‘Nana.’

She snaps from her gaze and sucks a hard breath into her sudden mouth.

‘It’s just . . .’

Her shoulders collapse. He spreads his fingers, steps toward her with open palms.

‘I know, come on.’

‘I just . . .’

‘I know.’

Slipping his arms under hers, he pulls her up against him. She helps as she can with a lean. Once up, she moves for her glasses again around his back, but has trouble reaching. She lets out a deep breath, gives up on the glasses and glances a fingertip to the pearl edge of the sink.

‘Okay?’

‘Okay.’

They move one foot of their four at a time in heavy clomps. The full weight of both of them combined drops on each single heel. This is how they turn. The bathroom spins in starts, off-white shining tiles, each framed by interlocking matte grout, graph the wall behind the toilet. A bowl of sweet chipped-bark potpourri and a book of inspirational Bible quotes stand on the back of the toilet. A towel plush enough to have been cut from the carpet of an office building’s hallway has a tight knit monogram, unfamiliar initials centered curling across its bottom, folded tightly perfect. Sculpted soap to look like sea-shells from pink to rose, pale aquamarine to muted sea-foam . . .

Star, Globe, and Enquirer are stacked thickly in a wicker basket. The thin page of the top issue is dimpled by drips of water, which warp the smiling celebrity’s familiar face. Burned by love and eating to cope, he’s been served up for public sacrifice before, won’t flinch. The wet page pinches his face in toward its middle, furrowing his brow and collapsing his nose, his chin like a diffused watercolor of a robot’s jaw made of a bucket clamping upward. But the warping is the surface remembers Will. This is not a flat surface representing a warp.