When we get home I bathe her. I take the soap. I take her scrunchy sponge and I wipe every part of her body. I dry her when we get out of the shower. I put her robe on, and I put her under the covers. I light candles in the windows and turn off everything but the kitchen light. I put my hand on her butt, over the comforter, and I put my other hand on her head.
She goes right to sleep.
I go to the kitchen. I make sure my mushrooms are packed away, all the cans sealed, no sticky honey residue anywhere on any of the cabinets (I hate sticky). I think about this trash can that’s in the alley behind the house this apartment is in, and I think about throwing away all my mushrooms: dismantling them, throwing away the honey in separate trash cans and disguising the mushrooms somewhere else..maybe just throwing them in someone’s yard. They’ll decompose fast enough without the honey. But I don’t do that. I check on Jules (asleep) and I make myself an Absolut Citron and OJ and I sit on the kitchen counter and play with magnetic poetry and wait for myself to get tired.