When they came back, the door to the bathroom wouldn't stay closed. The metal tongue of the latch made a satisfying click whenever they pushed the door snug against its frame, but when they let go, without fail, by some unseen mechanism, the metal latch slipped out of its pocket and the door swung open. They studied the problem, hoping to repair it, but no obvious solution presented itself. So they took their showers and used the toilet with the door ajar, and all the sounds and smells that are supposed to be restricted to the bathroom wafted freely into the living room and the bedroom, which was naturally more of an embarrassment to the person inside the bathroom than to the person hearing and smelling it outside. All of this because of some subtle change that they could not detect. Perhaps the settling of the door on its hinges, the slouching of a door jamb under gravity, or the warping of the frame over time with the inevitable contractions and expansions that a building undergoes from night to day or summer to winter. Their apartment had been changed by some minute and ordinary force, and though their two weeks away made the difference seem abrupt to them, in all likelihood it had been quietly at work all along.