Don Pond groaned. The couch seemed to get longer by the second and Don Pond’s groan came from far off.
“Melba, you wouldn’t miss,” he groaned. “Not if you didn’t want to. You know you can just hold up the ends of your apron and catch anything. But it’s no good trying to convince you. You aren’t compassionate. You lorded it over everyone when you worked at the bakery. Now that that’s over, I wonder what you’ll do? In a way, you’ve lost more than I have.”
Melba did not know how to respond. It was too new, leaving her position at the bakery, the bakery closing for business, the day stretching out before her without activities or tasks. Curled in the corner of the couch, she contemplated the black vinyl expanse. The couch was really a showpiece, one of a kind, grimly magnificent, the house merely a shanty built over the couch to protect it from the elements. The cold, claylike cushions cased in the thin, vaguely tacky membrane — they did give one the sensation of snuggling dead flesh. Even the faint chemical odor of the couch seemed preservative in nature. Melba rubbed her hand on the vinyl and examined the pad of her thumb — no darker, but waxier.
Summoning all her strength, Melba crawled from the couch corner toward what she hoped was the cushion’s edge, a matte black horizon line where the gleaming vinyl graded into the dim and porous air. The vista dizzied her. She swung her arm, using the momentum to propel herself backwards away from the edge. She bumped against her abandoned mug and the tea sloshed but did not spill. She fumbled for it, grasping the mug in both hands and gulping without hesitation. The taste was not good. The texture, however, reminded Melba pleasantly of silt.
Like any female in a male’s house, she thought, I am being struck with ways to make improvements. She smiled, relieved to find that she had surrendered her contested singularity and merged herself with the anonymous multitude of women in general.
For instance, thought Melba, improvingly, enjoying her newfound freedom as representative of a group, how nice it would be to serve such a tea in a small dish, just the slightest bit concave! The silty tea would spread out wide and warm and shallow, and the guest could drink it with eyes fixed on the brown surface, as though peeping through rushes at the squidgy rim of a eutrophic lake. Having seen her improving idea to the finish, Melba sighed, her mind returning to its lonely track.
She heard rummaging and clinking and wondered briefly if animals had emerged from wallows beneath the couch before she glimpsed Don Pond setting a platter on the coffee table. The platter was rectangular, white plastic, arrayed with daubs of jam and sliced sausages in alternating lines. Melba noted the thin, curved shadow limning the blade of a white plastic knife. Setting her mug beside her on the cushion, she squirmed to the edge of the couch and extended her arm across the crevasse between couch and table until her hand hovered above the tabletop. After making a few calculations, she let her hand drop onto the platter and pinched with thumb and forefinger, coming away with a firm grip on the knife’s handle. She performed a similar maneuver and a garlic stick was also hers. She reached out the other arm and spread jam on the garlic stick. The jam clung together in a dense clot that fell from the end of the garlic stick and was lost to view, tumbling down to be swallowed by the carpet. Don Pond did not glance over. He was ignoring her, had crossed to the other side of the room, where he stood cleaning the windowsills with a hand vacuum.
Engaging her back muscles, Melba retracted her arms, regaining her position on the edge of the couch with her prizes in her hands. She sniffed the jam, which smelled gamey, then crunched the garlic stick between her teeth. Don Pond switched off the hand vacuum and she froze, jaws clenched, the garlic stick lodged in her mouth. The hand vacuum surged to life and Melba blew out through her nose, a noisy gust of air, and mauled the garlic stick with powerful up and down and also lateral motions of her jaws, snorting, the garlic stick itself grown wet and pliable, folding silently now into a sodden but lacy ball. She swallowed, blew again through her nose, and let herself be pulled backwards by the couch’s inexorable gravity. Soon she was back in the corner.
So this was what it is like to be unemployed, thought Melba. Navigating a man’s couch, poaching in the thick unclean daylight, as the man bustles about, hosting.
Of course, Melba knew there were different forms of unemployment; some people opted for chemical comas, others ate pears in the face of the wind that blew strongly on the top of the mountain, others shopped, relying on the television and telephone to identify goods and place orders, or visiting the outlet stores on White Street where damaged or slightly soiled blouses and slacks appeared in bins at unpredictable intervals. Melba Zuzzo did not shop very often, never having had the time, but some girls shopped a great deal.
Melba had been warned by her mother that she did not shop enough, and that by not shopping enough she was jeopardizing her chances for long-term happiness. The conversation had shocked her, but whether it was because of what her mother had said, or because she had not expected to speak to her mother at all on that occasion, she could not be sure. She had picked up the telephone to place a call to Mark Rand.
“Mark Rand?” she had said.
“Speaking,” replied Gigi Zuzzo.
Melba had paused, perplexed. She had felt the impulse to pull the telephone receiver from her head and examine it, but she did not give in to this impulse, which she knew to be a stupid one. Instead she looked around the vestibule, where her coats hung on pegs and the telephone sat in the center of a tiny telephone table.
“Do you want to know what he’s saying?” asked Gigi Zuzzo. Melba heard muffled laughter.
“Yes,” said Melba.
“Melba!” barked Gigi Zuzzo. “Did you really mean to call a man, a landlord, at his private residence, so as to demand a report on what he is at that moment saying in a private conversation with a female visitor?”
“No,” said Melba. “That is …”
“Good,” said Gigi Zuzzo. “It would reflect badly on me. It would embarrass me in front of a landlord, and Mark Rand and I have just gotten past all of that, our differences in status.”
“There’s a fume,” said Melba Zuzzo. “In the house.”
“I should hope it’s in the house if you’re calling Mark Rand,” said Gigi Zuzzo. “A landlord has a great deal of responsibility, it’s true, but he can’t be expected to go about looking into every stray fume that attracts a tenant’s notice. Have you heard of the atmosphere?”
“Yes,” said Melba. “But …”
“Well that’s the source of fumes, Melba. Now do you think it’s Mark Rand’s job to upkeep the atmosphere?”
“No,” said Melba. “I …”
“Whose job is it?” asked Gigi Zuzzo.
“Astronauts?” guessed Melba. She heard a faint pop.
“Did you hear that?” asked Gigi Zuzzo. “I snapped my fingers! Yes, Melba. Astronauts. The division of labor gives us landlords and astronauts, thank goodness, or men like Mark Rand would never rest. He’s overworked as it is. You don’t understand what it’s like. Mark Rand does rest, make no mistake, but rarely. He has a bed for nodding off now and then, but it’s impossible for him to spend an entire night in his bed. For one thing, many people use it and not all of them use it at the same time. You sign up for particular timeslots and pay accordingly. Mark Rand is a landlord in the first instance, so even if he is so tired he’s swaying on his feet, he would never do anything irregular. He would never evict the people in his bed without the proper notice, and by the time he gave the people proper notice, they would be out of the bed anyway, and new people in their stead. Now why would you bother Mark Rand when, for practical and ethical purposes, an astronaut is the appropriate choice?”