Mick lay awake curled into a semi-fetal position. He hugged a pillow. It was a cold night. Typical for January in upstate New York, but yeah, too damn cold. The temperature had plummeted. Toes that never seemed warm felt frozen. But he wouldn’t wear socks. They were too confining under the heavy blankets. 

The irony wouldn’t be lost on her.

She snored next to him with her usual gusto. It wasn’t what kept him awake this night. Or most nights. He’d grown used to the whistling sounds that came from her smallish frame. 

She’d become a pretty woman, a lovely wife. At the time in life when many women develop mannish edges, she had become softer, more feminine. He wished he could appreciate the irony around that subject, but it was a sensitive issue. The cruelty of it stabbed at him unexpectedly during the years they’d stayed together.  

He eased out of bed with enough stealth to keep her sleeping, but not enough to disrupt her snoring. She rolled to her side and quieted. It mattered little. She would roll onto her back and start snoring again soon enough.

This was a familiar game they played. Mick called it insomniamusement. They played it nightly though she wasn’t aware she was a player, nor that she was undefeated in the game of which she knew nothing.

“I’m up,” he said in a whisper. “You win again, Pumpkin.”

The soft glow of the bathroom night light left his mirrored face lined with dark shadows. At fifty you get the face you deserve. Fortunately, your eyesight fails enough that it no longer matters when you look in the mirror.

He pissed a strong steady stream—for which he was thankful—and tapped the underside of his balls to drain the last squirt. Bad plumbing design in the male urinary tract but it beats the alternative. No matter how you wiggle and dance, the last few drops end up in your pants.

Being an expert on water and waste flow, he knew what he was talking about, including the little known reason why a man leaves a wet spot on the front of his trousers, even if being a man wasn’t what it used to be since The Change.

He pulled a tattered Syracuse hoodie overhead, mis-matched sweatpants over legs, slipped cold feet and toes gone numb into house shoes. He shuffled to the wood stove. The coals wanted stoking. He was happy to oblige. The heat felt good and orange on his face. 

The coals asked for more wood and he was happy to oblige. The split logs were old and dry. They crackled with flame quickly. The wife would have been pleased. She would have insisted he give the wood a blow job. 

Ah, the joke. She never seemed to tire of that tired old joke. 

Wood. Blow job. 

Ha ha ha.

His feeble long-term strategy to combat the joke was to wait it out knowing that she would tire of it. And, some day, she might. She had finally tired of Granddad’s old butter-up-your-end dinner table joke. 

They had both tired of many things already. But, he enabled her bad behavior every time he layered kindling on hot orange embers uncovered from gray ash, and blew on the wood until greedy flames licked up to consume it. Mick inhaled the smoky wood essence like an unrepentant smoker, a stone-cold tobacco junkie. Cigarettes were no longer an option for him now, which made his desire for a smoke all the more intense.

It’s about sucking anyway, not blowing. Suck in a deep breath…Exhale, ahhhhh. Repeat as needed.

Even if Chris would let him enjoy a smoke now and then, tobacco was always in short supply and a small pouch might cost a month’s wages, or more.

The restof his strategy was to avoid stoking the fire in her presence, but their cabin was small. The cozy wood stove drew anyone who entered like moths to a bug light, especially if there was weather. In upstate New York, there was a lot of weather. They both found that tiresome. But, what could you do? The reasons to stay put far outweighed the reasons to leave their little bubble.

The firewood box was low on kindling. He’d split more logs before work so she’d have heat today. He settled into the overstuffed reading chair. It swallowed him into its faded-sprung plushness. 

He loved the chair. Had fought long and hard to keep the chair. Would not part with the chair. It was a warm, comfortable cocoon in the brittle frozen winters, and a cool comfort in the muggy hot summers.

Beyond growing tired of it, she hated the chair. Had argued well for its demise due to its hideous upholstery and ridiculous footprint in their limited living space. 

For him it was non-negotiable. He’d given up a lot to fit their lives into this cabin, which they truly loved despite its challenges. But the chair stayed. And, of course, the cast-iron floor-stand reading lamp, which she did approve of, but not so much the nicotine-stained lampshade that came with it when he’d lobbied for the lamp from her grandfather’s estate. 

Granddad had smoked two packs a day but it wasn’t enough to kill him. Took a pint of bourbon and an overpass slick with black ice to take the old bastard out. That’s how a real man should die, Granddad would have said. Not like some feeble old bitch wasting away in a hospital bed. That was the one thing he and Granddad had agreed on, that wasting away in a hospital bed was no way to die.

Mick yawned, stretched, broke wind before he settled his backside into the well-formed cushion grooves. A moment of minor infinite peace washed through him when he turned on the light. Maybe this whole insomnia thing was by design. It offered a small pool of serenity, a singular peace difficult to squeeze into a chaotic waking day. And, he could fart with impunity.

His book of choice was a hard-boiled detective story. Mystery stories were like a big greasy brown bag of chips, both of which he considered a single-serving size. Chris roadblocked his potato chip habit while the library barely kept ahead of his voracious appetite for pulp fiction.

“They were rotting his mind,” she’d said. 

“Guess it’s my daddy issues,” he’d said. “I’m just happy to have a library where they don’t use the books for fuel.”

“I’d sooner have you reading Hemingway than this junk food diet of the brain,” she’d said in her most disparaging tone.

“You bring up Hemingway with such disdain. Have you become a true radical feminist then?”

“At least that pig Hemingway could write,” she’d said, and gone away in a huff.

He liked Hemingway just fine, but Raymond Chandler, that guy could write a hard-bitten tough-guy detective story.

Soon as he opened the book in the lamp’s yellow spotlight, Kitten mewled and levitated into his lap from the worn Persian rug. Mick moved a covering over his legs before she had time to settle.

“It’s my daddy issues,” he said, continuing the conversation that had occurred in his head. 

Kitten meowed. Her claws pierced his thigh through his ratty sweatpants. Grandma would have been furious seeing the gaudy afghan she’d knitted become the cat’s blanket. Grandma had hated cats and wasn’t exactly a dog person either. Kitten didn’t care, but she retracted claws, and settled into a sphinx-like state. She was done with this conversation.

“The payback of the living,” he said. 

Kitten ignored him, the payback of a Zen master.

The fire was just right. The wood stove radiated a warm glow. Kitten had settled, and purred rhythmically. Mick had his book in hand...and the phone rang in the bedroom. 

Had to be work.

Had to be an emergency. 

Kitten fled as he stood. The afghan fell away. Chris was in the doorway, sleepy eyes annoyed.

“The goddamn phone, Mick.” It was in her outstretched hand bleating like a handheld sheep. 

“Sorry,” he said. “Go back to sleep.”

She disappeared into the cold darkness of the bedroom far from the stove’s generous heat. He answered the phone. As expected, it was Alex from work.

“What is it?"

“We got a problem in one of the tanks.”

“Yeah?” 

“We got a floater.”

Mick laughed in spite of the late night interruption. “You got a floating turd in the sludge tank and you called in an emergency? I think it could have waited until morning.”

“Not that kind of floater. Looks like a body fell in the primary tank. It got hung up in the skimmer, which stopped skimming, and flipped the circuit that set off the alarm.”

He felt a shock from the news. Emergencies at the plant were, literally, crappy situations, but this was truly unexpected. “A human body?”

“Looks like it.”

“You sure it’s dead?”

“Yeah, it’s dead.”

“How can you tell?”

“Because it’s floating in the sludge tank, and hung up on the skimmer.”

That had a certain undeniable logic. Either you get out of the tank, or died trying. “Did you call the police?"

“No, I called you. That’s protocol when the alarm goes off, Boss Man.” 

Alex was a stickler for protocol if it suited him. Technically, he was on watch for overnight alerts, and therefore the first responder for any mechanical breakdown that could be a health hazard. Technically, he was supposed to call his supervisor, but a body in the tank? He probably should have called the cops.

“Okay. I’ll take care of it. You at the plant?"

“Yeah, I’m still here.”

“Okay, keep everything locked down until I get there.”

“What about the cops?”

“It’s after three in the morning, Alex. Sub-zero temperatures outside. How fast you think the cops are going to show for a body floating in a tank at the sewage treatment plant?”

Alex chuckled. “Not ’til after the donut shop opens,” he said, and hung up. 

Mick called the Sheriff’s office. He talked to the dispatcher, said there was an emergency at the Sussex County treatment plant, that there may be a body in a wastewater treatment tank. The dispatcher kept asking more questions he didn’t have answers for until the frustrated dispatcher said they’d get someone out there soon as possible and cut the connection. 

Mick went into the bedroom, changed into work clothes in the dark and felt unexpectedly tired. He lay down on top of the blankets thinking it’s a dead person, why should I rush?

But, it was a terrible thought and it made him feel horrible. But it was another hour before he got up and hurried out the door.