A written proclamation on a large piece of cardstock was stapled to the signboard in the central plaza: a truck would drive through town emitting gas to poison the mosquitoes, so residents should remain inside with their doors and windows sealed.

I was shutting up my house when the night jerk arrived. I had to let him in. Whenever he arrives, I have the sensation of falling into the void, or a void, a narrow, personal void fitted to me. We first met on a park bench, and I felt the floor was lava: I felt we were on a life-raft shaped like a bench, just the two of us, and so I felt an immediate affinity for the jerk, as well as resignation. He swims so much during the day, his hair is wet all evening. The jerk had not been around for weeks, which was typical for the handsome raccoon, and I was dizzy, worrying whether my windows were properly sealed. “You’re not a mosquito,” said the night jerk. He wandered into the kitchen, where the remains of my dinner and dinner making were strewn on all the surfaces. “You ate your whole dinner but these last three peas were too much for you?” he asked while scooping them from the plate and into his mouth. There are two ways to do someone else’s dishes: 1) in a helpful way, and 2) in a reproachful way.

To avoid hearing the trucks go by, I turned on my stereo. I thought also that music might set the mood with the night jerk, and I imagined tuning the atmosphere like a music producer at their faders. Oh, I am always imagining things, and it’s never any help. Who had turned the volume dial all the way up? Guitar blared out of the speakers so loud, the jerk and I collapsed in precisely the same way—it’s a thing we have in common: we bent at the knees holding our ears with each hand, until our knees alit on the carpet, sinking beyond that being unnecessary. I crawled to the stereo and turned the volume dial all the way in the opposite direction, so that guitars still played silently. A pain vibrated my eardrums, and I felt attacked with no one specific to fear or blame. We sat on the carpet in the tinny silence. It did feel good to be vulnerable together. By good, I mean I felt we were back on a life raft, close, in solidarity. I began to walk on my knees and shins toward my bedroom, until my A-line skirt tripped me, and I caught myself on my hands and crawled. The jerk crawled behind me. I opened the door the way a dog does. I crashed onto my bed like a shipwreck, and the jerk crashed next to me. We grabbed pillows and stuffed them with our heads, our heads sandwiched between them like a double decker: pillow, my head, pillow, jerk’s head, pillow. I could still hear him say, “When are you going to get a bed frame? Sleeping on a mattress on the floor makes you seem poor.” “I like it this way,” he heard me say. The problem is, I know I’m going to sleep with him, so the jerk being annoying makes me feel like I’m making a bad decision. But it has already been decided.

I remembered a concert I had been to in a mattress store. The owners’ daughter was a musician, and she hosted concerts after hours. The performance was required to involve the mattresses in some way. Sometimes the musicians leaned them against the walls to help the acoustics, sometimes they stacked them up to erect a raised but squishy stage, and, for the concert I went to, they laid out six soft mattresses for the audience to lie on during the concert. There was a pleasant confusion lying on a mattress with strangers, with BYO pillows propping up our heads. The music was all strumming and plucking, and the woman to my left lay on a luxurious pillow of her own curls. I know there was a man to my right, but was it the night jerk? I asked him if he remembered the mattress store. “Are you sure you’re not making this up?” People ask me that all the time, for some reason, and like stepping into quicksand, I am suddenly unsure. I wouldn’t ever want the floor to actually be lava, of course. Yet, the floor being lava is the state of being I always want to return to, and that is what the concert was like: our feet dangled off the mattress without touching the floor, and I felt a sly collaboration with my five mattress-mates, as well as a sideways suspicion of the other mattress groups. We should make ourselves a flag and a handshake and a secret code. The outside is poison gas, but my house is too big to be a life raft, and again, I do not want actual lava, only pretend. “I’m pretty sure I know precisely what you’re thinking,” said the night jerk, as it grew dark, I did not turn on the light, and he drew me closer.

The eiderdown cover had cost me six thousand dollars, I was thinking, feeling both satisfied and alarmed. Was I sure I had ever had six thousand dollars? The cover was white, soft and warm, but oddly lumpy: had it always been so lumpy? “You’re muttering in your sleep,” said the night jerk. The lumps were moving, and as they moved they became individuals, each one dear to me as a litter of kittens. The lumps were inspecting the bed, inspecting me and the night jerk, and interacting with one another in a manner that was hidden by the cover. They sounded like mourning doves, I thought, or they sounded like they were muttering in a lumpen language. Oh, they’re ducks, not lumps—King Eider Ducks! That must be why the blanket was so expensive. Thank goodness, I closed all the windows so the ducks are protected from the gas.