She was now the owner of a bathtub that had become a permanent architectural feature of her home’s upper level.
The tub never moved again. But every Sunday, Lena filled it with warm water and a splash of eucalyptus oil, climbed the ladder, and soaked while looking down at her living room. From that angle, the ceiling fan looked like a slow-motion helicopter. The goldfish drifted past her knees. And somewhere deep in the floorboards, Horace’s ghost—if it existed—probably laughed. bathtub stuck
So she improvised.
She froze. “No,” she whispered.
A crack spiderwebbed across the bathroom tiles. Then another. The entire floor—a six-foot-by-eight-foot chunk of plywood, linoleum, and rot—began to tilt like a seesaw. Lena yelped and scrambled backward into the hallway. The tub, still stubbornly attached, rose two inches, three, then settled at a drunken angle, one claw still gripping the concrete like a stubborn cat on a screen door. She was now the owner of a bathtub