Free Grist Mill Road by Christopher J. Yates

As undignified as he might feel were someone to observe him standing naked in the bathtub, the vacuum cleaner close at hand, his pale body covered in short lengths of dark clipped hair.
    Every day the picture in his head of Red Moose Barn gains a little more detail. The interior of the restaurant has been clear to him for some time, so his imagination begins to wander farther and farther outside. He sees a meadow rising behind the barn, climbing eventually to an apple orchard. The restaurant’s nearestneighbors are retired professors who live in a converted schoolhouse and take the same table early every Thursday evening.
    Back in the real world of their condo, Patrick begins to perform domestic chores beyond the kitchen, which means they have to let go of their housekeeper—there remains nothing for her to clean. He fears an angry scene but it is worse, their housekeeper cries and tells him they have a beautiful apartment and she is grateful to have worked there. Hannah says that letting go of Marta was a mistake, Patrick will soon find a job and they will struggle to find a housekeeper as good.
    But not using Marta will save them almost five thousand dollars a year. So he scrubs and he dusts and he polishes. He washes their clothes and folds them neatly away. One day in their apartment building’s laundry room, a woman tries to help him add time to the dryer. But he knows how to add five minutes to the dryer. He’s a man, not an idiot. This is not genetic fucking knowledge.
    Patrick smiles and thanks her.
    Returning to the apartment, he discovers that a picture of sorrel soup with blackened shrimp that he sent to a food photo submission website has been accepted. Nearly seven hundred people are funneled to his own website that day. One visitor, TribecaM, writes such a kind and gushing comment about Patrick’s recipe-writing style that he asks Hannah whether she has invented the character TribecaM so that she can compose uplifting comments on his blog to bolster his mood.
    She says that she has done no such thing, then looks uncomfortable, as if wondering whether she might be guilty of some negligent omission.
    One night, before the weather is quite warm enough for it to be comfortable outside, they make love on their building’s roof terrace, almost getting caught by neighbors who come out to show the view to friends. Patrick and Hannah are behind a long wooden planter and they hear the neighbors whispering about people in the building they dislike. Hannah and Patrick are not on the list but some of their dislikes surprise Patrick and he feels hurt on other people’s behalf.
    Another night, after watching The Seagull on Broadway, they eat at a Mexican restaurant and Hannah slips her hand under the table and up against his groin. They fuck urgently but almost silently in the men’s bathroom before returning to plates of l échon and carne asada.
    They no longer talk about his efforts to find a job. He doesn’t tell Hannah that his blog has started making money. It seems as if she has closed her eye to him and is silently praying for things to get better. But until they do, she doesn’t want to watch, she can’t take on his pain. Perhaps they love each other too much to talk about what is happening to him, that the sun is slipping from Patrick’s world.
    It had always seemed to him that Hannah’s nighttime screaming occurred approximately once a week. At the end of January he creates a document on his laptop to keep a record of these episodes and discovers that the true figure, over a three-month period from February to May, was 1.23 times a week. But there are no particularly severe episodes. No knives, no slashed upholstery.
    He expands the document to include figures that will allow him to analyze his tailing of Don Trevino—having decided that stalking is definitely too harsh a word—and then adds a section for recording the average frequency of his and