It’s his last dread before all dread leaves him. To find the earth unfolded underfoot, a bath towel dropped in his wife’s wake. Shower-damp or just-washed, slipped off, left on the floor, short of the laundry basket, the bed. The way it sprawls in soft crevasses and small peaks, so treacherous. He has to bend on hip bones thin as handlebars to pick it up. Once aloft, he can give it a light magician’s snap, a fold once in half, end to end, edges flush, corners aligned. The straightness lets him breathe a little. He holds it outspread in his quavering hands, the new rectangle clean and welcoming as a just-bought doormat. But the dread remains. So he folds it again to the size of an atlas, like the one he used to read in bed when he was a boy, his favorite pages the ones with dramatic, saturated renderings of unrenderable things like cosmic rays and hadrons and black holes. But still the dread. So he attempts the hardest folds, the quartering and eighth-ing that can’t keep their shape. As much as he smooths and presses, the layers flop open in limp resistance, and he despairs. There was a time he could fold the paper sleeve of a straw so tiny and neat and labyrinthine, it was like another world. Is there a place in this world for him anymore where order remains, and if not, where he can create it? Best to know when to give up trying, to let a thing go. This, at least, he remembers. Sometimes. Like now. He snatches up the towel—that wild, unfurled bane—opens the hamper, casts it into the chaos, and slams the lid. Breathes. Then he looks for another dropped towel that might lead him to his wife.
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