Saturday, May 14, 2011

Take my coat please.

“It’s a terrible world where one is cold as soon as the air conditioner turns on, but hot as soon as it turns off. Though it is an equally terrible world with pants on“ Kevan thought  to himself as he sat in his bed. He hadn’t seen the sun today, but that was fine by him. He was worried about becoming too complacent in his glamorous lifestyle as the delivery man knocked on his front, and only, door.
As he browsed through the catalogs lining his walls, slurping chicken egg-drop soup from its plastic container, he took the pen out from behind his ear and began crossing out various ladies overcoats from the pages. Soon Kevan was left with 8 approved choices. He gave them last once-over and felt great satisfaction.
“Dial Burlington” he yelled sharply, his warm breath fluttering a few of the stapled catalog pages from their walls for a moment. “Phone” he said in an annoyed tone “DIAL BurlingTON”. 
He hurried across the room to his communication center, which consisted of a cardboard box with a range of outdated cell phones piled amongst a tangle of adapters, decommissioned television antennae and a gameboy with a single AAA battery in it.
The phone he was addressing had come lose from its lifeline, and stared back at him blankly with an oil smudged screen. It was as he refastened the phone to the charger that he lamented dropping his internet provider for raising his cable connection rate 5 dollars a month, but it was the principle of the manner and the feeling quickly passed.
“Hello yes I would like to place a order. Uh huh. Yes items: 2104, 2218, 2219, 3020, 3404, 3500, 3511 and 3580 size M. Yes mam, each in yellow. Mastercard. 2108733289894402. My address sould be on- that’s correct. Uh huh. Thank you. Yes thank you.”
He waited, as he always did, for the representative to hang up.  He carefully took down each page from the wall, separating them into two piles, and filed them away under ‘April 2011’. As he got back into his bed, his air conditioner came on, and quickly shut off, as it did every several minutes.

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