Cornered at every corner...

She checks the temperature of the filling bath with her foot while precariously straddling the tub. It's too hot so she turns the cold water faucet and attempts to 'stir' the mixing water with her submerged foot. Unsuccessful, she relents and creates a whirl-pool with her hands to mix the water subsequently making her book damp with soapy-wet finger prints.

Satisfied with the temperature she gets into the bath only long enough to feel the grimy-slime on the tub walls after the hot water has broken down the layers of dried-on shampoo and conditioner into an unpleasant film. Annoyed but uncaring she pauses as she remembers her last words to her roommate--I don't have my house keys. I'm going to borrow yours and I'll just leave the door unlocked for you--and realizes, of course, the door is locked. She debates: unlock the door now and maintain my integrity as a reliable roommate but suffer the disappointment of getting out of a bath prematurely, or wait for her to knock, risk annoying her and still suffer disappointment.

Sighing, she stands up, skims the bubbles off her arms and legs and steps onto the mat carefully navigating over her tall-boy of cider. In one swift movement like a starlet on the silver screen she pulls the towel from the rack and wraps herself in it. Her cider hits the floor with a dull, tinny thud and the sound of hissing bubbles is overcast by a frustrated 'shit.'

" In one swift movement...God I am such an idiot." From an imperceptible flow of ions hitting countless synapses a stream of self-deprecating thoughts plough through her brain. "The bathroom was just cleaned how could I be so careless it's on the mat and it's going to stink like beer who drinks cider in the tub I am such a romantic 'like a starlet on the silver screen' is a stupid alliteration I used up all the paper-towel don't just watch it spread across the floor use toilet-paper gees I am pathetic..."

Her thoughts towards unlocking the apartment door are forefront only after the spilt cider and slightly before romance. She shakes her head in self-loathing as she reflects on her last thoughts before the incident with the tall-boy and the towel. Somehow thoughts of romance never get old in the face of limitless reasons (and citations) to not count on it.

The cider is sopped up, the door unlocked in an uneventful moment that held so much promise for serendipity, and what remained of the cider was in hand as she finally broke the surface of the thinning bubbles for an evening soak.

Thomas Hardy was on the menu that night. Another book to add to an ever-growing list of books started and never finished--this, mostly due to an unsettling sexual nature of the book that robbed classics of their innocence with which she always had associated with 'classics'. Truth be told, sex has happened for a long time, but it was a dream to find a good book that wasn't between the sheets of lovers, husbands and wives or family members. Leave it to Canadian literature to fulfill one's literary quota of incest.

The words flowed...like the water from the faucet? No, smoother and more crafted than that. Enough to turn a filmy tub of luke-warm water and thinning bubbles into another world but not enough to smooth the troubled look on her face.
Nothing could distract her from her troubles today. And perhaps she wouldn't be so melancholy if only she could talk about it but no one was home. Perhaps she could lay her thoughts out on paper but then she'd only be telling herself what she already wondered.

Her one outlet that provided a forum for borderline verbal abandonment had been compromised thereby completing her trifecta of unavailable channels.

Now what, she thought.