One cold day, Harry Bilson noticed that his vacuum cleaner was making a hideous noise – a piercing, strangled squall. He had hauled out the old beast to give the carpet a once over, flecked as it was with scads of just barely visible debris: dead skin from Harry’s nervous picking at his cuticles, a few grains of Minute Rice, stray salt scattered for luck, and something that looked like ash, which was strange, because Harry didn’t smoke. Had Addie been there, she would never have allowed it to reach such a state, but she was gone.

The old Schuber-Vac 2000 had been in the Bilson family for as long as Harry could remember. It had incredible suction power. As a child, Harry had hypothesized that it was nuclear-powered, or that it was somehow wirelessly connected to a black hole somewhere in the universe. When his mother wasn’t looking, he had tested it by using it to suck up whole potato chips, whole crackers, whole tacos, his sister’s diorama of the battle of Waterloo. He eventually vacuumed two of his own shirts, a whole roll of toilet paper, and his grandmother’s lace curtains.

Harry thought the noise might mean a bag change was due. The whale’s belly had enormous capacity. It was Addie who had changed it last, and that had been when they first moved in together. She had made short work of a thriving colony of spiders that had built their civilization in the basement. Now it was pregnant with five years of popcorn crumbs and toenails, mounds of long curly brown hair and brown eyelashes and stray earrings, shreds of cheese, spider egg sacs and dried-up fern fronds – even some marbles Harry had sucked up just to see.

Harry wrested the bag out of the thing, feeling as though he was delivering a breach foal. The bag was as heavy as a small child. He carried it out to the dumpster in the snow, using both arms and sweating despite the freezing cold. As he wiped a chalky brown residue off of his arms, he realized he had no idea where the extras were kept. He thought about calling Addie to find out where she kept the extra bags, but he feared she would see it as an excuse to call her and talk to her – and maybe it was. Who used a bag vacuum anymore anyway, she had often said. You should throw it out and get a new one. And that was probably true also. Harry stood with his phone in his hand, flipping it open and closed for several minutes. Something in the living room was different. It took a moment for him to put his finger on the change, but finally he realized that the wall behind the TV no longer bore the set of pseudo-African wooden masks that had hung there for years. Addie had purchased them at a swap meet. Now all that remained were four forlorn crusty black nails fixed to the wall.

Since Addie had left, things in the house had been disappearing little by little. On the first day it had been her clothes and her hair dryer. Harry came home from work to find the bathroom sink eerily clear and Addie’s side of the closet empty. When he had called her to ask what had happened all she had said was, I think I just need to move out for a while. Harry had said, Well, if that’s what you need to do.

Other items she picked up gradually, while he was at the bar or the office. Her collection of dolphin figurines one day, the candles, place mats, and napkins the next. Piles of extra blankets for the guests went over the weekend. The wineglasses and punch bowl after that. The kitchen eventually emptied out – rice cooker, food processor, juicer – gone. Then furniture pieces like the hope chest that had been their coffee table and the breakfast bar. The baker’s rack and all the plants on it.

I never did like those masks, Harry thought, and went to the kitchen to make a cocktail to drink while watching Sportscenter. Upon opening the liquor cabinet, he found the vacuum bags crunched behind the bottle of Captain Morgan like a dirty secret. The plastic encasing them was so old that it was no longer transparent. Harry frowned and made his drink, but couldn’t enjoy his program. The mess was too distracting. Here was some down from a throw pillow. There a bit of cut grass – dried and withered into sharp little slivers.

Sighing, Harry sat down on the floor with the vacuum nestled between his legs, fiddling unsuccessfully with the new bag before giving up. The insatiable digestive system of the machine was crusted with ancient dirt and grime, and it stubbornly resisted a new stomach. Frustrated and longing for a sense of clean, Harry decided to clean his goldfish tank instead, the walls of which were coated with an archipelago of brown slime. Halfway through the task, Harry realized it was two o’clock in the morning. Stiff and blinking, he wandered into his cold bed.

*

The next day after work, as Harry was helping himself to a drink, he noticed that all of the ladybug-shaped magnets had been removed from the fridge, and a pile of photos lay where the coffee maker had been on the counter. He flipped through them: Addie and Harry on the beach in Cancun, over a plate of nachos at their favorite bar, cuddled beside a campfire up north in the woods, Addie holding up a warped birthday cake and smiling cartoonishly. Harry, passed out on the sofa, one shoe on and one shoe off. There had been more, Harry was sure, so Addie must have taken them. But he couldn’t remember which ones were missing.

When Harry went to the living room to feed the fish, he found him swimming in circles in an empty tank. All the accoutrements – multi-colored glass seashells, little porcelain castle, forest of plastic seaweed – were gone. Harry went suddenly limp, dropping fish food all over the carpet. He distinctly remembered putting everything back in its place when he had cleaned the tank. Virtually knee-deep in fish food, he bent and stood face to face with the fish, mirroring its astonished expression. For some time, he paced back and forth in the living room, dragging flakes of foul-smelling fish food all over the carpet, as if trying to elude a soggy feeling that trailed his every step.

Again Harry confronted the vacuum. For an hour he struggled with the new bag, covered in sweat by the time he finally wrestled it into position. Harry doubted they even made bags for that model anymore. When he turned it on and began to run it over the mess on the floor, the noise was still worse – something between a sort of gaseous, curdled scream and a broken bag pipe. The sound shot hot needles into his gut. Gritting his teeth, he turned the vacuum off and then kicked it, sending a dart of pain from his toes to his ankle. He recalled his father had often stubbed his toe on the vacuum in the night, and accused his mother of leaving it there in the hallway on purpose. Now that Harry was finished however, the mess was gone, and in its place the carpet’s fibers were pulled into clean, rigid rows.

*

Harry took the vacuum in to a repair shop the next morning. The young shiny-faced man working there, whose name tag read “Joe”, stared at it baffled. They turned it on to demonstrate the problem, and the vacuum shrieked and roared – the noise like a steam burn on Harry’s brain. After turning it around and prodding it like a specimen for ten minutes, Joe shook his head.

How old is this thing?

Older than me. And I’m 36.

Joe made a spitting sound. I don’t think we can even get the parts for this dinosaur.

Are you sure? Not even online?

Harry tried to leave the monster with Joe, but the young man looked stricken. This fossil belongs in a museum, he said. He wouldn’t even unplug it himself, but backed away from it inch by inch, scratching his damp, stubbly neck, until Harry was left alone in the showroom. Again, Harry humped the vacuum into the back of his car, cursing. It had been a bruising, onerous process to put it in there the first time. When Harry got home from work that evening, he left it there.

Upon entering his living room, he saw that his battered old bean bag chair was missing as well. Only a trail of tiny stuffing pellets was left behind. Harry swore, because he would now have to face the vacuum again. He turned to go back outside, but then stopped in front of the liquor cabinet. He poured three fingers of rum into a glass and plopped two cubes of ice into the liquid. He found he was out of ginger ale and coke, but decided it was okay. It is time to simplify, he thought. Then he trudged through the pile of foam pellets on his way to the couch, scattering them like fallen leaves.

*

Harry was watching the Golf Channel, chomping on ice cubes and making loud sucking noises, when his phone rang. It was Addie.

Are you at home, she asked amid a din of background noise.

Harry debated saying no: that he was at a bar with friends laughing it up, out dancing with twenty-something women in tiny shirts, in the office working on an important project. But instead he said he was at home, and he said so in a sighing weak voice that surprised even him. It was as if he’d forgotten what his own voice sounded like.

Can I stop by? I just need to borrow the old vacuum.

Oh. Actually I took it in to get it fixed today but it’s so old. It’s just… sick or something. Still works. Just makes noise.

It occurred to Harry to ask about the fish tank, but he lost his nerve. He watched a plump black spider crawl down the wall where the masks had hung. Looking up, Harry could see new, shiny webs lining the perimeter of the ceiling. He nodded and smiled at them like a friendly neighbor would.

Oh yeah. I know. Addie was saying. But I just need to sweep some plant dirt off my floor. I’ll be over later, okay?

Okay, Harry said. Then, instinctively, I love you, but thankfully she had already hung up.

Once again Harry wrenched the vacuum from his car and hauled it into the house, grunting and huffing. Since Joe had been no help, Harry was determined to tackle whatever besieged the Schuber-Vac on his own. In the middle of the living room, toolbox at the ready, he turned the vacuum on its side with a mighty shove. One by one he unscrewed, yanked out or jiggled loose its innards, none of which were quite like anything he expected. Its components looked like the parts of a space-age torture contraption built by aliens. There was a plate made of a heavy metal that was shaped somewhat like a pelvis. There was a rod twisted with trails of spines, like a gypsy moth caterpillar with rigor mortis. An angry red moebius strip made of hard rubber that was mostly coated with caustic black grease. A pair of painted metal doo-hickeys shaped like strips of wax that had been melted over a cross.

Harry stood staring, greasy hands closing and unclosing, at the bizarre autopsy for a moment, then at the crooked empty nails on the wall vaguely in the shape of a diamond. The spider was still there, in the same spot, unmoving. He was reminded that once Addie had taken a map of the United States and drew dots for all the members of Harry’s family: his sister in Georgia, father in Arizona, mother in Florida, grandmother in California, and one for he and Addie in Michigan. She had tried to draw a star with the dots as its points, but couldn’t get the shape right. The dots could make no discernable shape at all, no matter how she had tried to connect them.

Harry took a hammer from the toolbox and began trying to wrench the useless nails from the wall one by one, sending the spider skittering to one of its silken condominiums. Eventually he heard the sound of the front door opening and Addie’s faint “hello” ringing down the hall. She came into the living room and paused, looking down at the dissected vacuum.

Well no wonder it’s not working, she said. It’s all in pieces.

Harry laughed, stumbled over, and gave Addie a little hug, before getting back down on his hands and knees to reassemble the vacuum. How he missed the smell of her hair. Her sweaty palms. The way her cheek cooled his neck.

So it’s still loud, huh? God I always dreaded using that stupid thing, Addie muttered.

More than loud, Harry said. Atomic bomb loud. Air raid siren loud. Smoke detector gone mad. Buzz saw. Hurricane, level five.

Harry lumbered on his knuckles, looking for one of the doo-hickeys that he had accidentally kicked into a corner. Wish the bean bag was still here so I could sit on it while I work on this mess, Harry said, immediately regretting the way it sounded.

Oh yeah? You finally throw it out? Say what happened to the baker’s rack? It looks so empty in here…

Harry stood up, confused, and blinked at her. From his new viewpoint he could see where the doo hickey had rolled. He slowly moved to pick it up and then bent over the gutted vacuum, attempting to shove it back into place.

Let’s see, Addie said, and leaned over to turn on the Schuber-Vac’s switch so that the agonizing noise filled the room. Oh my God, it’s like someone being tortured and having an orgasm at the same time…

Unfortunately, Harry’s hand was still in contact with the mouth of the vacuum when she unleashed its furious power. As the monster snatched and began devouring the middle three digits of his right hand, it was indeed difficult to discern Harry’s cries of pain from those of sexual ecstasy. Joint by joint, Harry’s fingers were inhaled into the body of the vacuum with a series of sickening crunches. It seemed that each knuckle it consumed burst open and collapsed, releasing the tender insides like the crisp bottom of ice cream cones, or tootsie pops licked down to their cores. Harry tried to pull his hand free, but the vacuum would not release him, its orifice instead appearing to suck harder and even to widen like the jaws of a snake. He believed the thing would draw him in whole, that it would suck in his entire body: arm, shoulder, head, torso and legs.

When Addie switched off the power, Harry had lost his forefinger at the knuckle and his ring finger at the fist. His middle finger was a pulpy mass dangling down against his palm. Blood spattered his shirt, the floor, Addie’s face and hair. It stained the sofa they had purchased together. It was splashed on the walls that Addie had painted. The pain blinded and deafened Harry. He thought, I’ll never golf again.

*

After taking Harry home from the hospital, Addie stayed for a few hours to care for him. Harry knew this was only because she felt guilty, that she would soon be gone again, and would never be coming back. But he was so loaded with painkillers that he didn’t mind. He didn’t notice the emptiness of the house or the dirt or the winter that just kept getting colder. He fell in and out of consciousness on the sofa – watching Addie through half-opened eyes, thinking he saw her struggling over the carpet with an unwieldy but innocent shop-vac he didn’t recognize, swearing and dragging its body behind her like a dog on a leash with no legs.