On the couch, Jacob Keever dreams he is an earthworm beneath a frozen expanse of dirt until Hillary comes home and stomps her boots loud enough to wake him. She leaves wet prints on the carpet and when she brushes off the shoulders of her best coat, she dusts the floor with clumps of snow.
“Have you just been sitting there all day?” Hillary demands, peeking her head into the front room. “Well? Have you? Have you done anything at all?”
“You’re not my mother,” says Jacob, and he sits up a little. “You come home like I’m your housewife and I haven’t finished making supper. It’s inappropriate. You come home like you’re demanding to see my report card.”
They keep a battered brown leather armchair positioned opposite the couch, and Hillary drops into it. “Pass me the Kleenex, will you? I’ve needed one for an hour. And all the way home. I was dripping onto the steering wheel.”
Hillary is a maid at The Bridge Hotel, which sits atop a hill in the north of town and can only be accessed through a steep winding road. She wheels baskets of dirty sheets through the halls, knocks tenderly on doors, and vacuums for hours. To get there each day, Hillary drives through patches of forest and over ravines.
Jacob scrambles around under the couch, snatches up the tissue box, and throws it to her. It hits Hillary in the face. “There are only about four or three in here,” she complains.
“Well, that’s because I used them up. I’m sick.”
“So am I.”
“I wish you weren’t. It’s bad enough when it’s only one of us. Two would be just impossible,” Jacob says. And as an afterthought, “I was sick first.”
“It’s not first come first serve. God, I have such a headache.”
Hillary gets up to go to the bedroom and Jacob lies on the couch, entertained only by the chirping of the old cast iron radiator and the settling of the building for the next twenty-four hours.
Jacob knows a day has passed when he wakes up, but he feels the same as yesterday. The apartment is quiet, aside from the groans and pants issuing from their chipped radiator. It has been very talkative recently.
The ceiling of the front room is a fascinating landscape. A brilliant patch of paint glows in the nearest corner, above the radiator. After a leak from the apartment above, it was repainted a shade lighter than the rest of the ceiling and shines even in total darkness. Thin cracks in the plaster link up little brown mold spots to forge constellations. Sour light from the standing lamp, which is plugged into an exhausted electrical outfit, splashes across the whole scene.
Jacob has been sitting on this couch for almost two weeks now, without moving. He doesn’t even feel sick anymore, but the idea of standing up to go to the bathroom or find something to eat makes him nauseous. Hillary hasn’t said anything about Jacob staying home from work for a second week. She won’t mind if he never gets off the couch. If Jacob were an old man Hillary would probably sponge-bathe him. It cheers Jacob to know that Hillary will smile and bear whatever harsh words he accidentally spits out. And now she is away at work, vacuuming carpets for minimum wage. Jacob feels like he did something clever without budging from the couch. He is almost proud of himself.
Behind him, the radiator clanks like a grandfather clock, saying, “Jacob Keever, you’re a total and complete rat.”
If he lies on his stomach with his chin perched on the arm of the couch he can rest his hand on one of its coils. The radiator doesn’t heat efficiently so it will not burn him and can be quite comfortable. It feels like putting your hand on your girlfriend’s knee, or the head of a dog.
“You’d better not be lying on the couch,” Hillary warns as she backs into the apartment with a paper bag of groceries wrapped in her arms. Jacob jerks his hand away from the radiator and hopes she hasn’t seen him holding it.
Hillary takes off her coat and hangs it on the peg where it belongs. Her hair dampened during the snowy commute from the hotel to the grocery store and back home, so it now hangs limp about her face. Jacob, from where he twists on the couch, sees her nose blazing red, rubbed raw from sneezing.
“Jesus Christ, Jacob. You have to get up.”
“I feel really sick. I mean really sick,” he says, affecting a bit of a groan.
“Well, aren’t you getting better?”
“It’s hard to tell. I can’t remember what it was like not to be sick.”
“You’re going to be fired” Hillary frets.
“I hope I am, actually,” Jacob says.
Hillary drops the bag of groceries. “What?”
“I wouldn’t be upset about it. I hate that job. I can’t stand being cooped up in an office. I can’t stand having a boss. There’s nothing worse than that.”
Hillary picks up her bag and shuffles her way into the tiny kitchen unit. “I’m going to make some nice warm soup.”
Jacob doesn’t have much of an appetite. Just the sound of Hillary banging the cabinets and knocking aluminum cans together makes his stomach turn. He groans loudly.
“What’s wrong?” rings Hillary, sounding like she is far away from him, sounding like she is down a well.
“I’m not hungry.”
“I was going to make it for myself.”
So she’s in a bad mood. “How is your cold?” Jacob calls.
“What?” says Hillary, from the kitchen.
Jacob sits up. His ears hum. “How is your cold?”
“I can’t hear you. Come into the kitchen.”
Jacob collapses back onto the couch. If she doesn’t want to talk to him, that is her problem. For a few minutes, he imagines a world that is all the front room. All is only a chair, a couch, a radiator, and the re-plastered ceiling spot. Having lived in such a world for over a week now, it was possible the rest of the planet is over. Maybe the apocalypse came and there is no more town, no more library, no more cafe, and no more Bridge Hotel.
The clunking in the kitchen ceases and Hillary shuffles into the front room. She and Jacob always eat their meals there, with no table on which to place their plates and bowls. Every day, Hillary sits in the armchair, splashing food onto her denim knees, dropping little grains of rice onto the rug, and being disgusting as she eats. Jacob keeps his eyes closed, but he can hear that she is slurping the soup and smacking her lips.
“So,” he tries, for a third time, “are you feeling any better?”
“Thought you didn’t want to talk about that,” says Hillary, sniffling.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude about it yesterday.”
“Don’t make fun of me.”
“I’m not. I’m not. I’m actually sorry that it came off that way.”
Hillary’s cell phone rings in her purse on its hook, and she leaps up and runs to it, splashing soup. Her ringtone is a horrible sound, like a couple of saws whirring in a barrel together.
“Hello?” Hillary says, into the phone. Jacob reaches over to the radiator and picks at the flaking lead paint. “Hello?” she says again.
“Who is it?” Jacob asks. Hillary doesn’t answer, still holding the phone to her ear. She looks so focused, so intent, like a worshiper from a far-off century. Jacob has a curious feeling that she can’t see him, nor any of the faded trappings of the front room.
Jacob plucks off a chip of paint, in the shape of Minnesota. It’s odd how familiar the shape is, right down to the profile of Wisconsin leaning in from the East. Without considering what he is doing, Jacob places the dry paint in his mouth where it dissolves on his tongue.
“Hello? Is there anyone there?” says Hillary into the phone.
“Who’s there?” Jacob demands, through a mouth full of lead paint. He is loud enough, this time, to make Hillary snap her neck up and look him in the eye. At her stare, Jacob is filled with guilt and the creeping concern that she has somehow caught him eating the paint. But this fear is ridiculous. The Minnesota-shaped chip is gone. There will be no one to know, no one to find out, and no one to remember it.
Hillary is still staring at him, unblinking, and Jacob has the notion that whoever breaks eye contact first will die.
Then, whoever is on the other line of Hillary’s phone call announces herself.“Oh?” says Hillary, “Oh, hey. Sorry, you were just muffled for a moment. Yeah, I can talk, one second.”
“Who is it?” asks Jacob. Hillary brings the speaker away from her face and mouths a word. Her exaggerated lips are all too red and all too wide. Jacob can’t tell whose name she said. Before he can ask for a fourth time, she turns away and heads back to the kitchen. Hot air hums in both of his ears.
Her chipped bowl of soup still sits precariously on the arm of the chair, getting cold. There is a feeble line of steam issuing off the top as if it is still putting on the appearance of being appetizing. Still, Jacob knows it is bone cold, the way a dog knows when an earthquake is coming.
Jacob feels around the Minnesota border. The uncovered space on the radiator is black and granular.
“That soup smells disgusting,” Jacob says, to nobody in particular. The radiator hisses a little in response. To Jacob’s amazement, he feels it warming up under his fingertips. He holds them there, for the heat is not yet unpleasant.
Hillary comes back, “That was Maria from the hotel.”
“Why did she call?”
“She was worried about me. I felt faint at work today. She wanted to see if I was feeling any better.” Hillary slurps a spoonful of her soup and makes a face. She says, “I’m going to go and reheat this.”
Once the soup is drained and the bowl washed, Hillary picks a couple of dust bunnies off the floor. “I wonder if we might be allergic to dust. We could feel better if things were a little cleaner.”
She bends and plucks, like a farmer collecting fruit in the sun.
Hillary doesn’t like to clean the apartment because cleaning is what she does all day at work. Jacob finds it unfair that all the cleaning is left to him, and it is on that principle that he refuses to tidy up. Their apartment is often cluttered and moldy and the bed is never made.
Jacob suspects Hillary is embarrassed by their apartment, with its single table, armchair, and occupied couch. And of the block of the glowing ceiling from the replaster job, the standing lamp, and the floor stained by all the boots stomped there.
While Hillary is still cleaning, Jacob falls asleep.
He sleeps fitfully. In his dream, the radiator is the same shape and size as it has always been, only now it is made of skin and bone and covered in short white fur. The radiator is hot like an animal, and its coils expand and contract as it breathes.
It’s completely dark when Hillary shakes him awake. Jacob thinks the hour could be anywhere between six in the evening and four in the morning.
Hillary says, “You haven’t eaten anything in days.” She’s holding a chipped plate with a dry slice of toast sitting on it in one hand and a white mug of water in the other.
“I’m really not hungry,” Jacob says.
“Look, Jacob. You won’t work and you won’t eat. It’s ridiculous. You aren’t getting any better. You’re getting much worse. You’re gray! I’m serious. Your hair, face, and nails are all gray,” Jacob inspects his nail beds and decides this is an exaggeration, “How am I supposed to live with you haunting the front room?” demands Hillary.
“I am not haunting,” says Jacob. “Do I ever hurt you? Do I ever keep you from what you want?”
It is very difficult to reason with Hillary as she shakes her head wildly. Without looking at Jacob, she slips out, “ This isn’t what I want. I don’t like braving bedbugs at the Bridge Hotel to keep on the heat and lights. I don’t like to come home every day to a sick man.”
“You’re being ridiculous. I just have a bad cold. I can’t help it.”
“Please try to get better,” pleads Hillary. She extends the plate, where something strange is glistening right beside the toast.
Jacob realizes it’s a little sparkly pink pill. Poisonous pink. The kind of pink that could kill a person.
Jacob tucks it under his tongue and clenches his throat as Hillary eagerly watches. When she looks away, he secretly spits out the pill and slides it between the couch cushions. Hillary covers him in a quilt and tucks it in all around him.
Jacob dreams that he is surrounded on all sides by piles of sliding soil. He discovers that the earth around him is warm the way his radiator is. He reaches out a tentative tongue to taste the dirt. There is the familiar flavor of lead paint, almost like cotton candy at the state fair. By eating this dirt –by really taking in great mouthfuls of it– Jacob can tunnel toward a light. He is almost at the surface when he sneezes awake.
Jacob flings an arm out toward his radiator. It is the perfect temperature, a purring companion. Jacob peels off a second fleck of paint. He decides this is the only medicine he needs, swallows it dry, and pulls the quilt over his ears.
