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He runs to the bedroom, shuts the door. I go into the bathroom, undress, open his medicine chest to look for a box of Q-Tips to clean my ears. It’s an awful habit, never buying a box for myself but only using Q-Tips I find in other people’s bathrooms. But it’s only two to four Q-Tips a person and I try not to hit the same medicine chest twice. It’s just something I do — some intentionally aberrational part of me I don’t question or want to change and perhaps my last link to a mediumly renegade life. I’ll probably do it even after I’m married, unless my husband already buys Q-Tips for himself, but not after I have a baby, since I suppose it’s necessary for a number of reasons to have them around for a child. And so far every time I’ve wanted to clean out my ears, which is about every second week, I’ve found a box of them or one of its inferior equivalents in other people’s bathrooms.

I take two Q-Tips out of the box and start to clean. Door’s locked, so he can’t walk in. Lots of wax, some of it quite hard and dark, so it could be three to four weeks since I did this. Most times two are enough. Now, after five — maybe a record number for me — the cotton nib comes out clean from both ears without digging too far in, and I flush the used Q-Tips down.

I wash my crotch with his washrag. I bet it’s a woman on the phone, wanting to come over or Peter to come by. So be it if that’s what he wants, but don’t be silly: he can be with me tonight and tomorrow with her. Though I’m still not sure why I’m here. Sex, yes, and the only reason, but by now I don’t even know if I can get into it in any way. Sure I can. Lights out, blinds down and shut to keep out the street light, close my eyes, open my legs, feel around with my hands, and it’ll be easy and easier still if I can work my way to the top. The pressure of my weight usually slowed him down by half and my control up there speeds me up considerably, making us about even. Then sleep, morning, coffee, goodbye. I wash under my arms with the same rag, wash my face, rinse the rag, brush my teeth with his brush, brush my hair, fold up my clothes, run warm water in the sink and one at a time stick my feet under the tap, pushing out any recalcitrant lint between the toes, dry them and put on his bathrobe. Soft and so long on me that I feel like a girl in her father’s coat. I leave the bathroom, set my things on a chair. Forgot to look for the spermicide. I did see a box of condoms. No hiding them under the T-shirts in the dresser for him. Bedroom door’s shut. I knock.

“In a minute.”

I go back to the living room, turn over the record, look at the two walls filled from ceiling to floor with books.

“No, you listen to me once this year,” he yells in the bedroom.