It takes five minutes to vacuum a room, but there are
100 rooms.
I am on door three when, through the din of the
vacuum roar, I hear a sound, faint and shaky, like the
tinkling of change in a pocket.
I turn the vacuum off. It’s so faint, I strain to
hear it.
I walk around, opening up rows of doors to reveal empty rooms, trying to follow the sound.
I open up doors four, five, and six. Nothing. I keep going. Seven, eight, nine. It’s not until door forty-nine that I find him: The Husband, sitting in an old armchair. It’s been a while. Even with his hands covering his face, I can see that he has aged, with a lightning-bolt streak of silver in his hair. He wears a sweater vest; he crosses his legs. When he looks up, I see that his face is wet, is pained.
It is the sound of delicate, fawn-like tears streaming down his craggy mountain of a face, strewn with white whiskers. Head lowered, I kneel in front of him, take his moist hands in mine.