To my right was a door that seemed to open onto a hallway, and at the other end of the front room, another doorway, probably leading to a kitchen. No sign of DeMont.
I was about to call his name when I heard a toilet flush. I stepped inside and waited for a respectable amount of time. Just as I was about to call out, “Are you feeling okay?” I heard another flush. And another. About six in succession before he yelled, “Bring my dinner back here!”
Not especially anxious to obey, and wondering why anyone in such apparent gastric distress would want to eat-let alone eat in that particular room-I said, “I’ll just leave it on the kitchen table.”
“No you won’t!” he called and I could hear him moving down the hallway. He stopped in the doorway and looked at me. “A woman!” he grinned, “That’s great! Just what I need! What happened to your face? Oh, never mind, that’s a rude thing to ask.”
He was a big man, tall and broad-shouldered, probably in his late sixties or early seventies, but in good shape. Having heard that he was an inventor who needed to have his meals delivered, I suppose I had expected someone who would be frail and pale. He was tanned and fit and seemed perfectly capable of taking care of himself. Or anyone else, for that matter.
His hair was white, his eyes blue under snowy brows. He waved his hand to me in a “hurry up” motion and took off back down the hallway. “Come on,” he called over his shoulder, “I want to show you an invention that is going to save marriages all across America.”
What the hell, I thought, and cautiously followed, keeping my distance.
He walked into the bathroom and moved to the toilet. I was just about to turn right back around when he said, “Watch the toilet seat.”
As he stood there, facing the toilet in the classic standing male position, the seat slowly but steadily lifted. He turned to me, beaming. “Now watch!”
He moved away from it with a jaunty step and it flushed.
“Now you try it,” he said.
“Uh, no thanks,” I said.
He gave me a sly smile and said, “Okay, you big chicken. Watch this!”
He approached the toilet, turned his back on it-as if he were about to take a seat-and slowly but surely, the seat came back down. He lowered himself onto it, grinned at me, and got off. Again the jaunty step, and the toilet flushed.
“You see?” he said excitedly.
“Yes. Amazing.”
His grin faded. “What’s the problem?”
“What’s what problem?”
“What s the problem that is preventing you from being enthusiastic about a product that could revolutionize the sleeping habits of millions?”
“Sleeping habits?”
“Of course!” he exclaimed, as if I were the biggest dunderhead he had ever laid eyes on. “Every night, all across America, millions of women fall onto wet, cold porcelain surfaces. And why? Because some man has forgotten to put the seat back down! Now how is any poor gal going to get back to sleep after something like that happens to her?”
“It’s very thoughtful of you to try to be of help-”
“I hear a but coming!” he said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“A b-u-t. You like it, but-” He stretched the last word out.
“But it needs to rise and lower faster. By the time that seat was starting on its way down, most women would have already hit the porcelain. And I don’t even want to think about what will happen while a half-asleep man waits for that seat to rise all the way up.”
“Well, he better not rush it,” DeMont said, “”cause this thing is operated on an electrical pressure-sensitive mat and if he hits the mat instead of the toilet, he just might get electrocuted.“
“Some women might consider that a fitting punishment,” I said, “but I don’t think Consumer Product Safety is going to give it the old green light. Maybe you need to work a few of those little bugs out.”
He seemed so dejected at this, I added, “But I like your front-door setup. How did you know I was there?”
“I didn’t know it was you, exactly,” he said, reanimated. “But that’s a pressure-sensitive mat, too.”
“How does it work?”
“Anybody steps on it, it sends a signal to my recorder, which plays a little tape and that’s what you hear over the speaker.”
“ ‘Come in’?”
“Yes.”
“It greets everyone by saying, ”Come in‘?“ I asked.
“Sure.”
“But what if you don’t want someone to come in?”
“Why, you just lock the door,” he said. “That’s all.”
Unwilling to argue the possible shortcomings of that system, I said, “Maybe you should eat dinner in another room.”
“Okay,” he said cheerfully, and led the way to the kitchen.
The kitchen was far less cluttered than the rest of the house, but I had a feeling his sister and Laurie were responsible for its relative state of cleanliness. I set the bag down on the table as he went to a cupboard. I was wondering what story I should tell him to get him talking to me on subjects other than toilet seats and doormats when he said, “Sit down, Irene, I’ll get you a glass of my special power drink.”
But I stayed standing, and didn’t loosen my grip on the bag. “How do you know my name?”
He laughed, but didn’t answer right away. I watched him warily as he set two tumblers on the table and moved to the refrigerator. “Let’s see,” he said, pulling out a pitcher of something that had settled into several layers that were various shades of red. He walked over to a blender, poured the contents of the pitcher into it, put the lid on the blender, then stood back and clapped his hands. The blender began whirring.
“I put one of those doodads on its power supply,” he said, speaking up over the whine of the blender, “so you could start and stop it from anywhere in the room.”
I didn’t bother to point out that remote control of a blender was not worth much if you were already forced to stand next to it to fill it and empty it. I just nodded, watching the liquid in the blender turn a single shade of bright red.
But when he clapped a second time, the blender kept going. “Dag nab it!” he said. Given his father’s virtuoso swearing, it surprised me. He tried clapping again, and still it whined on. Finally he went over and pushed a button on the machine. That stopped it. He clapped again, and nothing happened. He pushed a button, and nothing happened. He took the lid off and peered down into it. “Wonder if the dang thing’s jammed?” he said, reaching for a knife.
“Uh, shouldn’t you unplug it first?” I said.
He turned and smiled at me-a big, immensely pleased smile. “That’s it!” he said, banging his hand on the counter.
The blender started up again. I quickly ducked beneath the table, while Mr. DeMont received an object lesson in the power of centrifugal force as the blender sprayed red juice everywhere. He fumbled blindly with the machine, finally turning it off. There was an eerie silence.
I crept up from my sheltered position. Other than a few spots here and there on my clothing I was, for the most part, unscathed. But Robert DeMont looked like he had been doing surgery in a MASH unit.
He reached for a dish towel and wiped the red liquid from his face. He looked over at me, grinned, and then began laughing. It was contagious. When we had brought ourselves back under control, he quickly made me lose it again by asking, quite innocently, “What happened?”