It’s hot. I can’t tell if the air in my place is stagnant or just absent. Our bedroom – our whole apartment - is the attic of an old brownstone, where the servants used to swelter until the bell would ring from below. Maybe the windows back then were sealed shut, so as to induce a torpor in the lower classes. It prevents revolution. Regardless, even with the windows open wide to the bus traffic and bickering teenagers on Bergen Street, the air squats in place with a wet, soupy quality. It’s kind of like the oxygen has been replaced by space ether, pumped in by beings more tropical and cunning than we. Collectors ballooning the atmosphere of a butterfly dome with chloroform. I don’t mind it, actually, but it creates a feeling of disembodiment that I imagine is common in sleep study centers, even if it’s probably nine degrees warmer here. Floating and trapped under a weight at the same time. It’s also late on a Sunday. The liminal point in time when, leaving Venus and bending towards Mars, the sun sets on all the day’s verbs, changing them to disquieting adjectives of discontent.
At least the couch is gone. It sat there in the back of the office, a remnant of my singledom, taking up needed newspaper storage space and being hated by my wife. Not so much me – I thought it was functional and not unattractive. It was covered in sleek black pleather that bespoke a cool, stylish aura my bachelorhood never had.. But she felt that its size and blackness distracted from the mental calm she needs to produce her long, thoughtful essays about hip hop and prison and the Middle East. Its leaving became a point of near-obsession, something that grew in the crawlspace of her mind, slowly nibbling into the healthy tissue responsible for note-taking and typing and discussions with her editor until 60% off sales and warehouse outlets emitted a clarion call that deafened. The woman who bought it – a couple actually – drove an hour and twenty minutes from Connecticut to pick it up. They said it was going to be shipped to their summer home in Michigan. Our posting on Craigslist was clear – we were offering a seventy-five dollar, scratched up futon. A non-bargain for anyone who liked their furniture new or lived more than a 2-person carry away. So the people who showed up made no sense to us at all; their purchase, the summer house shipment or the couple themselves. She – Susan! - was bubbly in a way that wasn’t off-putting. She was just a nice woman delighted by her remarkable find of our generic, mass-produced, ubiquitously-available junk. She called down out of our window – up here! Apartment three! Yes, on the third floor! – to someone below. He turned out to be an older, ophthalmologist-looking gentleman who seemed unhappy, no doubt at the preposterousness of the entire scenario. From the differences in their ages and attractiveness, we guessed that this was one of a number of insanities that Stanley (or whatever his name actually was; he pointedly did not say hello) accepted in the relationship. The thrill of finding a sucker initially brought out the worst in us (did they want, say, our old toaster for $200?), until the inequality of the transaction slowly shamed us into silence. But ultimately, there was nothing we could say. Everyone knows where Michigan is, and what kind of furniture is available at Crate and Barrels across the country. It's not like we told them this couch contained a treasure map in the stuffing. Buyer beware, and all that, right? So we just floated on the tide of Commerce, accepting Stanley’s money and frustration at the price he has to pay for getting perky Susan to live with him.
That said, the moment they left, my wife's glee became unseemly. A jig, performed to the new and original composition entitled “I’m In A Great Mood, Bitches!” made me smile, and reminds me why I love her, despite her jihad against my possessions.
So the couch is gone, the wife is happy, the apartment less cluttered. But as I said, it’s still hot. Maybe we’ll go out for ice-cream. On Stanley.
# posted by Dash Riprock : 7:58 PM
