Page 27 of Terms Of Un-Endearment
“Good to know! Thanks!”
When I get to my room, rather than calling a plumber, I take Piper’s advice and consult Google.What makes water hot in California homes?
The answer I get is a water heater. Which seems obvious but also leads to more questions.
What is a water heater?
Google is more helpful with that question. Because, of course, the water has to be heated by something, somewhere. It’s not naturally hot in some parts of the world and not in others.
Where do I find a water heater?
Google fills my screen with pictures of water heaters—helpful—and a hundred places where I can buy a water heater—not so helpful. I narrow my search.
Where do I find a water heater in a California home?
I get a one-sentence answer.In California, water heaters are typically located in garages.
I smack my head. I know exactly what it is now. I’ve passed the rectangular box on the wall with all the pipes coming fromit every time I walk from the garage into the house. If I ever wondered what it was, I don’t remember.
Dressed in my warmest clothes and armed with Google, I run down the stairs to the garage.
An instruction manual entitled Tankless Water Heater is in a plastic bag attached to the side of the rectangle box. One page in, I discover that, not only is this a water heater, but it’s also one that never runs out of hot water. As long as the heater is powered on, the water will be hot. Forever and ever.
After a little more reading, I discover that the currently blank digital face of the box should have a temperature showing. I find the power button right below the blank face and press it, understanding one thing: The box must be on in order for the water to get hot, and this box is not on.
When the numbers light up the small screen, I give a little huff of success, then press the up arrow until it shows one hundred and twenty degrees Fahrenheit, which is what the booklet recommends. I stare it down for a minute, daring the power to go off or the numbers to go down.
Nothing happens.
Time for a test. I walk through the kitchen, past Piper, to the downstairs bathroom I just showered in. I turn on the shower, and seconds later, steam billows.
After my second shower of the day—which is also the best shower of my life—I go back to the kitchen. Piper is still coloring as though it’s her first day of primary school.
"Looks like the heater turned off for some reason," I say casually, even though she didn’t ask.
"Huh. Has it done that before?" She could have colored every page in that book of hers by now.
"Never." I stare at her harder than I did at the hot water machine.
“Weird. Glad you fixed it, though.”Color, color, color. Nothing to see here.
I open my mouth to say something else. To ask her if she knows anything about what could have happened to the water heating thing, or why she got a sudden itch to wash my outside towels, or if she always wakes up to the sound of a foghorn at five a.m. But I close my mouth and walk back upstairs, wondering if I'm being paranoid or if Piper Quinn really did wreak this much havoc before eight a.m. on a Sunday morning.
And if so, what am I going to do in return?
Chapter 11
Piper
After the shower incident, I barely see Archie for most of the day, which is fine by me. I “saw” a little too much of him this morning, and I’m uncomfortable with how much I keep replaying the image of him in that towel. Or towels.The man looks good in a towel, whatever size it may be. Small…slightly larger…extra-large. He can pull them all off.
NOT THAT I WANT HIM TO!
I don’t. Iswear.
At the same time, I don’t regret that the reason Archie was in that towel is my own fault. On my list of accomplishments, near the top is not laughing in Archie’s face That feat took monumental strength. Not only when he begged me to get him a towel but also when he thought the faucet was the source of hot water.
Honestly, I shouldn’t be surprised that Archie was today-years-old when he learned what a water heater is. Replaying the look on his face when I asked him where hot water came from makes me laugh out loud.
