Dyscountopia
Page 17
“I know,” said Mr. Edd. “We’ve tried to poison it, but it just keeps coming back.”
The door shut quietly behind them.
****
The man in the uniform knocked on the purple door. The hinges were shiny and new, like they’d just been replaced. The door opened.
“Mrs. Zim? Delivery for you. Sign here.”
The woman in the doorway took the plastic stylus from the man’s hand, obviously going out of her way not to be friendly. She scribbled her name on the green plastic screen in front of her, then gave the stylus back.
“Just a minute please.” The man strode quickly to his delivery truck and pulled an oblong box from the back, hefting it over to the woman and depositing it at her feet. “Have a nice day, ma’am.”
As the delivery man retreated to his truck, Mrs. Zim stared sourly down at the box. Stamped on the top of it, in cold, black letters, were these five words: Home Furnishing – This End Up.
“’Bout time.” She lifted it up and scooted it across the floor into her apartment, then swung the door shut behind her.
Inside, she began removing the contents of the box and arranging them on a conspicuously bare spot in the middle of her carpet. Panels A and B. Panels C and D. Panel E and F. Panel G. One small metal screw driver. Twelve bolts. Eleven nuts. She turned the box upside down and shook it. Nothing else came out.
“Goddamn it.” Mrs. Zim walked to the kitchen and opened a drawer, resourcefully digging through the contents until she produced a twelfth nut. She returned to the living room and got to work, not bothering to look at the instructions. Every year she’d ordered a new futon from Omega-Mart and put it together herself. There was nothing different about this one.
When Mrs. Zim was finished, she took a step back and examined the product of her labor. It was cold and gray and flaccid. It stood quietly in the center of her carpet, dutifully awaiting a long year of drudgery, demanding no thought from the observer; evoking no emotion. Whatever it had once been, it was now simply the sum of its parts, a purely serviceable thing destined to fade instantly from human memory without leaving behind so much as a blemish. It would be used until it could be used no longer, then speedily discarded.
Mrs. Zim studied it for a long while, then let out a satisfied grunt. It was no work of art, but for $29.95 it was a bargain. And everyone knew it.