Those Are Some Very Nice Appliances You Have There, Mary

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.