All day she finds the wrong thing in other people's bodies. Shoulder after shoulder. Her thumbs press until it confesses.
At the clinic, one flight up, the leaflets about afterward are restocked on Tuesdays. Her hands are read quarterly downstairs: grip, span, tremor. Insured to the second knuckle. Nothing off the table is covered.
Evenings she wants weight across her back. Sunday light coming up the sheets. She buys a wide bath sheet and a second pillow. Sleeps on her own side.
People like you form lasting bonds. A gold ring appears around her photograph.
The men are good. The fireman cries at films without checking whether she sees. He lifts her onto the counter mid-sentence. Her heels behind his thighs, flour on her ass. He finishes the sentence afterward.
The widower asks twice. Means both. He undresses her carefully.
The carpenter smells of pine. His hand spans her waist. Unhurried, thorough. She comes with his thumb pressed into her right shoulder. On Monday her hand shakes on the measuring desk. She asks the receptionist to move her first patient. With the other hand she gives the carpenter five stars.
She knows the Latin for every muscle moving under her. She says harder. She says there.
The mornings are the best part. Then she waits them out.
The funicular man stays three nights in March. Her thumb counts his spine and stops at the seventh. His breath stops too. She knows it from her table, the week after bad news. He sleeps with one arm hanging off the bed.
On the third night, still in his bed, she gives him her easy compliment.
"You're good at this, the way a hotel is good at it."
His face does a small wrong thing. She meant it kindly. He waits for her to say something else. Halfway down the stairs she almost goes back.
His message arrives. Say when.
She remembers writing a kind sentence and sending it on a wet Thursday. Months later she looks for a plumber's number. The thread still ends at Say when. Her sentence is nowhere. Not sent. Not drafted.
There is roadwork by the depot. For a month she has meant to change her route home. Every night she takes the same street and is mildly annoyed.
She books the baths on Fridays. The assistant suggests a warmer opening. She declines the suggestion.
It's been a while.
X is still nearby.
She lets it be a while.
Phones die in the old baths' wooden lockers. Under the dome, steam moves through unphotographed light. Wet stone. Women plain and unposed. The attendant has a rower's forearms. She scrubs to the exact edge of too hard.
Heat works through the week in her shoulders. Her hands open.
The cloth lifts. Her back follows it.
"You missed there," she says.
The attendant has not missed it. She guides the woman's hand back. The thumb clicks under her fingers. She knows that sound. The attendant apologizes.
She keeps her hand over the woman's until the scrubbing starts again.
"Just you?" the attendant asks at the long slot.
"Just me."
Two hooks along a woman teaches her daughter which words are dear. Each one twice, as with money in front of a child. The girl gets one wrong. They start again.
The water takes all of her weight. Where the cloth went twice, it stings.