Traces...

Our routine has become so normal. Five in the morning, hit snooze button, eight minutes extra of sleep until I roll over and say, “time to wake up”. I never thought I could get used to making coffee before daylight, but I have. It’s our routine that we share and repeat five days a week, like directions on a shampoo bottle.
He leaves early on these mornings, six o’clock, for work. That is when the suite becomes mine. After he leaves, is when the life begins in the house, long after the coffee is brewed and the lunches are packed. He never sees what I see; centipedes crawling out onto the carpet. I tell him about them, he figures they are fictions. Again, this morning the centipedes emerge after he leaves. Shiny hard brown bodies, soft legs, the same soft legs moving like a Viking ships oars in the water heading into battle. This morning the centipede wasn’t ready for battle instead the lengthy insect was attempting to escape the floodwaters of last nights plumbing drama.
This is where the story really begins, at the point of discovery of a small wet spot outside of our bathroom door. I didn’t want to think about the wet spot. I wanted to linger on how he traced “I love you” on my back and waited for me to notice his code. I made him wait. I always make him wait. I wanted to linger on his silent evocations of love. But there was a wet spot on my floor. Both he and I turned to the cat in our minds; the cat was the most likely suspect.
Certainly she wasn’t innocent she often found ways to annoy us, force us to clean her mess, be it fur, dead animals she had convinced herself she killed and the occasional well-matted fur ball left in the right spot for us to step on
Certainly, this wet spot on my carpet was the work of her evil machinations to dominate our household and eventually the world. I put my nose down to the wet spot, hoping to find her innocent but afraid I might get my nose too close to something very unpleasant. No odor…nothing. She was absolved in my mind, but not his. He kept insisting she was the culprit, and I almost gave in until the turned to the bathroom door and noticed in the corner more wet carpet—she certainly had no part in more wet carpet. I flung open the closet door to reveal two water tanks; one for upstairs one for downstairs. I revealed a wet floor. He came barging through, male intensity and a desire to ascertain and fix the situation. This time the situation would not be fixed with male bravado, not even a well-placed phone call to the plumber would slow the amount of water issuing forth from the pipes.
At this moment, I wished I could go back to when he traced “I love you” on my back and hold time right there, far away from the water.