A change of gravity

There was a narrow rectangular coffee table made of chromium and glass in front of the sofa bed. There was a magazine open on it, displaying a two-page color photo of a blonde woman with dramatically black and green eye shadow that made her green eyes look enormous, and bright scarlet lipstick on her tightly puckered lips; she was naked from the waist up, cupping her grotesquely large breasts in her hands with her thumbs and forefingers urging her nipples forward toward the camera, using so much pressure that the pores of the nipples were spread. There were smears of semen on the picture. The surface of the table showed many rings left by wet glasses. There was a small bud vase with one reddish plastic flower in it; next to it there was a one-pint clear glass mug about half full of a brownish liquid. On the rug under the table there was a pair of tan work boots with lug soles, the right one upright and the left one tipped over on its side. A pair of grey socks with red stripes lay over the boots. A pair of jeans with a black belt and a pair of blue-and-white checked shit-soiled boxer shorts inside were heaped open on the floor, still shaped to the lower body of the person who'd removed them and left them there. There was a white tee-shirt bunched up at the further end of the sofa.

Over the sofa-bed there was a three-by-four-foot print of a generic mountain-lake vista shaded by overhanging maple branches on a sunny sky-blue day. Four white vees represented four white birds in flight over the lake.

Merrion remembered first seeing and then gradually growing to dread seeing again another copy of the same picture long before. It had hung over the couch in Larry Lane's apartment. "He)i, that's a very good picture," Larry Lane had said, one day when Merrion sneered at it. "I want you to cut out that talk now, making smart remarks about my lovely picture. We hadda pay a lotta money for that picture. And there's another one of 'em just like it, or almost just like it anyway, in every single unit here. Got 'em to add a little class to the operation. People come and live here, they then decide they don't like 'em? Fine, they can take 'em down. Perfectly all right with us if they got no taste. But when they first come in to see the place and size it up, that picture tells them that this is a classy joint. They can see it. We took extra trouble make these apartments nice.

"Sure, when they get in they find out you can hear your neighbor two floors down and four doors over if he farts in the bathtub. When it's windy, the walls shake, gets a little drafty, windows rattle. The plumbing ain't that great. The heat comes up it sounds to God like the whole place's gonna blow up with you in it. But they notice those things later, after they paid the deposit. Before that what they notice is that in the living room we have got this fine scenic picture, so they know that we've got taste. Spared no expense on amenities; those pictures cost us three bucks apiece."

Beyond the couch in the southeasterly corner of the room at the picture window overlooking the boulevard there was a 27-inch Sanyo television set on a TV table with a VCR and a cable-service box under it on the lower shelf. The brief announcement from the local station now concluding was a 30"Second ad describing the superior comforts available from a revolutionary new design in mattress coils.

Opposite the TV in front of the book cased wall next to the window there was a blue and green reclining chair with an end table and a black metal floor lamp next to it. There was a clear glass one-pint mug on the table; it contained about four ounces of a clear liquid.

There were two remote control keypads on the table. There was a round purple anodized aluminum ashtray with a coil around the rim to hold cigarettes in place; it was full of stubbed butts. There was a crush proof box of Winstons open next to it.

Janet LeClerc in a white cotton nightgown decorated with small blue and red flowers with little green leaves and some lace around the yoke, under a thin pink chenille robe, sat curled up in the recliner with her weight resting mainly on her right buttock, the footrest up but not in use, her feet and legs tucked up under her, snoring softly and steadily with her mouth gaping open. Her left eye socket was badly bruised, greenish-blue and swollen puffy.

When she exhaled she made the kind of rhythmic, low, rumbling, happy growling sound that came from the television, harmonizing with the large tired golden retriever, first seen playing hard with children on a sunny day, now contented lying down after a nutritious dish of choice cuts of meat and meat by-products in real gravy combined in the dog food advertised in one of the brief announcements from the ABC local-affiliate station in Springfield.

Merrion picked up the VCR remote keypad and punched it twice with no result. Then he picked up the other one and shut the television off.