“What?”
There goes the, umm, the….” Tom snapped his fingers. “The bloody dimorphic confabulating disinterfritzer. You know.”
Jason looked up from the kitchen sink. “You mean the china hutch.” A wood-paneled tv blared some obnoxious game show on a folding table in the corner of the dining room. His voice seemed to change slightly. “I don’t know why you bother watching that stuff. It’s so…tacky.”
“Oh, come on, baby,” Tom said. “It’s just some harmless entertainment. Just a little background noise.”
Jason’s head snapped up. “What did you just call me?”
Tom looked away from the tv, and the shadowy curlers disappeared from his shortening hair. “Oh, christ, Jase. I’m sorry.”
“Damnit, Tommy, you’ve got to concentrate or they’ll be back!”
“I know.” Tommy had the good grace to look chagrined.
“You remember what a battle it was to redecorate last time,” Jason said.
Tom’s chagrin turned to a look of pain. “Oh, please, don’t remind me. That wallpaper in the bathroom? And that horrible taxidermy workshop in the den?” He shivered.
“He’s a trucker from Jersey, why shouldn’t he want to be reminded of the country?” Jason shook himself, shook his head. “No damn it. No apologizing.” He rinsed the plate in his hand and started scrubbing another. “And the stove, god. That electric monstrosity. No control.”
The dishes in the drying rack fluttered briefly with images of picnicking bears. Then they returned to plain blue-patterned china. The tv snapped back into a china hutch with a Bose stereo playing big band music.
“Well, I know,” Tom said, “But how much do you really expect an ex-Vegas showgirl to know about cooking?” He turned away from Jason, pouting.
On the countertop next to the sink, a plate with a few strands of linguini and a dab of butternut squash blurred, and the scent of overdone steak filled the kitchen.
“Oh, fer chrissakes,” Tom said, his voice turning course with cigarette phlegm. “You don’t leave a steak under the broiler fer twenny minutes, is all.”
“Oh, Tommy, no!” Jason turned around again. “Look at your gut!”
Oh, crap,” Tom said. He glared down at his stomach, which visibly shrank, while his shirt reddened and regained its sleeves.
“They always come around when we’re fighting, Tommy,” Jason said, and for a second his lips became more full and artificially, brilliantly red.
“Nah, not when we’re fighting, Pookie,” Tom’s roughened voice said, and he winked.
“Oooh,” Jason said, and his yellow and blue outfit took on decidedly bathrobe-like qualities. “I never thought about that before. You suppose that’s the only way they can get in the mood anymore?”
The curtains in the dining room took on a definite red gingham hue, faded back to a pale sage, then rebounded fully into the gingham. The Bose started playing a later-years Elvis tune, recorded live in Vegas.
“As long as they’ve been married, that just might be the case,” Tom said, his voice normalized again. He scratched at his neck, seemingly dirtied by stubble that wasn’t quite there. “Poor bastards.”
“How do you think they do it?” Jason’s voice rose, as if excited, and his hair seemed to lengthen again. His antique ladderback chair creaked like an aging lawnchair.
“Oh, god. I don’t even want to think about it.” Tom glared at the lightbulb flickering above his head, but it was only burning out in the normal fashion. “Hell. Would you finish these while I get a new bulb?”
“What?” Jason shook himself, and the tablecloth reverted to crisp white linen. “Oh, sure hon.”
Tom glanced sharply at Jason, then went down the back stairs to the basement. As he came back up, bulb in hand, he thought for a moment that he smelled cigarette smoke, and he started taking the stairs three at a time.
“Damn it, Jason!” Tom yelled as he rounded the corner into the kitchen.
He was greeted by a throaty chuckle. The kitchen was much dimmer, and not for any burnt-out bulb. The paint was at least two shades darker, mostly nicotine stains. A tall, gangly blonde woman leaned against the counter, and the gas range struggled with the image of a battered white electric stove flickering across its chrome surfaces.
Jessica lifted a thin, pallid leg, laying it out along the countertop. The front of her ancient, faded pink bathrobe fell open to reveal an equally antique, theoretically white satin teddy.
“Lemme show you how it’s done, babe,” she said, cigarette bobbing between her crimson lips.
As her hand snaked across her bulging belly, Tom’s face seemed to sag; it flickered, at once clean-shaven and bristled, clear-eyed and bloodshot.
“Oh, god. No,” he said, and his voice sounded like two tracks laid down, one atop the other.
When Jessica looked up again, Ed stood in the kitchen holding a sweaty beer in his hand, his gut straining at his sweat-stained wifebeater.
“God, Jessie, no,” his voice rough and phlegmy. “You know I gotta shower first. Gotta get all that perfumed shit offa me.” He took a long pull from the bottle as he walked out of the kitchen and through the living room where a football game vied with the game show playing in the dining room.
Jessica grinned and followed, rubbing herself more and more vigorously. “Well, I just think it’s so dirty. Makes me hot, baby. So you better hurry, or I might just take a poke at you myself.”
As she passed, the living room tv flickered and blurred, the pile of football players seemingly engaged in a uniformed, homoerotic gangbang.
“Just gimme a moment, goddamnit, and I’ll give you a helluva poke, porkchop.” Ed grinned.
Jessica collapsed onto the patched sofa as the shower started up.
In the bathroom, Ed muttered under the water, “Bad enough to have that pansy living in my head, I gotta have him in my pants, too.”
The S.I. Swimsuit calendar on the wall seemed to become a Monet print for a moment, but Ed glared and it firmed back into salacious and supple flesh.
“My turn now,” he said.
Jessica sighed in the living room, watching the heaving mound of flesh on the tv. “So dirty.”
The house across the street faded slowly from a remodeled Craftsman bungalow into a brick ranch. Streetlights disappeared. Property values dropped in an ever-widening circle.
“How the hell did this happen, anyway?” Ed said, and for a second his voice was two voices again. He shook his head and started towelling off. “No, damn you. It’s my turn now.” He walked naked into the living room and stared at his wife touching herself through her clothes on the sofa. “Yeah. Now that’s my kind of dirty,” he said.
Jessica smiled up at him. “Let’s show them how it’s done, big boy.”
Somewhere in an alternate space, two men sighed and tried to reassert control over taste and reality.
