WHAT IT IS

She is in the shower. The shower is all one piece of plastic. There is no soap on the soap ledge, but there is plenty of old gray soap sludge. She is in the shower. There is no soap. The water is on and goes from being lukewarm to scalding hot. When it becomes hot, she has to press herself against the side of the shower. There is no soap. The shower is plastic. The shower's door is frosted glass. Or maybe the glass isn't frosted--it's just so covered with soap scum. She is in the shower--but still wears her jeans, her vest. She still has her fake mustache on her face. Amazing how spirit gum can stick when you don't want it to and how it fails when you need it to work. It fails when you most need your disguise. The shower is in the kitchen. The kitchen sink is between the toilet and the shower--the shower that she is in. Across from the shower is a stove, and someone is at the stove frying something that smells like tofu. It must be tofu. There is no soap. She has on her mustache and her vest. Everything on her is wet. Everything inside her is wet, too, though she thinks it's all dry. She thinks her guts are dry and her hair is wet. It is all wet. Someone is frying tofu, and a piece of tofu flies over the shower door and slaps her in the face. It's still hot, and then it's at her feet. She closes her eyes and sees images from her awful day: a parrot, a piece of rusted metal, large gray underwear, broken green glass, a pint of blood still in its bag. Another piece of tofu flops over the shower door and lands at her feet. She still wears her boots. She takes off her boots. She takes off her jeans, her vest, her mustache. She asks the person frying tofu to leave, and he leaves. She thinks she is alone, but then, as the minutes pass, she smells thick gas in the air. Gas from the stove. She cracks the shower door open and sees the stove door open. The person who had been frying the tofu has his head in the stove. Naked, her vest and jeans and boots and mustache in a wet pile in the shower, she jumps over to him. He might have been her boyfriend. He was one of her boyfriends. He was her brother, visiting her from Chicago. She is naked and wet. His head is in the stove. The smell of gas is thick. She pulls him out, only to see his is wearing a breathing apparatus. He takes it off, laughs at her, turns off the stove. He takes a beer from the refrigerator and drinks it.