‘Why don’t you take a towel?’

I re-opened the pantry and I helped myself to two.

All afternoon, I sent to Dan noncommittal messages and received little parcelled-out messages in return: the couples had split off, to do whatever they wanted, then Lachlan had gone off to have lunch with a friend in Southbank, and Dan had gone into the city to meet up with him afterwards.

There were still provisional plans to have a swim, but these seemed increasingly like a collective MacGuffin. I felt sorry for the languishing employees of this pool, who’d spend the whole day wondering where all those swimmers were, peering out at the unpeopled horizon.

I stayed in my gruts, hot and slick, a damp night moving in; it kept to thirty-five but the humidity was whomping, prickly and velvet, sickening and slithering. Dan wound up at Lachlan’s neighbours’, eating all those leftovers; I was welcome to join them, but the details they imparted, a comprehensive ingredient list for toasted tofu sandwiches, suggested the careful construction of a cover story. Maybe they were having sex, or only making mood boards, or they’d realised that, fairy-tale-style, they’d gone too far with towel theft, taking first one, then another, then another, then another, until some moral about the commons was uncovered, the consequences mythical, the charges federal.

Dan was monogamous! And towel-obsessed! And Dan! Many housemates, many friends, blocked each other on Grindr, a gentleman’s agreement that allowed both parties to be comfortably gross and constantly online, but I loved seeing his little face humming on beside me. No thanks. I would miss his ever-unblocked presence.

I showered first with one green towel and later with the other, grateful for the two clean presents in the humid evening, where towels slung on the balcony would just stay wet all night. I was failing all the marshmallow tests, and they weren’t even marshmallows. What would they say at my funeral, once I’d had my last long shower? I imagined Dan standing at the podium and saying, ‘One thing’s for sure, he really tried to do as he liked.’ And someone putting their hand up and saying, ‘Sorry, I know it’s sad, but in the interest of accuracy, don’t most of us do that? Are you going to say that at everybody’s funerals?’

‘Yes,’ Dan would say. ‘I’m going to say that at everyone’s funerals.’

I was so sure the day’s business was unavoidably over that I wiped the benchtops and sprayed the bathroom with mould-killing spray. Dan was very tidy, but wasn’t very clean – his nature just abhorred a vacuum. So I vacuumed and mopped the floors and they stayed thick with moisture. I showered and moisturised until the moisture sopped.

If you weren’t careful, you could spend your whole life moisturising, and for what? I messaged my friend from Richmond. ‘Hey what are you doing tonight?’