(Here’s a photo of a sofa.)
Dear diary,
What do we have? A simple world. It is a nice world; don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. This world can’t be bad: there’s just too much good in it. Consider the average citizen’s day:
Our citizen awakes in a very small room. This one room combines all the features of a bathroom, bedroom, living-room, and kitchen. (Instead of continuing to use that cumbersome phrase “the average citizen” to denote our essay’s protagonist, I’m going to just say “you” from here on out — but, let me stress, I don’t mean you yourself, gentle reader: this term is just a literary device: we’re both in the clear; don’t take it personal.)
Alright, so you wake up in your single, small room, and you feel very hungry. Therefore you go to look in the fridge. You note that its interior is warm to the touch — apparently it has stopped working — but that’s OK; for the fridge is empty, anyway: there’s nothing in it that would need to be kept cool.
Yet you’re still pretty hungry, so you need to go get yourself some food. Go outside and hunt and gather.
Now, what should you hunt? Buffalo? No, they’re all extinct. How about deer? No, too greasy.
Rabbits? OK, rabbits are easy to hit with a crossbow.
So that fulfills the hunt side of your occupation “hunter-gatherer”; now what should you gather? I nominate black beans. — And my suggestion wins, because you vote for it: Black beans, it is.
So you head toward your front door, and turn the knob, but the slab is stuck. Someone welded it shut. And all your windows are welded shut, too. This is when you recall that you’re under a village-wide quarantine, because you’re living in the time of the plague.
So you sit down and mope for a while. You recite the “To be, or not to be” speech, and you really think about the words...
But then you pull yourself up by your own hair and shout: Aha! I have an idea.
You shuffle to the cupboard and locate your reciprocating saw. You then go fetch your step-ladder out of the closet. Using these tools, you begin to cut a person-sized hole in your ceiling.
You then climb thru this hole. You are now in your upstairs neighbor’s apartment. He or she must be either sleeping or dead — the air smells foul. You head toward the window; but it is welded shut, just like yours.
So you climb back down to your own apartment again and retrieve your hammer from the vanity cabinet. You head back up to the neighbor’s flat and re-approach the window. You noisily smash the glass with the hammer.
After stepping out onto the fire escape, you notice that your arm is bleeding. You probably cut it on the jagged shards of the window that you just broke and climbed thru.
Now you descend the fifteen stories till you arrive at ground-level. Then you begin to walk in the direction of the grocery store.
On the sidewalk, you meet a passerby. The passerby points at your bleeding arm and sez:
“May I help you with that?”
So you thank her, and she clutches your hand and leads you to a gazebo in the nearby park, where she mends your arm and applies various ointments to the wound; then she wraps it in gauze and tapes it up tightly.
This friendly young woman, while explaining to you that it’s been her lifelong dream to become a registered nurse, pulls out a needle filled with an amber-hued elixir, which she injects into your arm. You feel like you’re sinking into the netherworld.
When you awake, it is evening. You have successfully made it thru one day, or perhaps more — it’s impossible to tell how long you slept. Now you’re still famished; so you head towards the grocery store again.
On the way, you see a truck parked at the side of the road. Its back doors are open, and a man is standing before them looking nervous. You approach this man.
“You look lost,” you say.
The man’s forehead is sweaty; his eyes are bloodshot. “I’m selling contraband,” he sez.
“Contraband? You mean street-drugs?” you ask.
“No,” he sez; “nothing illegal. Just cuisine that will make you ill.”
“Ah, I see,” you say. “How much for one meal?”
“Five U.S. dollars,” the man sez while bowing, then he coughs drily a number of times and raises his right hand with the fingers spread, to emphasize the price of his product ($5); then he extends his hand toward you and strokes the side of your face. His palm is damp.
“All I have is a twenty,” you say, handing him a bill.
“That is fine. I will make change,” he answers and coughs.
After which, he hands you a plate that feels lukewarm and contains some shreds of iceberg lettuce; then he reaches down, tugs off his leather boot, thrusts his hand into the shaft and pulls out a banknote, which he offers to you.
“This is a ten spot,” you say, after inspecting it; “I paid you twenty — you still owe me a few singles.”
“That’s all that I have,” he sez; and he tips his boot upside down and shakes it, to prove his claim. Two dimes fall out and dance on the ground for a second as he does this. He eyes them with genuine shock; then he crouches down & picks them up. He holds out the coins out to you: “I guess I have these, too. Here, take them — I swear, that’s all I got.”
“Nah,” you say; “I don’t wanna leave you broke and destitute. Keep them for yourself. For, who knows: You might need them.”
The man shrugs and tosses the dimes back into his boot.
“Maybe put them on your eyelids after you die,” you quip. “They’ll help them stay shut.”
You laugh at your joke, and the man laughs and coughs.
“Oh, and, by the way,” you add, while lifting the plate, “thanks for the hot meal.”
You begin to walk away. “Stay safe,” the man sez.
You eat the lettuce from the plate as you walk. It tastes exquisite — you weren’t expecting that.
When you’re finished eating, you toss the plate onto the street. It makes a sharp crash and smashes into fragments; for it was made of porcelain (it was one of those plain white plates like they serve in cheap diners).
Now, about halfway to the grocery store, you meet a hotdog vendor. You stop and chat.
As you shoot the breeze with this friendly fellow, you notice that every car that zooms past on the street has its front windows open — both driver and passenger side. This strikes you as strange, since it’s very cold outside: still far below freezing.
So you purchase several hotdogs with your remaining funds. The vendor hands you a large basket containing your order; additionally he offers you a pair of squirt bottles, which are colored individually red and yellow, for use as condiments.
“Thanks!” you say. Then you douse each weiner liberally until it’s covered in ketchup and mustard — you totally drench them.
Now you wait for the next automobile to approach. You take one of the sopping dogs in your hand. As the car draws near, you toss the hotdog thru its window. It lands directly inside the vehicle.
“Swish!” you exclaim.
The vendor looks baffled. He’s apparently never before witnessed such a graceful display of hand-eye coordination.
The next vehicle to pass is a Mack truck. You lob the hotdog into the window, just as before. Again, it sails right in.
One after another, the vehicles coast by, and you continue to land each shot until your hotdog supply runs out. You then hold up your hands with the palms facing outward, and say to the vendor:
“Do you have a pump dispenser of sanitizing gel that I could use?” Both of your hands are dripping with sauce.
The man passes you a stack of napkins.
“Thanks again!” you say. And, before cleaning up, you lick your left wrist where a drip is forming: “Mmm, that’s got really good flavor.”
It takes just about the entire stack of napkins to get your hands dry. When there’s only one left, you say to the vendor:
“This is the very last napkin. We should do something special with it. Hmm, let me think. Ah, I know! I’ll use it to draw you a map. As I told you earlier, I’m currently on an adventure. My first stop shall be the grocery store, and then I plan to meet my friend Blip at his command post. He’s stationed in the middle of Brompton Road. Meet me there, when your shift is over. And bring all your stuff.”
So after waving goodbye to the hotdog vendor, you begin to skip: for you’re so pleased with the way that your journey is unfolding that you no longer feel like plainly walking down the street: you can’t resist the urge to caper & prance. You move along lightly, hopping from one foot to the other, & perform a little curvet with every step.
Soon you reach the grocery store. You were assuming that you had a few more blocks to travel, but you seemingly made faster progress than you predicted; for lo: here’s the place. It is big and beautiful.
You go inside and buy cheese, ham, beef, rabbit, spinach, black beans, and three bars of soap. You pay the cashier with an “I.O.U.” note, which you write out in longhand, using the ballpoint pen that’s chained to the countertop. And then you leave.
Now we’re at the end of the story, so you meet your friends, the vendor and Blip, at the appointed place; and you have a good time. Then you all part ways and head back to your home districts.
Upon reaching your front door, you put your key in the lock and turn the knob, but the slab won’t budge:
“Ah, I forgot,” you say aloud to yourself, standing there like a dope, alone in the hallway; “all the doors and windows are welded shut, because of the lockdown.”
So you head back down the stairs and go outside. At the rear of the building, you mount the fire escape and ascend till you reach the broken window of your overhead-neighbor’s apartment. You climb back in thru the shards of the shattered pane; & while doing so, yet again, you cut your arm. You then lower yourself thru the hole in your neighbor’s floor down into your own room.
You open the grocery bags and restock your cabinet. You put the cans of ham, beef, and beans on the first, second, and third shelves, respectively. There are thirteen cans of each kind.
Now you place all the bags of spinach in the crisper drawer of your fridge, and you place the cheese in the drawer right next to that one (you don’t know what this other drawer is for, exactly, since it does not have a label; but you’ve always just used it to store cheese); and then the rabbit meat you pack in salt and place in the large, lower compartment of the fridge.
Then you distribute your bars of soap. You place one at the side of your kitchen sink, which doubles as the bathroom sink (it’s all a single room, you’ll recall); and you store the extra bars in the vanity, to the left of the hammer.
Lastly, you open the front door of your oven, which folds down and doubles as a bed. After saying your prayers, you lie down and smoothly drift into a slumber. For you’ve had a busy day. As it is written:
The sleep of a labouring man is sweet, whether he eat little or much. But the abundance of the rich will not suffer him to sleep. (Ecclesiastes 5:12)
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