The new wall cracked. The crack oozed gel. The couple didn’t know who to call. A lawyer? No. The rest of the house did not ooze gel. There were no cracked walls in the rest of the house. They didn’t want to sue and they wouldn’t sue, wouldn’t know what to sue for if they could sue — maybe the crack oozing gel was their own fault somehow — but they knew who they’d sue if they’d wanted to sue, and he was, their builder, a decent man who’d tried his best to do what was right: he had put up the new wall at the first opportunity, not to mention free of charge, and above all he’d done so with total humility, without even hinting that replacing the wall in so timely a fashion was anything more than that which dutiful builders must do for clients whose walls have cracks gels ooze from. Plus the house, on the whole, was a very good house, a strong, handsome house, entirely predictable, completely sound, creakless and dripless, sturdy and sealed, proud in the daylight and safe in the dark.
Things, in short, could be much worse. They had a heart-to-heart over coffee on the patio. They decided he’d keep a close eye on the gel, and, in order to avert any chance of it sliding down into their open, sleeping mouths, the couple pushed their bed against the opposite wall. 2
Every night of the following week, the man sat in a chair in front of the wall in order to witness the crack ooze gel, but every increasingly caffeinated night he fell asleep before the oozing, foiled again, then woke at first light to a gel-covered crack.
Each morning that week, he wiped the gel with a kleenex, threw away the kleenex in the can in the garage, fed the dog and himself, and took the dog for a walk.
On the seventh morning’s walk, his eyes were so tender with sleep-deprivation that even the smallest breeze would sting them, but the dog’s fawn coat appeared especially handsome, which filled the man with a prideful affection that, sting be damned, he wanted to relish — there seemed so little to relish of late — so he made the decision to walk the block twice instead of just once, and during the latter half of this walk, in the midst of relishing his prideful affection, it occurred to the man that he needn’t stay awake to witness the oozing, for he owned a camera, and he chided himself for not remembering it sooner, and commended himself for remembering it at last.
That night he set the camera on the chair in his stead, pressed RECORD, and happily went to sleep beside the woman. In the morning, however, he met with disappointment. The recording of the wall during the hours before sunrise was far too dark for him to even make out the crack; by the time it grew bright enough, the gel had already oozed; he could see nothing more than he’d already seen.
The next night, at bedtime, he set up the camera just as before, but this time he put a flashlight beside it to shine on the crack.
The following morning, to his great surprise, the crack was entirely free of gel.
He proceeded to use the camera-and-flashlight rig three nights in a row, only to discover, three mornings in a row, a crack with no gel. The woman suggested the flashlight (and maybe even the camera) be set on the chair before the crack in perpetuity; she suggested that keeping the crack well-lit (or under well-lit surveillance) might prevent the gel from ever reemerging. The man thought this plan was cowardly and defeatist, but also, he knew, the woman wouldn’t understand why it was cowardly and defeatist. The problem, to her, was that a crack oozed gel, and to prevent that crack from oozing gel would, to her, be a form of victory, while to him it would at best be a stalemate, for the crack would still be there (the woman wasn’t even pretending to suggest that light or surveillance would uncrack the wall), and at worst be a miserable and total defeat because you don’t negotiate with terrorists, do you? You don’t buy a high-performance German sedan to convey you to work when a baby’s on the way (knock wood, knock wood). You don’t learn to live with your plight, you end it. The world was a blooming and ever-fertile garden containing the means with which any man, if he was of any use, could solve any problem that might arise as long as he determined to forego half-measures. But because the man knew the woman wouldn’t understand how mounting the flashlight or the flashlight-and-camera would be cowardly and defeatist, he suggested that the gel, if prevented from oozing forth from the crack, might gather in the wall, causing them troubles they couldn’t imagine, and the devil you know, and the devil you don’t.
And the woman relented. “Maybe the crack’s finished oozing anyway,” she said. “Maybe it ran out of gel and stopped.”
“It’s possible,” said the man.
“If the gel comes back, though,” the woman said, “and you won’t try the flashlight and camera again, you have to promise you’ll keep the crack clean.”
The man made the promise, the crack oozed gel, and he returned to the previously established routine. Each morning, on waking, he would wipe the crack with kleenex, throw the kleenex away in the can in the garage, feed the dog, feed himself, then take the dog for a walk.
As the weeks went by, the walks became longer, and the man, on these walks, became increasingly vexed by fundamental questions about the gel’s origins, namely: had the gel formed first and created the crack, had the crack formed first and created the gel, had they been created simultaneously by a third phenomenon he wasn’t aware of, or might they even have been created by a pair of independent phenomena he wasn’t aware of? Was it really safe to say the gel oozed from the crack? Might it not be the case that the crack somehow attracted or gathered the gel from somewhere else? From somewhere in the bedroom? From the air in the bedroom? The very air the man and woman breathed nightly?
The man elected not to trouble the woman with these questions. They’d only upset her, which would, most likely, be bad for the baby. He hated, however, to hide things from the woman. It revved his vexation. He grew vexed to distraction. He’d find himself thinking of the crack and the gel during meetings with clients, visits to friends. In the middle of an orgasm he saw them on his eyelids. What did it mean? What could it mean? It was gel on a crack. A crack oozing gel. Or gathering gel. Or coalescing with gel by unknown means for unknown reasons. Crack and gel. He lost lots of sleep. Eating seemed a labor. One morning he forgot to shave a section of his face and didn’t even notice until after lunch when a certain associate who liked to yank his chain called out to him just outside of reception and told him, “Nice work! You possess my admiration. Rare is the man who can pull off the cheekstache without looking totally crazy and depressed.” Was he crazy and depressed? He remembered a talk show that talked about depression. Or maybe obsession. Something psychological. Experts were consulted. They got into arguments. All they could agree on was break the routine. Break the routine was the moral of the talk show. Break the routine was the cure for… something. He’d give it a shot. It was worth at least that.
In the morning, instead of wiping the crack then feeding the dog then himself and then walking the dog, the man walked the dog first. A couple blocks in, it seemed to be working. His mood was improved, jovial even, and so was the dog’s; it licked at his hands and bounded and leaped, cast glances at the trees whose leaves had started turning, then cast glances at the man as if to say, “Look! These trees are really great! Don’t forget about these!” and accompanied these glances with a kind of sigh that sounded like “Fff!”