She oils the wooden counter. For this, she uses a viscous hybrid oil that she orders from Denmark. It's a job she's attended to—daily at first, now monthly—for almost a year: layer over layer, each one taking twenty four hours to dry, the room rendered unusable. Ensure the area is well ventilated.

She pours the oil onto the soap-clean surface, and works it in with her bare hands, as if it were a Kobe beef cow. Her fingers push and pull in circular motions, until no one could claim she'd missed a bit.

When the wood has sucked up all it can, she will work it to a luster with the silk camisole that, in the dim distant, was the conceit of her wedding night.