Venus lowered herself onto the edge of the tub with the care of someone who had learned, through long and sometimes hilarious experience, that the universe would happily tip her sideways if she gave it half a chance. The bathroom was warm from the radiator and thick with steam, the mirror already fogged into a soft gray blur, and she could feel the heat of the water waiting beneath her feet, the surface shimmering with the faint iridescence of the bath salts she'd dumped in without measuring. The porcelain pressed cold through the backs of her thighs, and her belly settled soft and warm against her lap. She considered the bottle for a moment, then set it down. "Measure," she muttered. "Who measures?"
"Right," she said to no one. "Let's see if we can do this without the fire department."
She braced one hand on the edge of the tub, the other on the tile wall, and swung her legs over. The clearance was tight—her knees brushed the towel rack, and the edge of the sink dug into her lower back if she leaned the wrong way. She'd mapped this geometry years ago, the way you learn the exact dimensions of a room you live in, but that didn't make it comfortable. It just made it predictable. She went in sideways, hip first, one hand flat on the wall to steady herself, the soft weight of her shifting as she found the angle that worked.
The water closed around her ankles first, then her calves, then the heavy press of her thighs as she lowered herself in. The tub was a standard residential model, the kind that came with the apartment, and it had never been designed for a body like hers. "Built for a broomstick," she said, wriggling. "Congratulations, broomstick people." The porcelain was slick and cold against her skin where it rose above the waterline, and she had to fold herself at an angle just to get her shoulders submerged, her knees drawn up and pressed against the far wall, the faucet digging into her hip. Her breasts floated, buoyant, the warm water lapping at the undersides, and she let out a low, involuntary hum at the feel of it.
She sighed and let her head fall back against the rim. The steam curled around her face, beading on her glasses, and she took them off and set them on the edge of the sink, blinking at the blur of the room. The water was good. Hot enough to turn her skin pink, the salts doing their work, and she could feel the tension in her shoulders begin to unspool. The heat crept up between her thighs, and she shifted, letting it find her, a slow private warmth that had nothing to do with getting clean.
But the angle was wrong. Her hips were folded too sharply, her knees jammed against the side, and every time she tried to shift, the water sloshed dangerously close to the rim. She held still and waited for it to settle. She'd had this tub for eight years, and she still hadn't figured out how to actually soak in it. She could sit in it. She could get wet in it. She could, with considerable contortion, wash herself in it. But the idea of lying back and letting the heat take her—that was a luxury the tub had never offered.
"You know what this room needs?" she said aloud, her voice echoing off the tiles. "To be about three feet wider. In every direction."
The thought settled into her like a seed, and she let it grow while she worked the soap across her skin, the washcloth dragging over the swell of her belly, the heavy curve of her breasts, the soft give of her arms. She was not a small woman, and she had made her peace with that years ago—had, in fact, made something closer to a friendship with it, a working relationship based on mutual respect and the occasional indulgence of a warm towel straight from the dryer. She liked her body. She liked the way it moved, the way it filled a room, the way it drew glances from people who were paying attention. She liked the freckles scattered across her shoulders and the silver-gray curls that fell past them, the pink ends that she'd dyed herself in the kitchen sink last spring and touched up faithfully ever since. She dragged the washcloth slow across her collarbone, down the slope of one breast, and felt her own touch go straight to her belly, a warm clench she didn't bother to talk herself out of. She caught her own blurred reflection in the fogged mirror and gave it a little salute.
What she didn't like was the way this bathroom made her feel like she was performing a geometry problem every time she wanted to wash her hair. "And I failed geometry," she said. "Twice."
The shower was worse. She'd tried it this morning, wedging herself into the narrow fiberglass stall, her elbows knocking against the walls, the curtain clinging to her wet skin like it was personally offended by her existence. "Oh, we're fighting now? Fine. We're fighting." The handheld sprayer was mounted too low, and she'd had to crouch to rinse the shampoo out of her hair, her knees screaming in protest, the water splashing onto the floor because the curtain didn't quite close. She'd given up halfway through and finished with a washcloth at the sink, which had its own problems.
The toilet was the worst of all. That was the truth she didn't say out loud, the one she'd learned to work around with a kind of grim humor. The clearance between the bowl and the wall was too tight for her to turn properly, and reaching around to wipe was a contortion act that left her shoulder aching and her forearm cramped. She'd developed a system—a specific twist, a particular angle, a deep breath before she committed—but the system was exhausting, and it made her feel, in the small hours of the night when the apartment was quiet, like she was being punished for the crime of having a body. "One day," she said, "I'm going to take a sledgehammer to you. Just so you know. It's coming."
She finished washing, drained the tub, and stood carefully, gripping the towel rack for balance as the water left her skin and the cold air raised goosebumps along her arms. The towel was warm—she'd started putting it in the dryer before her baths, a small luxury that made the whole ordeal feel slightly more civilized—and she buried her face in it, breathing in the scent of the fabric softener, the heat soaking into her cheeks. She wrapped it around herself and pressed it flat against her belly, the terrycloth rough and warm, and stood a moment just feeling it.
The bathroom smelled like her. That was something she'd noticed years ago, the way a room absorbed the people who lived in it, the musk of skin and hair and the faint sour note of sweat, the steam that carried it all. The towels smelled like her. The bathmat smelled like her. Even the walls, she suspected, had absorbed her over the years, the paint drinking in the humidity and the scent until the whole room was saturated with the particular fact of her existence. She didn't mind it. It was honest, that smell. It was the smell of a life being lived. She patted one wall on her way out, a small, private acknowledgment.
She pulled on her robe—a faded terrycloth thing that had seen better decades—and padded out into the living room, her bare feet leaving damp prints on the worn wood floor. The apartment was small, a one-bedroom with a living room that did double duty as a dining room and a workspace, and it was cluttered in the way that homes get cluttered when the person who lives there has better things to do than organize. Books stacked on the coffee table. A half-finished cross-stitch project draped over the arm of the couch. The couch itself, sagging in the middle, the upholstery stale with years of use, the cushions permanently dented in the shape of her body.
She dropped onto it and let out a long breath, staring at the ceiling. The cushions gave under her with a familiar sigh, the springs settling into the grooves they'd worn for her, and she let herself sink until her thighs spread wide and her robe fell open down the middle. Her bed was visible through the open bedroom door, the sheets rumpled, the quilt half on the floor, the pile of clothes she'd tried on and rejected this morning still heaped on the chair. The apartment was a mess. It was her mess, though, and she'd made it, and she knew exactly where everything was even if it didn't look like it. The mess was a system. It just wasn't a system anyone else could read.
Her hand drifted to the phone on the coffee table, and she unlocked it without looking, scrolling through her photos until she found the ones she'd taken this morning. The bathroom, from the doorway. The tub, from above. The shower stall, the toilet, the narrow stretch of floor between them. She'd taken them because she'd been thinking about something, an idea that had been rattling around in her head for weeks now, growing more insistent with every awkward bath and cramped wipe.
She wanted a new bathroom.
Not a new bathroom in the sense of a fresh coat of paint and a better shower curtain. A new bathroom in the sense of a room designed for her. Built for her. A room where she could turn around without hitting her elbows, where she could sit on the toilet and reach herself without contorting, where she could lie in the tub and actually soak, her whole body submerged, the water covering her like a blanket. "A room that doesn't hate me," she said. "That's the dream."
She sat up, the idea suddenly urgent, and began to talk to herself in the same way she always did when she was thinking something through—out loud, with gestures, as if she were explaining it to an audience that existed only in her head.
"Okay. So. The steam shower—vapor-tight, obviously, you don't want the whole room fogging up. Multiple adjustable sprays, so you can hit different angles depending on what you need. A handheld shower head, mounted low enough to reach without crouching. And a bench. A real bench, built into the wall, sturdy enough to sit on. Not one of those little plastic things that slides around. I want to sit down in my shower like a queen. Is that too much to ask?"
She pointed at the far wall, where the shower currently was, and traced the outline of the bench in the air.
"There. Against the back wall. Teak or something, or maybe just tile, heated if possible. Something you can actually sit on and not worry about it collapsing."
She shifted on the couch, getting more comfortable, her knees pulled up, her robe gaping slightly at the chest. The apartment was quiet around her, the only sounds the hum of the refrigerator and the distant murmur of traffic from the street, and she let herself sink into the fantasy of it, the room taking shape in her mind's eye.
"And the tub. That's the big one. I want a soaking tub. Japanese style, maybe, deep and square, the kind you can actually sit in, not just recline in. Water up to your chin. Steam rising off the surface. But it has to have a practical entry—you can't have me climbing over the side like I'm mounting a horse. So maybe a step, or a door, or something that opens and closes. There are tubs like that. I've seen them. They're expensive, but they exist. And I've earned expensive. I've been climbing over this porcelain cliff for eight years."
She gestured at the corner of the room, where the current tub sat, and imagined it transformed. The porcelain replaced with something darker, deeper, the water a black mirror reflecting the candlelight. She could picture herself in it, her hair pinned up, the heat soaking into her bones, the whole world reduced to the size of that warm, dark room.
"And the toilet. God, the toilet." She laughed, a short, sharp sound. "The toilet is the thing. I want a washlet. Heated seat, warm-water bidet, air dryer. The whole works. You press a button and it does everything for you. No more contorting, no more reaching, no more—" She made a vague gesture at her lower back. "You know. I want to sit down and be pampered like a Roman emperor. Is that so much?"
The toilet was the thing, she meant it. It was the thing that had pushed her from vague dissatisfaction to actual planning, the thing that had made her start taking photos of her bathroom and pricing out fixtures on her phone in the middle of the night. She was tired of the system. Tired of the twist and the angle and the deep breath. Tired of the whole production. "I'm not asking for the moon," she said. "Just a toilet that doesn't require a warm-up routine."
"And the rest of it," she said, her voice picking up speed, her hands moving in the air. "Clearances. You need enough room to turn around. Wider door, or a pocket door, something that doesn't take up half the wall. Nonslip flooring, obviously, you don't want to break your neck getting out of the shower. And storage—actual storage, at the right height. Not a medicine cabinet I have to stand on my toes to reach, not a shelf behind the toilet that I can't see without kneeling. I'm not doing calf raises to find the aspirin."
She was pacing now, or as close to pacing as she could manage in the small living room, her bare feet slapping against the wood floor, her robe billowing behind her. The vision was so vivid in her mind that she could almost see it, the room superimposed over the real one like a ghost, every detail sharp and clear.
"Heated floors, maybe. That would be nice. And a window, or at least a skylight, something so it doesn't feel like a cave. Plants, if there's room. I don't know. I'm not an architect. I don't know if any of this is even possible. But I know what I want, and I know I'm tired of pretending I don't."
She stopped, her hands falling to her sides, and let out a breath. The fantasy receded, leaving the real bathroom behind it—the cramped tub, the narrow toilet, the shower stall with its limp curtain. She loved her apartment. She'd lived here for eight years, and she'd made it hers. But the bathroom had always been a compromise, and she was tired of compromising. "Eight years," she said. "Eight years of apologizing to a room. That's enough."
She was turning back toward the couch when she noticed the water.
It was on the floor, a dark stain spreading across the linoleum near the base of the tub, catching the light from the window. She frowned and walked closer, crouching down to look at it—her knees complaining, her belly folding against her thighs—and the linoleum was old, and the stain was darker than the worn pattern around it, a patch of damp that hadn't been there this morning. She touched it with her fingers, and they came away wet.
"Huh," she said.
She stood and looked at the tub, then at the floor, then back at the tub. The water she'd drained was gone, the tub empty, the porcelain still beaded with droplets. But the floor was wet, and the wetness didn't stop at the base of the tub. It spread out, soaking into the grout of the tile, creeping toward the wall.
She knelt down again, this time pressing her hand flat against the floor, feeling the damp soak into her palm. It was cold, and it had a smell to it—that faint, mineral smell of water that has been sitting in pipes, the smell of metal and time. She followed it with her eyes, tracing the path of the moisture from the base of the tub to the corner where the floor met the wall, and she felt her stomach drop slightly.
The leak was real. It wasn't a spill from her bath, wasn't water that had sloshed over the rim while she was settling in. This was something else, something that had been happening slowly, steadily, for a while. She'd noticed the water before, she realized now—a damp patch near the tub that she'd assumed was from her baths, a mustiness in the air that she'd blamed on the humidity. But it wasn't that. It was a leak. A real leak, the kind that would only get worse if she ignored it.
She stood up and wiped her hand on her robe, looking at the spreading stain. "Well," she said. "That's not ideal. That's the opposite of ideal."
She looked at the tub again, at the caulking along the edge, the spot where the porcelain met the floor. She couldn't see the source of the leak from here—couldn't see past the surface of things, into the walls where the real damage would be. But she knew enough to know that this wasn't something she could fix with a tube of silicone and a prayer. "I've fixed a lot of things in this apartment," she said. "I've fixed the garbage disposal. I've fixed the closet door. I've fixed the thing that goes bump in the night. But I am not fixing a leak I can't see." This was something that needed a professional. Someone who knew what they were doing, who could diagnose the problem properly, who could tell her what was actually wrong instead of what she hoped was wrong.
She pulled her phone out of her pocket and looked at it, the screen glowing in the dim light of the living room. She didn't have a handyman. She'd never needed one before, had always managed to fix things herself or live with them broken. But this was different. This was water damage, and water damage only got worse the longer you ignored it, spreading through the subfloor, rotting the joists, turning a small problem into an expensive disaster. "And I am not paying for a new subfloor because I was too proud to call a man with a wrench."
"Okay," she said, talking to herself again, her voice steady. "Okay. I need to find someone."
She walked back into the bedroom, her mind already turning over the problem, and pulled open the drawer where she kept her clothes. The shorts were at the bottom—a pair of Sophie shorts she'd bought two or three sizes too small, the smallest she could find, because nothing commercially available ever sat low enough to suit her. She'd taken them to her sewing machine and reworked them herself, trimming the front rise to four inches from the crotch and the back rise to eight, so the waistband rode deep into the cleft of her thick labia and barely covered anything at all. The back was comically low, and the shorts didn't cover her crack even standing still; if she bent over, there was a real chance of showing most of her cheeks. She loved them. She pulled them out and held them up, looking at them critically, then at the blush-colored camisole with thin straps and lace trim that she'd bought on a whim and worn twice. The shorts were soft, well-worn, the kind of clothes she wore when she wanted to feel good about herself.
She hadn't planned to be seen in them today. But if she was going to call someone—if she was going to have a professional in her home, looking at her bathroom, her body, her life—she wanted to feel like herself. She wanted to feel like the person she was when she was alone and comfortable, not the person she became when she was trying to be presentable. She loved her body, and she loved letting it hang out for the desires and imaginations of anybody who got the gift of her presence—her fupa hanging half exposed, though her belly usually covered her up anyway. "If he's going to see the bathroom," she said, "he might as well see the rest of the tour."
She put the camisole on, then the shorts, and looked at herself in the mirror that hung on the back of the bedroom door. The woman who looked back at her was soft and round and silver-haired, the pink ends of her curls brushing her shoulders, her glasses perched on her nose, her nose ring glinting in the light. The lace of the camisole pulled taut across her chest, and the shorts sat low and snug, and she felt a warm little thrill at the sight of herself, the same low heat from the bath still humming under her skin. She was beautiful, she thought. Not in the way that women were supposed to be beautiful, not in the way that magazines and movies told her she should be. But in the way that was hers, the way that she had earned through years of looking at her own body and deciding that she liked what she saw. "Damn right," she said, and turned to check the back. "Still got it. Still got all of it."
She smiled at herself, a real smile, and turned away from the mirror.
"All right," she said, picking up her phone. "Let's find someone who knows what they're doing."
She scrolled through her contacts, then through the search results, looking for a handyman who specialized in bathroom repairs. She didn't know the neighborhood's shops the way she knew her own apartment, but she knew how to read reviews, how to spot the ones that were written by real people with real problems. She wanted someone who would take her seriously. Someone who would look at her bathroom and see the problem, not the body standing in front of it. "Though," she added, "if he's cute, I'm not going to complain."
Though—she allowed herself the thought, a small, private pleasure—if they happened to look, she wouldn't mind. She liked being looked at. She liked the weight of a gaze, the way it made her feel seen. But she didn't need it. She wasn't looking for a performance. She was looking for a repair. "A repair," she repeated, firmly. "And maybe a little eye candy. But mostly a repair."
She found a name and a number, and she typed out a message, her thumb hovering over the send button.
Hi. I have a tub that's leaking. I'd like someone to come take a look and tell me what's wrong. Also, eventually, I'd like to talk to someone about a bigger project—a bathroom remodel. Not sure if that's something you do, but I'm open to a consultation.
She read it over, then added:
I'm free most evenings and weekends. Let me know what works for you.
She sent it before she could second-guess herself, then set the phone down on the nightstand and looked around the room. The apartment was still a mess. The bathroom was still leaking. The fantasy of the perfect room was still just a fantasy, a collection of images in her head that might never become real. "But I've done harder things," she said. "I've dyed my own hair in a kitchen sink. I've reworked a pair of shorts with a sewing machine and a prayer. I can handle a plumber."
But something had changed. She'd said the words out loud. She'd reached out. She'd taken the first step toward making the room she'd been dreaming of, and even if it took months, even if it cost more than she could afford, even if it turned out to be impossible—she'd started. "And I'm not stopping now," she said, and meant it.
The phone buzzed, and she picked it up, reading the reply.
Happy to take a look. I'm actually just two blocks away—I can be there in about ten minutes if now works. The remodel—yes, I do those. We can talk about it.
She read it twice. Ten minutes. She looked up from the phone, and the apartment looked back at her—the books stacked on the coffee table, the cross-stitch draped over the couch, the damp footprints she'd tracked in from the bathroom, the bedroom door standing open on a rumpled bed and a heap of rejected clothes. Her hair was still damp against her neck. The bathroom floor was still wet. "Ten minutes," she said, and laughed, a startled, breathless sound. "Ten minutes and I'm dressed like this." She was already moving, snatching up the cross-stitch and dumping it in a basket, kicking the damp prints out of sight with the side of her foot, tugging the quilt up over the bed with one hand while the other smoothed her camisole. It was not going to be a spotless apartment. It was never going to be a spotless apartment. But it was hers, and she was wearing exactly what she wanted to be wearing, and the man was two blocks away. "Well," she said, catching her reflection in the hallway mirror and grinning at it. "He did say he was close."
"Ten minutes," she said to the empty room, and this time it came out as something between a laugh and a dare. "Perfect."