She kicks off slippers onto the plywood floor and nestles against the headboard in a cocoon of pillows. Two cats, banished to the foot of the bed due to recent transgressions, crowd together on their hair-encrusted blanket. The graffiti of discordant paint samples on the wall mar the otherwise harmonious lines of the add-on bedroom. The drywall she hung over a month ago still smells slightly like damp earth.
The make-shift night stand supports a precarious pyramid of books, an alarm clock blinking 12:00 due to the intermittent and unresolved electrical problem with the breaker box, and a sweating beer bottle. She yanks the comforter to her shoulders and the Netflix case falls to the floor. The remote pokes her in the ankle and she gropes for it, finally pinning it between the skewed sheets and the cat blanket. Bit by bit she repositions herself and again wrestles with the comforter, as the cats fidget to find the center of their blanket.
Her sore butt, a result of this afternoon’s bike ride, vies for attention with her right elbow, tattooed with a bruise from a pipe wrench that she had wrestled with earlier that day. His comments about her pokiness had lead to a premature end of the bike ride, a request for him to leave, and resumption of her search for a long cheater bar to break loose that corroded pipe.
Over the last months of the house remodel the fit of pajamas had become increasingly tight around her shoulders and forearms. She shifts to face the floor length mirror, clenches her fist, and flexes her bicep; and then again at a different angle. Rolling stiffly back onto the pillows she reaches for the beer. It slips through her hands, soaking the edge of the bed and drowning the remote. She considers getting up to manually operate the DVD player but instead reaches for the top book on the pile; the Lost Symbol barely wins out over Californication. She hefts the book into her lap, fingers for the bookmark, and begins with, "Secrets hidden in plain sight …”. Her eyelids close before she reaches the end of the paragraph.
The make-shift night stand supports a precarious pyramid of books, an alarm clock blinking 12:00 due to the intermittent and unresolved electrical problem with the breaker box, and a sweating beer bottle. She yanks the comforter to her shoulders and the Netflix case falls to the floor. The remote pokes her in the ankle and she gropes for it, finally pinning it between the skewed sheets and the cat blanket. Bit by bit she repositions herself and again wrestles with the comforter, as the cats fidget to find the center of their blanket.
Her sore butt, a result of this afternoon’s bike ride, vies for attention with her right elbow, tattooed with a bruise from a pipe wrench that she had wrestled with earlier that day. His comments about her pokiness had lead to a premature end of the bike ride, a request for him to leave, and resumption of her search for a long cheater bar to break loose that corroded pipe.
Over the last months of the house remodel the fit of pajamas had become increasingly tight around her shoulders and forearms. She shifts to face the floor length mirror, clenches her fist, and flexes her bicep; and then again at a different angle. Rolling stiffly back onto the pillows she reaches for the beer. It slips through her hands, soaking the edge of the bed and drowning the remote. She considers getting up to manually operate the DVD player but instead reaches for the top book on the pile; the Lost Symbol barely wins out over Californication. She hefts the book into her lap, fingers for the bookmark, and begins with, "Secrets hidden in plain sight …”. Her eyelids close before she reaches the end of the paragraph.
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