I

In the bath, the tv blares in the background, Chinese people speak fluently with no sign of a translation. An Australian woman summarizes something at the end and now it’s a house hunting show.

Steam does rise from the water, but I don’t think it’s hot. I want to boil, tumble around like the potatoes in a thick soup of potatoes. A copy of Tender is the Night balances precariously on the white tub edge, it’s pages brown and yellowed, mold splotches on every page. Nathan told me to read it, with a promise of alcoholism and depression, love lost and yearning, but he likes the kind of professionally prescribed, upper education required reading literature I just don’t get into, so I guess we’ll see.

The water isn’t deep enough to cover my breasts, and the tub isn’t long enough to stretch out my legs, so while my knees, thighs and calves form a tent outside of the water, my breasts spill to the side and kind of languish in the water, like the part of the ocean where the rows of pebbles just stop, and your feet sink slightly into the sand, before it all turns to water, water, more water.

My cheeks are hot, I know they’re as red as they turn whenever anyone I don’t know well talks to me – one of my more annoying tells. (I want to be cool, collected, like a poker player, wearing dark and reflective sunglasses). Ollie just pushed the door open with a flourish, I almost drop the phone, he checks that I’m okay with a great sniff of his nose and he takes off again, out the door with his strong tail pointing up, satisfied that I am still in working form.

Now I want soup.