*

Laura would like to apologize for and explain her lack of branting this week.

After last year’s outrageously expensive first winter in their new house, Laura finally made an appointment with an HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, & Air Conditioning) company to try to solve the mystery of why, despite how low they kept the thermostat, their natural gas bills had been so ridiculously high last year and why their bills were probably going to be just as high this year too.

Within two hours of the arrival of Andy, The HVAC guy, on Monday morning, he discovered that the boiler was cracked. Laura had always assumed this was some sort of idiom, or figure of speech (“What a cracked boiler he is!” “You want a cracked boiler? I’ll give you a cracked boiler!”), but when Andy stuck a hand-mirror into the maw of the raging boiler’s open belly to show her what he was talking about, she saw the jagged scar he was pointing to and suddenly realized that a cracked boiler actually means that the inside chamber of the boiler is cracked!

Even if Laura wasn’t one of those egregiously dumb homeowners who had no idea where the electrical box was (OK, that’s an exaggeration) or how to flip a circuit breaker (but that’s not), she would have been smart enough to figure out that the San Andreas fault line in her boiler (which she had just been introduced to minutes before by Andy himself — she’d always gotten it confused with the water heater) was a bad thing, though she didn’t think it was an incredibly bad thing since at least it was still working! But just as Andy got up from the floor, the boiler suddenly sputtered and then stopped making any sound at all.

Andy shook his head, then explained in a hushed reverent tone that the crackling-hissing noise the boiler had just expelled like a covert belch was the sound of the boiler cracking completely. Andy tried to explain to Laura that a completely cracked boiler had something to do with steam and water coming through the crack and dousing out the flame for good, but of course Laura didn’t understand what he was talking about because 1) she not good at homeowner stuff and 2) she had already detached from herself like a space capsule off a flaming hot rocket.

Laura could barely believe what was happening and was having a hard time processing what incredibly bad luck she was continuing to have into the new year! She suddenly felt incredibly depressed and defeated, not just because she knew the house was going to get freezing cold — they were, after all, facing their first cold snap of the entire winter! and even some possible snow! what perfect timing!– in the absence of a working boiler, but because she knew in her bones that replacing the boiler was going to cost almost as much as she earned last year.*

(*This is meant to imply that Laura didn’t earn much last year; not that she earned a lot. She just felt the need to clarify that just in case people thought she was complaining unduly.)

By the afternoon, two other HVAC guys — Tom and Mike — came into her house and stared at the now quiet cold boiler. And the more they took measurements and talked in hushed tones about steam heat and radiant heat and water pipes and water heaters, the more Laura wanted to crawl away and into her bed so that she would be frozen solid by the time they were ready with their “estimate.”

When Tom finally did give her the bad news, Laura truly did take to her bed for much of Tuesday and Wednesday (not to mention part of Thursday and most of today, as necessary recovery from the incredibly stressful and depressing week). She also took to her bed because it happened to be warm under the covers, right next to one of the six space heaters that the HVAC guys had lent Laura and Brendan and Benji until the boiler was replaced and up and running by Wednesday evening.

For two nights, the three of them slept together in the big bed, huddling together for warmth against the cold while the space heater glowed red beside them. Drifting off to sleep, Laura wondered if this was what it felt like to be a chicken on a rotisserie. Anything to take her mind off of the check she was going to have to write the next day….