So I took the phone and turned it toward me. The house shined like a new penny. I called Eddie.
“Hi, it’s us!… Just get back?”
“Yeah. Everything okay down there?”
“We’re doing a major cleanup. We’ve moved the furniture around a little…”
“Fine. Great. Tomorrow I’m going to put all your stuff on a train…”
“Thanks, great. Listen… Betty and I were wondering if we could do a little painting in the kitchen… one of these days, I mean…”
“Sure, go ahead.”
“Great, That’s good news. Actually, we’ll probably get on it pretty soon. Right away, even…”
“I don’t mind at all.”
“Yeah, well, that’s what I thought. Listen, while I’m at it, I wanted to talk to you about the wallpaper in the hall. You know, the sort of flowered…”
“Yeah, what about it?”
“Nothing. Just that maybe someday if it turned out that we could sort of replace it with something a little brighter. You don’t see something in a blue there? What do you think of blue…?”
“I don’t know. What about you? What do you think?”
“It’s a lot calmer.”
“Look, do whatever you want. I can’t see any problem.”
“Okay, cool. I’m not going to bug you about all this, you see, I just wanted your okay, you know what I mean…”
“Don’t sweat it.”
“Yeah, good.”
“Okay…”
“Wait. I forgot to ask you something else…”
“Hmm?”
“Well, it’s Betty. She wants to break through a wall or two.”
“…”
“You there? You know how it is when she gets an idea into her head. Listen, it’s no big deal-just a couple of little walls, not big walls. It’s not like a big job or anything, not what you think. Just puttering, you know…”
“Right, puttering. That’s not puttering anymore. Breaking down walls, that’s a notch above puttering. You guys make me laugh…”
“Listen, Eddie, you know me. I wouldn’t bother you with all this if it wasn’t important. You know how it is, Eddie. You know how a grain of sand can change the whole world. Imagine that this wall is like a barrier between us and a sunny glade. Wouldn’t it be like slapping life in the face to let ourselves be beaten by a silly little barrier? Wouldn’t that really worry you, to miss out just because of some stupid little bricks? Eddie, don’t you see that life is full of terrifying symbols?”
“Okay. Do it. But go easy…”
“Never fear. I’m not crazy.”
When I hung up Betty was looking at me with a Buddha smile. I believe I detected in her eye a spark that dated back to prehistoric times-to the days when guys sweated and groaned to prepare a shelter for their mate standing there smiling in the shadows. In some strange way it was nice to think I was obeying an instinct that went back to the dawn of time. I felt I was doing something good-contributing my drop of water to the great river of humanity. Plus, a little puttering never hurt anybody. You’d have a hell of a time these days not running across a sale somewhere in the electric drill and saw department. It allows you to lift your head up a little-feel good about things like shelves. The real secret lies in not blowing every fuse in the house.
“Okay, you happy now?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“Hungry?”
We ate, watching a horror movie-some dudes who came out of their graves and went running around in the night screaming. Toward the end, I started yawning-nodding off for two or three seconds-and each time I opened my eyes the nightmare was still going on. They’d found this old lady in a deserted street and were eating her leg. They had gold-plated eyes. They were watching me peel my banana. We waited until every one of them had been roasted with a flamethrower, then went to bed.
We carried the cushions into the bedroom and I swore that the first thing I’d do tomorrow was go buy a mattress-I swore on my mother’s head. We made the bed in silence. We were wiped out. Not one speck of dust showed as the sheets came down like parachutes, stirring the air in the room. We would be able to sleep on our pillows without risk of inhaling a germ.
Early the next morning I heard somebody drumming on the door. I thought I was dreaming. I saw the pale glow of dawn floating timidly behind the window, and the face on the alarm clock was still lit. I had to get up. It gave me a stomachache, but I got used to it. I made sure not to wake Betty and went down stairs.
I opened the door, shivering in the early morning cold. There was this guy standing there, an old guy with a two-day beard, looking at me and smiling. He wore a cap.
“Hey there, I hope I’m not bothering you,” he said. “But are you the one who put that mattress there, by the garbage cans?”
I spotted a garbage truck rolling along slowly behind him, a yellow light revolving on top. I made the connection.
“Well, yeah. Something wrong?”
“We don’t handle them things. Don’t even want to know about them.”
“So, what am I supposed to do with it? Cut it into pieces and swallow it? Take one a day…?”
“Don’t know. It is your mattress, ain’t it?”
The street was empty and silent. The day seemed to be stretching like a cat come down from an easy chair. The old man lit a cigarette butt in the golden light.
“I realize it’s a pain,” he said. “I can put myself in your shoes. Nothing more annoying than getting rid of a mattress. But after what happened to Bobby, we don’t mess with them anymore. Plus, it was one just like that, gray with stripes. I can still see old Bobby trying to push it into the compactor. Bang-took his arm straight off. Get the picture…?”
He brought me up short. My eyes were still half glued shut from sleeping. Who was Bobby, anyway? That’s what I was going to ask him, when the guy behind the steering wheel started yelling from the other side of the street.
“Hey, what’s going on? He giving you a hard time?”
“That’s him-Bobby,” the old man said.
Bobby kept it up in the truck. He had his head out the window, making little puffs of steam.
“That guy giving us a pain in the ass over the mattress?” he yelled.
“Cool down, Bobby,” said the old man.
I was cold. I noticed that I was barefoot. There were even a few layers of fog here and there, floating in the early-morning air. My brain was going in slow motion. Bobby decided to open the door of the truck and get out, whining. I shivered. He wore a bulky sweater with the sleeves rolled up. One of his arms sent off light reflections-it ended in a giant hook. It was one of those cheap artificial limbs made out of chrome-totally reimbursed by health insurance, fitted like a shock absorber. I was startled. The old man was looking at the end of his cigarette. He crossed his legs.
Bobby came toward us, rolling his eyes, his mouth twisted into a frown. For a second I thought I was back in front of the TV, watching a scene from the horror movie, only now it was in 3-D. Bobby looked totally nuts. He stopped when he got to the mattress. I saw him clearly-there was a lamp post just over his head, as if put there on purpose. The tears on his cheeks looked like tattooed lightning bolts. I couldn’t hear too well, but I think he was talking to the mattress-whimpering. The old man took a last drag on his cigarette and spit it out, looking into the sky.
“We ain’t come across one in a long time,” he told me.
The cry that Bobby let out pierced my ear like a javelin. I watched him lift the mattress with his one good hand, as if he were grabbing someone by the neck. He stared into its eyes, as if he were holding in front of him the person who had ruined his whole life. He drove his arm into the thing. The hook came out the other side, sprinkling little pieces of stuffing onto the sidewalk. The revolving light gave me the feeling of a giant spider weaving its web all around us.