The walls are freshly painted white.
The wooden floor shines.
There is no:
• television
• stereo
• computer
There are no:
• rugs
• personal mementos
• pictures on the wall
• shelves
There is nothing on the glass coffee table.
On the beige canvas couch is one book, closed on a stiff leather bookmark; a dual-language edition of the Bhagavad Gita.
The windows smell of Windex and the bed of detergent. The kitchen appliances look brand new. The clock is right.
Going in, Ralph asks that Eddie remove his shoes and Eddie asks if Ralph is some kind of Maoist. Ralph goes to the kitchen.
Eddie sits right down on the gleaming floor and puts his briefcase on his knees and puts his head on his briefcase.
He calls out through his crossed arms, “Did you have a really happy childhood? Don’t tell me. You just, obviously, you’re the kind who, your parents loved each other and you had a fucking collie.”
“Do you want a beer?”
“Yeah, try and shut me up. That’s the best thing.”
“Do you want a beer?”
“Of course I want a beer, but I’m trying to talk about why you can’t hear what I’ve got to say. That’s the point.”
Now Eddie rears back and clicks his briefcase open. Rummaging among the papers, he pulls out:
• half a ham sandwich with a match embedded in the bread
• a plastic brontosaurus
• phone bills
• bedraggled bunny ears, à la Playboy
• pens, tickets
• one fuzzy die
then he just dumps it all out on the floor.
Papers, socks, envelopes, pennies, fly everywhere. A travel-sized Listerine bounces, hitting him in the face. A snapshot of a lanky young girl in pink dungarees, smiling in the seedy Chinatown of some metropolis, skates free, briefly takes off kite-fashion, swoops down, hoverfoils some yards over the smooth floor, and finally tips over onto its face just where Ralph is about to put his foot, on his way back from the kitchen with two cans of beer.