In the ear­ly spring of 2014, set in Indi­ana, the nar­ra­tor reflects on her rela­tion­ship with Cyrus, with whom she has been liv­ing for a year post-grad­u­a­tion. Dur­ing this time, they engage in casu­al dat­ing and heavy drink­ing, which per­sists until Cyrus embraces sobri­ety. Their week­ly vis­its to Jude’s house for yard work become a pecu­liar rit­u­al; ini­tial­ly seek­ing “fresh gro­ceries,” they dis­cov­er Jude’s offers are literal—groceries in exchange for labor, with Jude watch­ing them from his rick­ety lawn chair.

Jude, a bald­ing man in dingy under­wear, observes them doing odd jobs in his yard whilst con­sum­ing alco­hol. The nar­ra­tor and Cyrus, high on fen­tanyl, joke about their arrange­ment, pon­der­ing if their efforts con­sti­tute sex work. They play­ful­ly ana­lyze their sit­u­a­tion through a sociopo­lit­i­cal lens while engag­ing in wood chop­ping, an endeav­or they find both amus­ing and dan­ger­ous.

One Sat­ur­day, after prepar­ing for their vis­it, Cyrus injures his foot with an ax dur­ing their wood-chop­ping task, result­ing in a sig­nif­i­cant cut that bleeds pro­fuse­ly. In a state between shock and high, the nar­ra­tor strug­gles to man­age his injury, demand­ing first-aid and con­tem­plat­ing a hos­pi­tal vis­it due to the sever­i­ty of the blood loss.

Jude, pan­ic-strick­en and near­ly use­less, attempts to offer min­i­mal assis­tance while being main­ly con­cerned about the after­math of the injury with­in his home. As the nar­ra­tor tends to Cyrus’s foot, they can’t help but laugh at the absur­di­ty of the sit­u­a­tion: Cyrus’s injury became a source of humor rather than pan­ic.

Even­tu­al­ly, as the sit­u­a­tion calms, Jude hands over a mix of cash in com­pen­sa­tion for the mishap and a pair of strange wind chimes becomes a token from their bizarre trans­ac­tion. That evening, with the cash, Cyrus and the nar­ra­tor throw a par­ty, where the tale of their “adven­ture” grows increas­ing­ly exag­ger­at­ed. In the morn­ing, they awak­en to a messy apart­ment and the sight of Cyrus, still slumped on the couch with his wound­ed foot uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly dis­played, illus­trat­ing the strange blend of humor and chaos that char­ac­ter­izes their exis­tence .

Wait­ing ai