The Blue Water Room

There is a room in this house that I do not fully understand. I have tried. I have applied considerable intellectual resources to the project over the fourteen months I have lived here, and I remain, at this juncture, largely without answers. I am documenting my observations in the hope that the process of writing will bring clarity, or at the very least, that this record will be useful to future historians.

The room is small and white. It is located off the main hallway, past the linen closet, which I am allowed into but have no interest in, and the good bathroom, which I am not allowed into but have considerable interest in. Gerald enters this room once in the morning and once in the evening, sometimes twice if something unusual has happened. He is in there for an average of twenty-two minutes, though on Sundays it can stretch to thirty-four.

He always brings a magazine.

I have thought about this for a very long time. He brings a magazine into a small room. He is in there for twenty-two minutes. I have examined every possible explanation and I have not arrived at a satisfying one. My working theory is that the magazine is a prop — a signal of some kind, the way certain birds display specific colors to communicate status — and the real activity in the room is something Gerald does not want me to know about.

The room contains the following items, based on my observations from the doorway during the occasions when Gerald has been insufficiently careful about closing it all the way: a large white basin mounted on the wall, which I understand is called a “sink” and which functions as an extremely inefficient water bowl; a glass enclosure in the corner with a metal fixture that produces water from above, like indoor rain but controlled and smaller; and, in the corner near the floor, a large porcelain bowl filled with blue water.

The blue water is what concerns me most.

I am not permitted to drink from the blue water bowl. This has been made extremely clear through a combination of verbal instruction, the removal of my face from the vicinity of the bowl on at least four separate occasions, and what I interpreted as a very firm look that communicated: do not. And I have complied. Mostly. I have complied in the sense that I have not been caught.

But here is what I cannot reconcile: if the blue water bowl is simply a fixture of the room and the blue color is incidental — some mineral deposit, some cleaning agent, some aesthetic choice — then why is access restricted? Gerald does not restrict access to the sink water, which I am also not supposed to drink but which is monitored less aggressively. He does not restrict access to the water in my bowl in the kitchen, obviously, or the glass of water he leaves on the nightstand, which I have occasionally investigated.

The restriction is specific. The restriction suggests the blue water is different. The restriction suggests Gerald knows something about the blue water that he does not want me to know.

My current best theory is enhancement. The blue water contains something that accelerates Gerald’s recovery, sharpens his focus, or confers some advantage he has decided not to share with me. This would explain both the secrecy and his general afternoon alertness on days when he has been to the blue water room. It would also explain why he is in there with a magazine for twenty-two minutes — perhaps the magazine is a cover story, and the real twenty-two minutes are devoted to the consumption of enhanced blue water and whatever ritual surrounds it.

I intend to conduct further research. I have identified a moment in Gerald’s morning routine when the door is briefly unmonitored — approximately forty seconds between when he goes to get his coffee and when he returns to close the bathroom door. This is a narrow window, but I am a precise animal.

In the meantime, I have been going to Dapper Doodle on Wednesdays, and I can report that whatever they do there — the warm water, the particular shampoo, the professional hands that know exactly how to work around my ears — it produces results that the blue water room does not seem to produce for Gerald. I come home magnificent. I come home gleaming. I come home with my coat in the peak condition it deserves to be in.

Gerald comes out of the blue water room looking approximately the same as he went in.

I am not going to say anything about this directly. I am simply going to continue presenting as an example of what professional care looks like, and I am going to trust that the contrast speaks for itself.

The data, Gerald, is there.

You just have to look.

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Dapper Dan is the resident observer and self-appointed household analyst at an undisclosed address in Springfield, Missouri. He is groomed regularly at Dapper Doodle Grooming and believes the quality of his coat speaks for itself. Gerald remains unaware of this diary.

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