Written by Erika Spadavecchia
Cringing on the beige couch again. The pillows have given out to the shape of her body and the cat’s body that sits next to her, talks to her, nibbles at her. Smiles at her even. With the TV on, the AC on, and the fan on, the sound of the neighbor’s hawking and spitting seems like a distant memory of winters and snow melting into the expensive rain boots with the logo. The winter sounds are different than the summer sounds. The old radiator screeches like crying foxes. The winter spitting is accompanied by toilets flushing and crying babies and the occasional smell of gas. The neighbor is dead or dying and doesn’t say hi when he crosses the street. He must be timid except for when he spits like a tobacco chewer, like a man who doesn’t care. But she can’t be sure it’s him, so she doesn’t say anything. She wonders where he spits into and if he says hi to the other neighbors, and she sits on the couch all summer with the TV on, the AC on, the fan on, and the cat, without once hearing him spit again. Until one evening the AC starts going out intermittently and Jessica Fletcher stops delivering her quips. The woman gets agitated. The fan doesn’t turn back on when the electricity goes out so she gets up to push the button one, two, six times, and the sweat is falling down her back and into her underwear. The cat yawns and hides in the bedroom because none of this matters. Without the summer sounds the evening is empty and existential, very blue. She looks out the window and the neighbor’s lights are turned off, the AC doesn’t buzz, and the spitting returns. Back on the beige couch, and her long hair sticks to her neck and arms and she cringes. She thinks of the time she put a stranger’s misdelivered debt
relief letter into her neighbor’s mailbox not wanting to deal with it. The neighbor texted the building group chat with typos because he is seventy and clueless and spitting, saying “who is Karen? I am not Karen.” She cringed. And Karen probably doesn’t cringe, not on her couch in the summer, and is out spending money on gorgeous things with her credit cards and central AC. The electricity is out forever now. The couch seems to be sinking under the woman, until it is sinking under her, and it sinks further. It’s not possible, but for her it is. It sinks so much her cat is just perplexed and staring from under the TV, which is black and empty, and very blue. And her legs that haven’t been shaved are up in the air now, just sticking out of the couch that keeps receding into the floor and half of her body is gone sucked into the pillows, and maybe she feels held and cared for like a baby in her mother’s arms. And then the couch sucks her whole, and it seals up as if nothing happened and the woman never spent entire summers rotting, sweating on it in her underwear. She doesn’t make a single sound. Suddenly the TV is on, and the cat is using the litter box. The remote is unmovable on the couch which is unoccupied and so beige. Jessica Fletcher wears a white cardigan over her shoulders, the AC buzzes like it does, the fan is still, and somewhere in the building the neighbor spits into who knows where, says hi to who knows who.
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Erika Spadavecchia is a writer and translator from Rome, Italy. She lives in New Jersey with her cat, Cannoli, and is working on a novel that keeps her up at night.