brown a pack of cream-filled chocolate cupcakes at the checkout stand. She ate one while waiting in line and saved the other for later. She’d eat it with some ice cream. Upon entering her apartment, Julie was greeted with a strong, warm draft that resisted her and made it difficult to push the door open, as if a pile of sand had grown up behind it. What hit her wasn’t the familiar metallic rush of radiator heat that she was used to. Instead, the air in her apartment was thick and smelled earthy, like beets. Maybe hay. For a moment, she thought that Ira might have come back, that he was there cooking them something for dinner. Perhaps there had been something more complicated the previous night in that searching, clinical look of his. Maybe it hadn’t been disappointment or pity on his face at all. She hung her key on the small hook near the door and with her free hand flicked on the lights. There was no Ira, and the earthy smell faded quickly. As she stood in her small entry hall preparing to take off her coat and hang it in the closet, she could not believe that she’d felt so suffocated the night before. The apartment seemed enormous to her now, palatial, and Julie felt small and hard as a beetle scuttling around inside it. The ceiling seemed too high, and the windows were so tall. The floor spread out for what seemed like acres. She put her jacket in the closet, set the groceries on the counter, and looked around. When she finally put the groceries away, the ice cream, which had been rock hard in the outside air, was softened mush. On Monday, Julie decided to pull herself together. She showered, washed, and conditioned her hair, scrubbed her arms, legs, and the undersides of her feet. She scrubbed her armpits, elbows, and knees in the same manner, until the hot water and scrubbing made her skin tender and, in some spots, a little raw. She dried, wrapped a clean towel around her body and another around her hair and went to her
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