When Marjorie had a duck, it slept in Marjorie’s shower stall. Marjorie felt bad about this because she assumed that the duck would prefer to sleep in or near a pond, or at least a kiddie pool, or even a bathtub, but those options weren’t available.

The duck’s flat, stone-hard beak was the same vaguely variated color as blacktop. After a morning spent pecking at cracked corn or forcing bits of Wonderbread down its throat, and after an afternoon spent frantically flapping the perimeter of the tiled room, squawking desperately as it searched for a way out, the duck felt tired or even, sometimes, exhausted, and so it would push the shower curtain aside with its beak and step into the stall. Then the duck would lift and lower its webbed orange feet three or four times, as though it were in a marching band. The duck would bend its legs beneath its body and rest itself on the hairy drain. If Marjorie had recently showered, the floor of the stall would be cold and puddly, which was the way the duck liked. The duck would turn its chin and bury the tip of its beak in the feathers on its shoulder. The duck would lower its eyelids. When the duck slept, air moved with great force through the nostrils in its beak and caused the duck’s short white feathers to flutter and make a rustling sound. As the night wore on, the duck’s slumber deepened and its dreams grew vivid with desire. However, the duck never told anyone what it dreamed about. As the duck’s dreams grew heavier, so did its breathing, so that the duck’s entire body would begin to shudder and the duck’s respiration made a vibrate, rushy noise.

In her bedroom, Marjorie often lay awake, at various hours of the day and night, and listened to the duck’s noises. She thought that the duck’s slumbering breaths were like snores, that its squawks were not quacks. It seemed to Marjorie that the duck was unfortunately unaware of its duckness and therefore did not know how to achieve its duckness. She thought that it would be good to take the duck, with a long string tied around its neck, to the park, where there was a little lake with geese in it. There the duck could observe and therefore learn its waterfowlness, if not specifically its duckness. Or perhaps there was another park with a different lake or pond, one dedicated exclusively to ducks, or at least one that was inclusive of all the various water-loving species. Marjorie thought that she would like to teach the duck its duckness. The only problem was that Marjorie considered it very difficult to leave the house, what with the duck and all.

In the mornings, the duck and Marjorie woke up. Marjorie would open the bathroom door very carefully, so that the duck could not get out. The duck usually tried to escape over Marjorie’s foot, but Marjorie always picked it up in time, and cuddled it. The duck huffed and squirmed when Marjorie rubbed her cheek against the duck’s head feathers and fingered its underside. Marjorie did not know the duck’s gender even though she had on many occasions tried to check. With ducks, it is very hard to tell, because they are so flat down there. Marjorie would set the duck on the ground and retrieve a bag of Wonderbread from the bathroom shelf. She would remove a slice of bread from the bag and tear it into tiny pieces and throw the pieces at the duck. The duck lunged at the pieces as they bounced off its face and hit the floor. It swallowed them whole, its little neck convulsing as it raised its beak and forced the bread down to its stomach. Marjorie would refill the duck’s bowl with water, and then she would use a big wad of toilet paper to pick the duck’s feces off the floor and throw them into the latrine. As she did so, Marjorie would from time to time glance at her duck and sometimes she thought that their eyes met. When Marjorie looked at her duck, she hoped that at least eating made her duck happy. She thought about how much she loved her duck. When the duck looked at Marjorie, it thought of nothing at all.