“In my shed out back. I’m using the outlet on the charging station. Since we don’t have an EV, it’s just been sitting there.” Teddy said this as if it were painfully obvious, as if mining crypto was practically obligatory.
“So were you hiding it from me?” Jane was trying not to sound accusatory and failing miserably.
“The rigs can throw off a lot of heat. I didn’t want them in the house in August.”
“Okay, but you realize that you still have to pay for that power? It’s not free.”
“I know.” He shrugged. “I guess I didn’t tell you sooner because I knew how you would react.”
Jane took that in. “Are you making it my fault that you chose not to tell me?”
“No, but—come on, Jane, you shit on everything I do. Anyway, Ethereum is paying me in crypto for doing the mining, so it should all even out.”
“It ‘should,’ or it will?”
“Well, it’s a little unpredictable. You get paid when you’re the first one to get the hash—”
“It’s a whole lot unpredictable, Teddy. How do you mine something that isn’t even tangible?”
“It’s, like, a metaphor, it’s not literal.... But the blockchain requires constant verification. That’s why crypto is so solid.”
Jane scoffed. “It’s as solid as fantasy football. And we’re paying the price! A thousand dollars! Did you have any idea it takes so much power?”
Teddy paused before sheepishly replying, “No, not really.”
“So, spend a thousand dollars to make a dollar’s worth of crypto. You’ll be a millionaire in no time.”
“Can we talk about this later? After Keith goes?”
“Did he talk you into this?”
“No, and don’t hate on Keith.”
“I’m going to lie down. It’s been a bitch of a day, and this is not what I needed to come home to.”
She stood in front of the bathroom mirror, splashed water on her face, then squeezed a dollop of her most abrasive scrub onto her fingers and rubbed it on her cheeks. She wanted to remove anytrace of this day. She studied her face in the mirror. Did she look like her mother? Sometimes she thought she had her mother’s eyes. But only the shape. Her mother had blue eyes, and Jane’s were hazel. No, she really looked more like her father.
She willed herself to cry, hoping it would be cathartic, but to no avail.
Chapter Four
Leila
Jane gripped her travel mug of coffee tightly as she drove. She was exhausted and caffeine was her only hope. It was supposed to be a mood elevator, and after all the unpleasantness of the previous day and night, her gloom amalgamated into a dull heartburn that was exacerbated by the stubbornly warm October morning. Jane would have preferred gray skies and falling leaves to mirror her state of mind.
She’d tried antidepressants in her late teens, then again in her twenties, and right after she turned thirty. They numbed her a bit, but her core anhedonia persisted, immutable. The last med she had tried was Wellbutrin. It made her anxious and incited vivid, unpleasant dreams.
After Keith had left their place the previous night, Jane and Teddy picked right up where they’d left off arguing about the electric bill and crypto.
“You know what, Jane? It’s really easy to just be so cynical all the time.”
“No, it isn’t easy at all, Teddy, trust me.”
“I don’t think you respect me. You treat me like a moron.”
“I only treat you like a moron when you act like a moron.” She would speak the truth, even if it was unwelcome.
“Why don’t you ever give me a break, huh, Jane?”
