Seven people once lived together in close proximity, and for a while this group did most everything together. Cooking rice-based meals together, collecting rare pieces of art, sweeping down the steps. It was a friendship devoid of jealousy or antagonism. It would last for seventeen years.

The bed was theirs equally, and the seven roommates slept together in it often. Sometimes, during the day, it would be three of them in bed, or the two of them, but usually it was the seven—fourteen ankles fighting the duvet. Fourteen bruised ankles.

The men slept close together and the women snored. The thighs of the men were exposed—people might have been surprised by the abundance of this exposure, but the women were not surprised.

There were three men and four women. Four of them were young, and three of them were old. One of the men was quiet but caused the most noise since he had decided to become a drummer. Six of them were lawyers. Seven of them did not believe in God. Two of the women were orderly, and two of them were untidy. Three of the men were orderly, and none of them were untidy.

The seven did not have much privacy.

While five slept, the two could not stop fucking. They climbed on top of the others, aligned themselves, kissed, slipped. Their heels fell against the protrusion of five collarbones. But the five never woke up, or stirred, and for the seventeen years they shared a home, none of them ever suspected that at one time or another the two could not stop fucking.

For the two it was not ideal or comfortable.

The community of seven lived in a home the color of a peach, with a yellow kitchen wall and wooden floors marked with burgundy dots. The large tree outside their home was infused with remnants of a bicycle—the bicycle tree, they called it. It bore no fruit, but the community of seven did not mind this; they were not afraid. They didn’t believe the tree was cursed, in fact they leaned against it for shade and they touched the rusted bicycle with their fingernails.

As anxious children the seven had heard stories about this place and its previous inhabitants, and sometimes they would sit and discuss these stories as only anxious adults might—too loudly, too quickly: