The shamed man removed himself to the bathroom and closed the door without turning on the light. He was about to drop on the toilet seat cover when something lying there jabbed his thigh.

It was the vibrator—uncoiled and still plugged in.

Like another insult, it was gingerly replaced in the potpourri basket.

The clammy pants and briefs were shoved down to his socks and kicked off in an artless wad over his ankles. The shirt buttons required a little more negotiation than his mind wanted to put to the task, but that garment too was shed. He at last relieved himself, cowering behind his long arms on the commode, and with indolent thoughts only a little less ordered than the heap at his feet.

He had been stepping in and out of urination dreams all night. The humiliation he presently felt could not help but elicit flashbacks of childhood bedwetting episodes.

He wanted to take a shower and wash the grimy dampness from his skin, but settled instead on using a bar of soap and washcloth at the sink. The door abruptly opened at his back to set off his talc-white body against the pink vanity. Folding like a deck chair, he darted behind the door for cover.

Emma tossed in a pair of pajamas with a motherly request. “Hand me your clothes.”

He shrank again on rising to give her the wet garments.

Candlelight reemerged under the bathroom door by the time he squeezed into the ill-fitting nightwear. (The pajama pattern unfortunately depicted characters from The Little Mermaid.) He stepped out to find the resident busily remaking her bed. His shadow bumbled clumsily on the wall as he tried to sneak back into the front room.

“The sink was turned on upstairs,” she announced. “With the basin clogged, it ran over.”

The candlelight did little too nuance Emma’s flat expression, and Michael could only think she was dissembling to hide her disappointment in seeing him nude. He could not endure her curtained thoughts, so bowed his head with a general apology. “I’m sorry.”

Still in her housecoat, Emma crawled into the remade bed to turn away. “Come,” she said. “I’m sleepy.”

Michael slipped in without another word to face her back, yet kept his distance.

Her voice echoed off the wall. “You’re on your left side.”

He needed to face her—needed something from her.

“Can you even sleep in a bed with another person?” she asked quietly.

He was not sure he could. “Yes,” he said.

She backed into the curve of his body and pulled his dead-weighted arm around her waist. Her hair was apricot perfume at his chin, and her soft words into the pillowcase seemed to stumble more out of her dream than his. “You’re becoming a complication.”

Michael watched the brightening window over the line of her jaw. The redolent scent of laundry detergent in the cool, creased sheets, as well as the feel of her warm bones in the terrycloth robe, were what he imagined domesticity to feel like. Together with the soothing thump of the dryer down in the basement, they might discourage him from parsing the word “complication” in the hour before daybreak.

There was no sense of his eyes shutting as his vigil wore on. A moment or two had lapsed, at most. It was only in seeing Emma peering down at him from the edge of the bed he realized he had even been asleep.

“Good morning, sleepyhead," she beamed.

Michael squinted by way of response. Her lemony yellow dress was a second Sun against the windowpanes. It clung to her curvaceous shape as a single swatch, with a rayon sweater of inky blue pulled over it to reign in its vivacity.

She asked, “Do you feel like breakfast?”

The blindsided sleeper shook his head.

Emma twinkled to her toes. “I ironed your things, by the way.” She was pointing. “There…”

Michael glanced over at his neatly folded briefs and trousers in the wooden chair. They were sharp with creases and smelled warmly of starch. He replied with meek gratitude. “Thank you.”

Emma traipsed out into the hallway and left him to hurriedly dress. Her voice was ungodly cheery from the kitchen. “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day!”

The houseguest fished around for a clock when he reached the sock stage, yet had no idea under which fluffy bunny or teddy bear it was likely to be hiding. He ventured out to join the resident. “What time is it?”

No response was forthcoming.

Michael looked down at the answering machine; it was now stuffed with twenty-nine messages.

Emma popped out of the kitchen with two bowls of cornflakes. “Twelve vitamins and minerals!”

The man lumbered piecemeal to the nook and slouched over the edge of a stool with a few mismatched buttons. He took only one lump of sugar from the sugar bowl, although he was the kind of person who liked sugar on his frosted flakes. He swirled his mood in the bowl. “What was in the tea you gave me, last night?”

“Just chamomile. I’m sorry it didn’t keep you off your feet.”

A click of utensils sufficed to fill the dead air, but the guest could think of nothing clever to say. A new familiarity existed between them, albeit involuntarily imposed by his behavior. For whatever reason, less stagecraft was required after two people share a bed, although what this left him by way of roles and ways forward was frustratingly unclear. Another glance at the answering machine had him shoving a limp cornflake into the side of his bowl with even greater despondence.

The sprightly girl, oblivious to his many dilemmas, cut her meal short. She leapt up to put her bowl in the sink, chirping, “I have to open this morning at the coffeehouse.” After retrieving her bag from the bedroom, she returned to the nook and casually took hold of his wrist.
Michael looked down in amazement to see her strap on a watch. The clock face was of Dali’s famous painting of a melted clock, The Persistence of Memory.

She was ho-hum about it. “My father bought this for me when I was a child. You need to know the time since it’s unlikely you’ll replace that clock of yours anytime soon. I’m letting you borrow this.”

The man was momentarily taken out of his self-absorption. “It’s beautiful.”

Emma pulled her bag over her shoulder, not wanting to make more of it. “Be sure to lock up on your way out,” she said on marching out the door.

In appreciation of the gift, he washed the few dishes in her sink before proceeding back to freshen up in the bathroom. A brief stop was made by Emma’s open closet on the way out of the bedroom. The electric blue taffeta dress was conspicuous in among the other frocks. He stroked it like a charm, wishing to conjure back a less complicated piece of their shared sky together out at the mound. No more than a second or two could have passed in his reverie, yet when he glanced up at the doorway the owner of the beautiful gown was standing in it.

He visibly crumbled.

Emma did not delay but walked toward him with her hand extended. The photograph of her he had taken from the bathroom was in it. “I found this in your pants before I put them in the dryer last night.” The picture was placed in his shirt pocket with gentle matter-of-factness. “I want you to keep it.”

She made no mention of the tissue paper, although perhaps it was unmentionable. The shamed man could not look her in the face, so stared at the gowns in the closet.

Emma recalibrated her voice in the closeness, letting her fingers drop over a pleat of the wedding gown so aged in daylight. “You’re not very inquisitive, are you?”

The question merited eye contact; she was now the one looking embarrassed.

“It’s as much my fault in not telling you as yours in not asking…” she began.

Thump. Thump.

Someone was knocking on the front door. Emma was slow reacting, tarrying to reconnect with him in a strange way. Michael moved over to the bed once she left the room, with each plod of foot like a fist punching up into his chest. Whenever any attractive woman needed to tell him something, it portended nothing good. He wanted to escape, but there was no way out but by the cowardly secret door. Erica’s mordant voice in the front room soon flushed him from hiding, and with the thought he could use her visit as an excuse to slip quietly away.

The barista was not fazed to see him slinking in the hallway. Her remarks were now for both of them. “I thought I should come by and give you a heads-up before the police get here.”

Emma’s face lifted only to sink in anticipation of bad news. “What do you mean?”

“Jacques.” Erica was straight. “He apparently killed himself in an auto-erotic misadventure last night.”

The resident gasped, “Wha...?”

The woman spilled the rest. “He was speed-dialing your number.”