I'll Never Finish This Book

SIXTEEN

December 12:

When I asked Eli to move in, I knew he wasn't going to always help me clean. I did expect him to at least pick up after himself. He did that for a few days after he moved in, but that was it. Fed up, I waited to see how long it would take for him to clean up.

He had stayed up the night before watching TV loudly and munching on popcorn and chips. If I couldn't get any sleep because of him, he surely wasn't going to get any sleep because of me. The TV was on all night, and so I raised the volume, letting the sound of the infomercials fill the room. He didn't even flinch. I had to resort to other means of waking him up. I rolled out the vacuum cleaner and began to clean up around the couch he had been sleeping on since I reclaimed my bed. The television could still be heard over the sound of the vacuum, and I was sure everyone across the hall could hear them, except for Eli. I pulled out the hose and began cleaning the cushions, and when that didn't work, I nudged him in the back with it. It wasn't very subtle, but it did the trick. In only a few seconds, he was sitting up, disheveled, and looking around the room.

"Oh, did I wake you?" I asked nonchalantly.

He stared at me with as much disbelief as he could muster after having been woken up abruptly. His hair lay messily on top of his head, and it was taking everything in him to keep his eyes open. "No, I've been up for hours." It was amazing how he kept his humor through almost anything. "What time is it?" he asked groggily.

I looked at my wrist. "Six AM."

He squinted his eyes. "You're... you're not wearing a watch."

"And...?"

He stood up and held his hands up in defeat. "This is too much to take in right now," he mumbled before heading to the bathroom.

I finished cleaning up and headed over to the kitchen. I poured some coffee and sat at the counter to get some more of my book done. He left the bathroom and walked into the kitchen. It looked like he ran some water through his hair because it was looking a lot neater. I watched him rummage for clean cups in the cabinets. I had stopped washing the dishes a couple of days ago, figuring that it would only be a matter of time before we would run out of clean ones to use. I hoped that would force him to wash the dishes.

Once he didn't find a cup, he stuck his head underneath the faucet and began to drink the unfiltered water. Dumbstruck, I watched as he walked over and sat beside me at the counter.

"Unbelievable," I uttered, setting the laptop down beside me.

He raised his eyebrows as if he couldn't have been more clueless.

"What was that?" I asked, still in shock.

"What was what?"

"That," I pointed to the sink.

"Oh, I know those dishes are piling up."

I stared at him incredulously. I knew he had just woken up moments ago, but his brain was moving slowly. He began catching on.

"We should really wash those...?"

I kept my eyes on him.

He stood up quickly. "I'll get to washing them."

I watched him struggle to wash the dishes. He dumped half of the dish soap on to the plate. Wrong. Proceeding to smear the sponge all over the first plate, he then set the plate back in the sink. Wrong. Unable to watch any longer, I walked him through the entire process, and it was when the sink was completely empty that I realized I had only fooled myself. I wondered if he knew that would happen.