Chapter 9: The Basement

July 2020

The heat arrived early and stayed late, the kind of California July that turned the air into soup and made the cicadas scream like witnesses.

For three weeks the household had run on a rhythm older than language: 5:00 a.m. – Collars and coffee 6:00 a.m. – Chores, naked, music loud 8:00 a.m. – Breakfast on the floor at Bob’s feet 9:00 a.m. until dusk – whatever he decided Night – whatever holes, mouths, or hearts he wanted to fill.

But every spare hour, every drop of sweat, had been poured into the basement.

Bob worked like a man possessed (cutting drywall, running electrical, staining the concrete floor a deep blood-red that drank the light). Susan painted trim on her knees, breasts swaying with every stroke, collar glinting. Nawana hauled lumber and cursed in musical Cuban when she pinched a finger. Alicia measured twice, cut once, and tied perfect suspension rings into the ceiling beams with the same precision she once used to tie her pointe shoes.

By the last week of July the transformation was nearly complete.

One final shipment had been delayed since May: a custom stainless medical tray on wheels, 18 × 24 inches, lipped edges, mirror finish. Bob had ordered it the day after Nawana’s arrival, back when he still thought one woman might be enough.

It arrived on a Thursday at 2:14 p.m. while they were all on their knees scrubbing the new rubber flooring.

The doorbell rang once.

Bob climbed the stairs, signed for the heavy box, and carried it down himself.

The women looked up, paint-speckled, sweat-slick, and went still.

He slit the tape with his pocket knife.

Inside, wrapped in foam, lay the tray (cold, clinical, perfect).

He set it on its rolling stand beneath the St. Andrew’s cross he had built from oak and iron the week before.