Ring! Ring!
“Good mor – Good afternoon, Acme Grommets and Gravel. Pearl speaking.”
“I’m like a rich person over here,” Mary says.
“You buyin’ the name-brand tuna again?”
She chuckles indulgently. “Oh, Pearl, Pearl, Pearl. So droll.” There is the sound of her opening then closing the lid of a large appliance.
“Do you hear that?” she says. “That, my friend, is the sound of a washer machine. And this – “ the lid of another large appliance is opened and then closed. “ – is the sound of the dryer.”
A smile leaves her lips, bounces off a satellite, and hits me in the ear. “Like I said,” she grins, “I’m like a rich person over here.”
“No more running to the laundromat,” I say. “It’s the end of an era.”
“It’s the end of a backache, more like,” she says.
“Would you like to describe them to me? Because I would like to hear them described.”
“Well,” she chuckles, “they’re white. And one of them washes, and the other dries. Hmmm.” She pauses. “That’s it, I think.”
“That’s all you need.”
There is silence as we each nod. We know we are nodding.
“Mary,” I say.
“Hmmm?” She’s staring at her new washer and dryer. I just know it.
“You’re staring at it, aren’t you? Lovingly.”
“Am not.”
“Mary,” I say, reproachingly. “We got a thing that’s called Radar Love.”
“What?” she says, laughing. “What’s this now?”
I laugh, refuse to answer.
“Pearl,” she says. “Pearl!”
“What?”
“I bin driving all night, my hands wet on the wheel…”
“We mock what we don’t understand,” I say, in a mock-hurt voice. “Scoff at my love for you, but I know that you are standing in front of your washer and dryer, running your tiny little freckled hands over their lids, aren’t you?”
A smile is muffled. “No, I’m not.”
“And you just stopped.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“I’ll let you get back to that.”
“Weirdo.”
“Appliance-based pervert.”
Click.