Clean

Today we treated ourselves to a bubble bath, he on one end, me on the other, our legs outstretched and overlapping, the water hot and slippery. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the medicine cabinet misted over. Below it, on the toilet seat, our clothes lay in a tidy, folded pile. We were two grown adults in a normal-sized tub, and I felt like one of seventeen clowns jammed in a car.

‘It’s nice’, he said.

‘Mmhmm’.

‘Smells good.’

‘Yup.’

He wiggled his toes and grinned toothily, trying to draw me out. I winked back, but all I could think about was phosphorous, sewage pipes bleeding goo into the ocean, gasping fish and high school chem class. Nature was out there with its struggling ice caps and abnormal winter temperatures, while here we were in our perfectly bubbled oasis.

He saw me looking blankly at the water and once again read my mind. ‘Stop thinking about the fishes’, he said. ‘The fishes are okay. They’re happy and they’re swimming free’.

I looked up and made a face. He flicked a bubble mound my way and the world went back to being good again.