We’ve collected numerous bars of elegant soap over the years, all destined for future use. You know how it is: you spend a night in a chic hotel, you take home the soap. We’ve visited a few chic hotels in our days; we’ve snitched some pretty elegant soap.

The snitched soap resided in our linen closet, which we cleaned out a week ago. Almost everything in the closet is destined for the tag sale, but a few things – like three, exceptional bars of snitched soap – were packed away and hauled to our storage unit for another day.

Naturally, we’re now running out of soap. We’re running out of a lot of things – peanut butter, strapping tape, even Advil – and they won’t be replaced. We will remain in this apartment for less than a week. Does one buy a bar of soap, a jar of Adams’ crunchy, or a bottle of Advil when only six days remain?

It’s a bit like living on death row.

Meanwhile, we consecrate the remaining sliver of soap in the shower as if it’s a sacrament of Holy Communion. Life is no longer a sudsy soak, it’s a surreptitious splash. As we say each time either of us heads for the bathroom: “Don’t drop the Dove!”