Buster, my gray tabby, sat on the linoleum by his plastic food bowl, waiting for his morning spoonful of salmon pate. I always poured my coffee first, letting the dark roast scent clear the heavy dampness of the October morning. On the laminate counter sat the small stack of mail I had brought in from the porch box. The white envelope from Oak Creek Power and Light sat on top, its cellophane window showing my name printed in cold, square letters.
I slid my butter knife under the paper flap, expecting the usual eighty-five dollars.
My fingers went stiff as I unfolded the statement. The total due was two hundred and twenty-seven dollars.
Buster let out a low, demanding meow, rubbing his ribs against my ankle, but I could only stare at the bold black numbers. I checked my gold wristwatch, a habit from thirty years of school bell schedules, and saw it was exactly three minutes past eight. My hand moved to the small table where my toast sat cold on a blue stoneware plate.
Two hundred and twenty-seven dollars was nearly double my typical autumn charge.
There was no error in the previous balance, and no estimated reading note on the back of the page. The usage bar graph showed a sharp, vertical spike that looked like a cliff, starting right at the beginning of September.
I set the mug down so hard some of the coffee sloshed over the rim, pooling around the base of the salt shaker.
I picked up the bill again, holding it closer to the window light. My eyes traced the line items: customer charge, state transition tax, distribution charge, and then the kilowatt-hour total. The consumption had surged to over eighteen hundred kilowatt-hours.
My late husband, Richard, used to keep a ledger of our household expenses in a small green binder, tracking every gallon of fuel oil and every watt of power. He always said a sudden jump meant a leak, but electricity does not leak into the dry ground. It has to go somewhere.
I set the paper down under the ceramic fruit bowl, my appetite entirely gone.
