It had been so hot for so long that “heat” was losing its place in the lexicon. Stifling humidity had enveloped the town so completely that there was no longer any use for a comparative or qualitative descriptor of the yawning, prickly fuzziness that seated itself upon anyone unlucky enough to find himself outside. Heat had flattened everything.

The town was bounded to the east by the large, sheer cliff of a plateau, which had a sizable dam built into it. The hill cast a shadow, but it was barely any comfort, and only lasted until midday or so at best. In the hydroelectric plant atop the cliff, the water had been evaporating before it could turn all of the turbines, which threatened the grid and precipitated much civic hand-wringing.In the first few days of the heat, people observed lawns heaving and cracking and giving birth to bricks of earthworms, fused together and squirming orgiastically. Birds dropped dead mid-flight and floated lazily to the ground in the swollen breeze. Hands darted out of houses through mail slots and deposited eggs and other griddle-friendly comestibles upon their own doorsteps, just to see what the heat would do to them. All of this may still be happening, but nobody notices because nobody opens their blinds.Young Dave looked down at Dave and was pleased to see that he had fallen asleep. The flat heat, and the endless circadian limbo that the closed blinds fostered, made it rare for Dave to get more than an hour of uninterrupted sleep. Worse yet, the baby had been rationed a single can of formula a day for the past week. He was a peaceful baby—he hardly ever screamed—but the hunger pangs were starting to keep him awake and whimpering.Thank god for the formula, though, thought Young Dave. If his father, Dave, hadn’t pushed so hard about being prepared, they never would have had that stockpile full of cans. Young Dave remembered the day he gave in to Dave’s insisting and drove the Bronco to the store—this was months before the weather changed and the Bronco’s hood bubbled and evanesced right up into the air—and bought all those pallets of franks-and-beans and baby formula and corn and greenbeans. Dave had said why don’t you get the store brand but Young Dave had to hold the line somewhere, so they ended up getting half name-brand and half store-brand because if there’s no difference dad you can eat the generic and I’ll pay you the difference when we get home. Good that they got those cans, for certain, although Young Dave was a little upset because the other day he noticed Dave eating some of the Bush’s chili instead of the white-label C-H-I-L-I cans. He couldn’t be too mad, though, because if it hadn’t been for Dave they wouldn’t have had the cans in the first place.Since Dave was finally asleep, Young Dave and Dave agreed it was time to open one of the condensed milks for Sunday Treat. They hadn’t ever been a particularly religious family, but two generations of spousal abandonment had opened a gap that faith wormed its way into, and the flat, hot darkness of the past few weeks had made it even more important to set aside Sunday as a special day, if only to keep the days from running together too much.While Dave and Young Dave were taking turns sipping Sunday Treat, they heard a scratching at their door. Before the weather turned, such spookiness would have been grounds for retrieving Dave’s oldpump-action shotgun from the basement. Now, laden with weeks of torpor, Dave and Young Dave simply nodded their chins towards the door and continued to take turns pouring the condensed milk down their throats. The scratching continued, and a whimpering noise was audible. The thick air conducted the sound so well that Dave and Young Dave felt it like it came from inside their own ears.Dave started to cry. Dave, surprised and frustrated at his grandson’s unusual misbehavior, set the condensed milk down and watched his son tend to the howling infant. The scratching and whimpering continued outside. Dave opened his mouth—mostly dry except for some thick, sweet saliva coating the front of his throat—and exhaled heavily. It was a weary sigh, even though it had been provoked by indulgence.The scratching grew steadily more urgent. Dave screamed louder and Young Dave buried the child’s face in his shoulder and swayed back and forth with an annoyed, matronly expression. The ceiling fan beat away at the stale air, and its motion made the whimpering and scratching and infant screams pulsate nauseatingly. Young Dave, Dave nestled near his armpit, made eye contact with Dave from across the room. They gave each other the same expression of irritated comprehension.Dave began to get up from his chair. Young Dave sat down and fed the baby a few spoonfuls of formula. Dave stood above the table with his hands on the back of his chair. He looked at the doorknob and noticed that the metal foil covering it was peeling. He turned and brought the empty condensed milk can to the sink. As he rinsed it out, he watched small, sugary trails of the sticky liquid circling down the drain.  ***The living room looked different. It was darker than usual. Young Dave looked around, disoriented by the slight change, until he noticed that the crack between the front door and the floor, which usually let in a sliver of light, was partially blocked. Young Dave padded up to the door and crouched to inspect the obstruction. It was a worn-out looking piece of paper, and it had been folded into a thick, uneven square. Young Dave hooked his fingers around a corner of it and pulled it out of the crack.He unfolded the paper. There was a message written in the center: “Help. Nofood.” The note had another set of creases on it apart from the right angles that made it into a square; Young Dave retraced these and ended up with a paper airplane. He set the plane on the kitchen table, walked over to the pantry, and returned with one of the last cans of brand-name chili.Young Dave sat at the table and ate the chili. The airplane leaned on its left wing. Young Dave contemplated the now-aeronautical missive as he stirred a piece of gristle around the can. He flipped the can over and began reading the nutrition facts. He lost focus, because the light had begun to flicker. This was normal. Then the lights went out entirely.The power had been off for what Young Dave could only guess to be half an hour when Dave shuffled into the kitchen. Young Dave pointed at the airplane on the table, and his father picked it up. He unfolded it and stared at the message for some amount of time, and then retrieved a can of name-brand chili for himself. The two men prodded their stews—Young Dave prodding more resentfully than his father—and watched the baby sleep in his crib across the room.There was no more hot, and now that the power had given out, there was no more time. The sun went up and down dozens of times. Dave, Young Dave, and Dave remained dispassionately suspended in their torrid living room.On the plateau that overlooked the town, a group of people had assembled near the newly-defunct hydroelectric plant. They stood near the railing of the dam and looked down the buildings in town; one or two pairs of eyes surely passed over the house where Dave and Young Dave and Dave lay in the doldrums. Thegroup of people had fumbled their way up to the top of the cliff in darkness, and the sun was beginning to rise behind them. A sweaty man who stood with a woman close to the edge of the cliff looked behind him and nodded at another sweaty man. The second sweaty man shuffled into a small shack perched above the dam. The plateau was still again, except for a collective shrugging of shoulders that pushed up against the morning languor each time the group drew a breath.The group exhaled, and the plateau was no longer still. A tremendous, grinding creak resonated over the entire town, and the people atop the cliff stepped back and held one another as the ground moved beneath them. Then the water began to move.The water poured over the lowering lip of the dam and onto the asphalt of the town’s main street. For a full twenty seconds, the torrent hissed into vapor when it hit the street, and one of the men closest to the water shrieked and turned to face his cohort with red, scalded hands covering his eyes. Water continued to pour out of the dam faster and faster, and it began to run down the street. Mailboxes, dead birds, bricks of earthworms, and fried eggs were caught up in the deluge and washed down the thoroughfare.In the bedroom, Dave woke to a knocking at the window above his head. It was different from the scratching he had heard while he and his son had enjoyed Sunday Treat—more of an insistent thump. The thumping strengthened. It felt like the entire house was moving.On the couch in the living room, Young Dave sat up slowly, and then got to his feet very quickly. He ran to the crib and pulled Dave out of it just before the kitchen wall gave in and the water started to come through. Dave, held tight in his father’s arms, began to scream and cry—the second time he had done so during the entire heatwave. Young Dave felt the water pulling at his ankles, then his thighs, then his chest, and he wondered why it had taken him so long to realize that infants often have an uncanny understanding of the gravity of events. 

A sonnet.  Eve was curious but bold.



Adam wondered if the branch above



could hold her.  He watched Eve’s body unfold



above and touch the fruit.  “I think this fruit



 



was made,” she said.  He once



regretted her, so limber, not content



to name.  Chaos of time and dance…



Adam engaged to teach her to relent:



 



“The stars, their motions false, untimely.  Earth



is here.  The triangle has properties



no matter what.  The mind too can give birth



to number, natural law, mythology.”



 



The will to teach was gone.  The pomegranate



seeds were gone.  They were gone.  A sonnet.

Even at forty years old, Leo indulged his younger brother. He stood at the kitchen counter and loaded a Hi8 tape into the Handycam that he and Charlie had found when they were packing up the basement. Leo pressed the cassette compartment back into the camera, and the metal frame set the black tape into place. Charlie clutched a candlestick and stared into the lens with the expectant attention of a newscaster. “Do you have to do that?” asked Leo.

Charlie grinned. “Is it on?”

Leo scrutinized the miniature of the room cast in realtime on the small, flipped-out screen. It looked unfamiliar, like it belonged in the pages of a catalogue. He pressed the red button with his thumb, and REC appeared in red digital letters. “Alright, you can start whenever.”

“Hello! For the purposes of posterity, I am Charlie, Leo is filming, and this is the kitchen. Mom will not be happy that it’s a mess, but that’s probably more accurate in any case.”

The kitchen was in disarray, although it was not familiar daily clutter. Nearly everything had been pulled from the cabinets. Cans were stacked on the counter to the left of the stove and perishable items were placed on the right. On the table were plastic bins, which held pots and pans with newspaper stuffed into the gaps. A box labelled “Very Fragile” in permanent marker held stacks of plates. The refrigerator was bare except for a bottle of milk, a mostly empty carton of eggs, and a container of lo mein from the night before.

“The style is French Country—very rustique. Note the hanging pots and pans.” Charlie gestured towards the ceiling. Although his hairline had receded slightly, his face was still boyish, and on the small screen he could pass for as young as twenty-five. “What else to say. The oven runs hot. Take five or ten minutes off of all cooking times. Maybe give a quick three-sixty, Leo.”

Leo panned obligingly around the room, sweeping along the cabinets, stove and sink. The appliances had all been packed up.

“I’ll be glad someone will be cooking for mom now. Little old lady with a gas stove was starting to make me nervous. And next up we’ll make our way into the dining room.”

Leo backed out of the kitchen and turned to the swinging door, the camera coming right up to the slatted wood until the peach room burst suddenly into the frame. The dining room was a formal space, used more around holidays than any other time of the year. For the most part it lay dormant, though it took up nearly a quarter of the downstairs. It was almost completely empty, with the lacquered table and chairs sitting in the center of the room on the decarpeted floor, and the wall where the sideboard had been slightly darker.

“This is probably the least exciting room of the house. The most exciting part of it is the door to the basement, and only because the basement is a horrible place.” Leo zoomed into the stairway door as Charlie spoke. “Why don’t you give this one a three-sixty, too?”

“I did when we came in.”

As they passed the bathroom, Leo flashed the camera inside, quickly focusing on the sink knobs, which had the hot and cold reversed.

The living room was a mottle of things. The corner by the dusty-brown upright piano was crowded with cardboard boxes in various states of closure, with two packing tape dispensers and shreds of pink and clear bubble wrap littered on top. The big floral sofa was noticeably absent, replaced by a cream showpiece that the real estate agent had selected so potential buyers could better impose their own imagined rooms onto the space. The low shelves had been cleared of the frayed gardening paperbacks and their father’s old French textbooks to make way for a Complete Works of Shakespeare and a jar of polished stones.

The camera swung up to Charlie’s face, which still had the makeshift candlestick microphone at his lips.

“Here,” Charlie arced his free hand outwards, as though to a large audience, “we have the living room. Home of our mother’s failed attempts to make me a piano player. Successful for you, at least. But ...” He held a finger up to the camera. His audience waited. “I still remember this gem.” He set the candlestick on the piano as Leo stepped back to fit the scene into the frame. Charlie sat at the bench and swept imaginary coattails out from under himself. With dramatic wrists, he began an ungainly rendition of “The Entertainer,” furrowing his brows like a maestro. His hands leapt up between the octaves and dropped heavily onto the keys, eliding the ragtime rhythm as though stumbling and drunk. 

Charlie swayed back and forth, favoring the left hand, then the right, and as he slowed the piece almost to a stop he turned to the camera and grinned. Leo, half watching over the camera and half watching through the screen, was struck. For a moment, the Charlie on the screen was a boy; maybe twelve, maybe fifteen. It drove their mother crazy the way during recitals, Charlie would turn to the camera and grin, getting up from the bench even as his hands finished the piece, like he wanted to play for the audience and be in it all at once. Though his face had aged and rounded, the geometry of his smile had remained indelible, twenty years later.

“You’re up, Rubinstein.” Charlie approached and reached for the camera. His chest filled the frame.

Leo shook his head and withdrew the camera. “I’m alright.”

“Come on, Leo. We’re making memories.” Charlie thought for a second. “Well, we made memories. Now we’re keeping them.” Leo snickered. “I don’t remember anything well enough, anyway.”

“That’s bullshit. You were always a thousand times better at this than me. Now give.” Charlie pulled the camcorder from where it was strapped around Leo’s hand and hefted it to his own eye. He gave Leo a small slap on the back as he approached the piano.

Leo eased himself onto the bench as though it would break and brushed his fingers lightly across the keys as if they, too, were fragile. When the first chord sounded into the room, the faint mistunings lingered in the air beside the notes. After probingly pressing the first few bars, his fingers grew reaccustomed to the keys and he began to play in earnest. He leaned into the instrument, restraining notes that seemed always on the verge of collapsing into one another. It was a complex piece, technically challenging, although Leo had always insisted that it was easier than it sounded. He stumbled twice but recovered quickly. His face and posture were labored, but the notes themselves were light and effortless.

As Leo finished the piece, the tones grew higher and faded away as if floating off the edge of the keyboard altogether. The final hammer hit the string so lightly that it was difficult to tell whether the final moment was silence or another soft resonance. He placed his hands on his thighs and looked at the piano like he could see inside it, to the action and tuning pins behind the frontboard.



“Jesus. When Mar and I have kids I hope they’re more like you than me,” said Charlie. His applause was muffled by the hand strap, and the camera filmed an erratic swing across the floor. “Take a bow.” But Leo waved his hand and retrieved the camera from his brother.

They made their way upstairs. To the left, the hall led to the master bedroom. To the right, the bedroom they had shared for their twelve overlapping years. Charlie turned left and opened the door, although both brothers remained in the doorway.

“This is our parents’ room. I probably slept here more than my own bed for the first six years of my life.”

“Eight,” corrected Leo.

“Let’s just say seven, shall we? Anyway, one time I found a condom on the nightstand.” Charlie made a wry face. “Maybe we’ll erase that part of the tape. I don’t think we need to record that particular memory in the

annals. We should get a shot of this and a shot of our room, and maybe a shot of the shed, too.”

Their own room was mostly unrecognizable. The two beds had been cleared for the night, but the room was otherwise cluttered with junk: board games, two trunks of clothes, ironing supplies, beach chairs and other accumulated artifacts of the elderly. The right bed was Leo’s, the left was Charlie’s. Both claimed to have lost their virginity in the room, though Charlie was rounding up. The shared desk, which had once held a boxy computer, was covered in sewing supplies, and a Singer sewing machine sat where the monitor had once been. The only constant was the steel blue color of the walls and the view out of the windows. The one by Charlie’s bed looked over the driveway, and the one by Leo’s looked into the garden in the backyard. Leo filmed out of his window and followed Charlie back down the stairs.

He stepped after his brother through the screen door onto the patio and surveyed the yard through the viewfinder. The tape whirred gently as it took in the garden. Petunias leaned clumsily against the shadowbox fence and the side of the shed, which Charlie was prying open. He spoke to the camera over his shoulder.

“This is our dad’s shed. No one really uses it anymore.” After a few seconds, the screen adjusted to theshadow inside. There was just room for the two men.

“Everything was packed up a long time ago,” Charlie continued, “but you can tell where things used to be.” He indicated the pegboard above the workbench, where thick black marker made swollen tool outlines. Under some pegs, the varnish of the board had been sanded away to erase the outline of a discarded implement, and a new shape had been drawn on the pale matte surface. Leo’s throat tightened with dust and he turned from the camera to cough.

“Our mom tells a story that she knew he was going to die after he waterproofed the house, because he left his tools in the wheelbarrow outside overnight.”

Leo spoke over his hand, “Not that he should have been doing that in the first place. He wasn’t even supposed to go jogging.”

Charlie smiled and shrugged, the combination of gestures familiar to the story. He went on. “This also happens to be the site of my first kiss.”

“I thought your first kiss was with Anna at Jack Feld’s house.”

“That was my first kiss on the mouth. Lisa Campbell gave me a peck on the cheek here when she was waiting for her mom to pick her up after the safari party. The minx.” Charlie held his face coy until it fell once again into a grin. He looked around the small space. “Unless our cameraman has anything to add, I think that might conclude the tour.”

Leo said he would take a shot of the facade and stepped back into the light.

He turned the camera on the house itself, tracing the white clapboard and pausing on the windows. Pulling the zoom lever to the right, he looked at the screen, seeing what was visible from the outside. The whitebacked curtains of his parents’ bedroom hung at the edges of their glass. He panned over to his own room, where the corner of the closet appeared in the bottom left pane. Each waver of the hand was amplified, and the windows rocked in and out of the frame. He couldn’t tell whether the clothes in the closet were really discernible or if he were inventing collared shirts in the pixels. He panned to the kitchen window, bright and orange, through to the window on the opposite wall that faced outwards to the street. Charlie went into the house, his body appearing in the kitchen window onscreen and disappearing again. The living room light clicked on, faint against the bright day, and the muffled, awkward tones of the piano sounded into the yard.

The camcorder showed little. Just beyond the siding were the rooms Leo and Charlie had toured, larger than the painted wood belied from the outside. He tried to place the contents of the rooms, imagining what the screen would show in the absence of the exterior walls. In the cutaway, there would be his parents’ bed, its back to the camera. His and Charlie’s beds sat across a thin dividing wall, the furniture placed as in a massive dollhouse. Removing the walls altogether, the three beds alone would sit straight in a row, the leftmost one doubled in size, ludicrously suspended above the grass. If he included the sofa bed that they pulled out for guests, that would appear on the ground below, perpendicular to the three.

Next he tried just the doors, placing them as he panned from left to right and then up. The doors between the living and dining room, the bathroom and the hall, and the one from the kitchen to the driveway were perpendicular to Leo. The others faced flatly towards him. The upstairs doors had all the same brass knobs, although the ones to the bathrooms would be brighter with use.

The three toilets of the house, one on the first floor, two on the second, sat on their pipes like stems. The sinks and showerheads did, too. He began to populate the space with the furniture as it was inside: the desks and dressers, the clothes hampers, rugs lying remarkably flat in the air, framed pictures and shelves fixed to invisible walls. He tried just the knicknacks, sitting against the blue sky like black stars, but it was too unfeasible to place them all and he went back to the bigger furniture. He continued until everything was there except the walls and the floors, though it was difficult to hold the full image in his mind. As he built one room, another would slip into abstraction. 

He added the frame like a ribcage, the bones of the house. His father, who read blueprints the way some men read the newspaper, would have known the exact placement of the studs. The house had looked identical to the others on the block before his parents had moved in, but no one would guess that anymore.

When Leo looked up from the camera, the clapboard seemed unnaturally opaque and hard. He turned the camera towards his face and waved at the lens, though he was not sure his fingers made it into the frame. He pressed the red button and the REC disappeared, though the screen still played the view through the lens.