chips and the yellow-green mush in the kitchen trash, she claimed to have eaten it all. She still had no idea how to make guacamole.

That episode stood out in Pella’s mind as a benchmark of small but irresistible desire, but if anything she wanted to wash these dishes even more. She could see in advance the scrubbed white color of the fresh-bleached sink, the rows of overturned pots lying on the counter to dry. Maybe Mr. Arsch wouldn’t think she was psycho. Maybe he’d be thrilled. Who wouldn’t want a maid who worked for free? Maybe Mr. Arsch was sad, just as she’d been sad, and that was why the kitchen was such a mess. Maybe a scrubbed-out sink would be the boost he needed. Slovenliness correlated highly with despair—the inability to exert influence over one’s environment, et cetera. Speaking of despair, she hadn’t yet taken her sky-blue pill. She’d probably have a cracking headache in about five minutes. Better enjoy this respite while it lasted.

While these thoughts were spinning through her sleep-buoyed brain, she had scrubbed several plates and laid them on the counter in a fanned-out formation to dry. A fistful of flatware was calling her name. Whatever retribution awaited, she’d left herself little choice but to finish the dishes. She squinched her rag between the fork tines and rubbed.

By the time she finished she’d worked up a sweat, and she needed her sky-blue pill far more than a cup of coffee. On her way out she lingered in the doorway for a long minute, admiring the empty sink.