Three in the afternoon , a time of danger in this gerontocratic suburbs of St. X . Alfred in the big blue chair on which he slept, awakened since noon . He had his his nap and there were no local news to 05:00 clock . Two empty hours were bred a sinus infection . He struggled to his feet on the table tennis table , listening in vain for Enid . On the eastern side of the table tennis was the workshop that housed Alfred metallurgical laboratory. The workshop was now home to a colony of mute , dust - colored crickets, which, when startled , would like a handful of fall through space marbles , of which distributed some misfires at crazy angles , others with the weight break down their own abundant protoplasm. All too easy to fall into , and cleanup more than Kleenex . Enid and Alfred had much suffering they believed to be extraordinary , oversized - shame - and the crickets was one of them . " Saturday! " He agreed .

But the chair? The chair was a monument and a symbol and can not be separated from Alfred . It can only be moved , and in the basement and it is followed Alfred . And so in the house of Lambert Bay, as St. X , as in the country as a whole , life has come to have lived underground. Enid could hear Alfred above , opening and closing drawers. He was furious when they walk their children to see . See the children is the only thing he seemed to care.

" And what about the money I made ​​and what the work that I have done ? "

The chairman was ever made the only major purchase Alfred without the consent Enid . When he traveled to China to confer with the Chinese railway engineers , Enid went together and the two have to buy a carpet factory carpet for their Familienbesuchezu . They were used in money for themselves , and so they have one of the least expensive carpets , with a simple design of the blue book of changes on a solid field of beige. A few years later, when Alfred black of the Midland Pacific Railroad retirement, the replacement of the old cow smell leather chair he was, where he watched TV and sofa . He wanted something really comfortable, of course, but for a life of providing for others, it takes more than just convenience , it is a monument that is required to meet these needs. He went alone , a non- discount furniture store and took a chair for consistency. An engineer chair. A chair so large that even a great man lost in it , designed a chair to contribute under heavy load . And because of its blue leather vaguely correspond to the blue Chinese carpet Enid had no choice but to suffer the rush to the family room. "It's my own money ," Enid said. " That's how I spend it. " Alfred pointed to his blue chair , under plastic dropcloths the upholsterer looks like something you make in a power plant on a flatbed truck . He was shaking in disbelief , unable to believe that Enid can to forget their plans crushing refutation of the arguments , this overwhelming obstacle. It was as if all the bondage who want to spend his seven decades of life is in the six years included - old, but essentially new chair. He smiled , his face glowing with the perfection of his terrible logic. In the streaklessly clean windows of the dining room was chaos . The crazy wind , the shadows of denial. Enid looked everywhere for the letter of the axon Corporation , and she could not find it. She blamed him , and for a while the crepuscular birds subjected to , but outside , the wind , the sun, and it is still very cold.

" And what about the chair, then ? " He said. " What about the chair? "

Alfred is in the bedroom was wondering why his dresser drawers were open, they open or does it open it yourself. He could not help Enid blame for his confusion . To bear witness. For existing , himself, as a person , the drawer was open. No one since the fiction that lived in this house here - - Enid faced a substantial tactical challenge Six days a week a few pounds came through the mail slot in the door , and there is nothing that it is allowed to accumulate stairs . She never thought of herself as a guerrilla , but a guerrilla was what she was. By day they ferried equipment from camp to camp , often only one step ahead of government power. Through the night , under a beautiful , well - boring hedge against a too small table in the dining area, she directed several steps: pay bills, balanced checkbooks, attempted Medicare deductible records decrypts the sense of impending Our third for manufacturing a medical laboratory , the immediate payment of $ 0.22 required during which transfers a balance of $ 0.00 and show that it owes nothing, and not addressed in any case when the payment can be made. It would happen that the first and second U -Bahn noticed somewhere, and had to be on any given night because of the constraints under which Enid she led her campaign only the darkest sense where the other evidence can . She thought , perhaps , the family - room closet, but the ruling power in the person of Alfred , would during a network news magazine with a volume thunderous enough to awake to look for him , and he had every light in the family room fire , and it was from a non-negligible possibility that , when would she opened the closet door a cascade of catalogs and house beautifuls and various Merrill Lynch statements come to overthrow and sliding doors , going to Alfred 's wrath. There was also the possibility that the information not be there , as the governing force staged random raids on her depots , threatening to " bite " the whole lot of it, if she does not care , but she was too busy dodging these raids was always to make right, and a sustained lost in the wake of forced migrations and deportations semblance of order , and so the random Nordstrom shopping bag that had camped behind a dust with his plastic handles disturbed rows non-consecutive issues of Good Housekeeping , black - white - Photos of Enid in the 1940s , brown recipes on high - acidic paper called wilted lettuce, the current month telephone and gas - would all mixed pathos of a refugee existence contains accounts , the first detailed knowledge of medical laboratory assignment fellow riders following accounts for less than fifty cents , a complimentary ship photo of Enid and Alfred wearing LEIS and sipping drinks hollow coconuts, and the only existing copies of two of their children 's birth certificates , ignore , for example .

When it became clear that both the back and Alfred chair was gone , the back is easily molded. Enid advertised in the local newspaper and free netted a nervous bird of a woman who has to make mistakes and their fifties from her purse in a disorderly role they unpeeled and flat with a trembling finger.

Enid looked at the chair. Her expression is just afraid no more. "I have never liked the chair. " It was probably the most horrible thing she said Alfred could. The chairman was the only sign that he was ever a personal vision for the future. Enid words filled him with so sad - he was so sorry for the seat, such as solidarity , as perceived amazed with him grief over the betrayal - he pulled dropcloth and sank into his arms and fell asleep.

Unfortunately, Enid lacked the temperament as home management and Alfred had a neurological deficit that means. Alfred cries of rage discovering evidence of guerrilla actions - Nordstrom a pocket in broad daylight surprised on the basement stairs , nearly precipitating a tumble dryer - was the cry of a government that could no longer govern. He has developed a knack for making his printing calculator spit columns meaningless eight-digit numbers recently. After finding out the most of the afternoon , the social Housekeeper five different times and four different numbers and finally a number ( $ 635.78 ) that he managed only to accept with spent twice ( the correct figure was $ 70, 00) , Enid staged a nighttime raid on his filing cabinet and relieve them of all control files , to improve the efficiency of household may have had the files not found their way into a bag with Nordstrom some antique misleading Good Housekeepings concealing the documents under more germane , the victims of the war led to the cleaning lady fill out the forms themselves with Enid merely checks and Alfred shook his head at the complexity of the whole.

" It's Thursday , " she said, louder. "We are not leaving until Saturday." Enid was sure that her head would only delete if not every five minutes , what Alfred had to wonder. But, as they might try , they do not get him interested in life could . When she encouraged him to get his metallurgy again, he looked at her, as if her head off. On the question whether there is not a yard work he could do , he said, his legs hurt . When she reminds him that the men of her friends have all hobbies (Dave Schumpert his glass , Kirby Root his intricate chalets like purple finches , Chuck Meisner his hourly monitoring of its investment portfolio ), Alfred acted as if she tried it divert some of his great work. And what is it to work ? Paint the porch furniture? He was the love seat repainting since Labor Day. She had to remember that the last time he took the furniture he finished painted sofa in two hours. Now he has his workshop morning after morning , and after a month she dared to be , to see what he was doing , and found that all the love that he had the sit bones painted .

This argument was , in the past - it was , so to speak, the constitutional basis of tyranny legitimacy - but it did not work now. " This mat is almost ten years old, and we will never stains from coffee ," Enid said. He went to the door , where she appeared . He began a sentence: "I - " but if he was surprised , each set has an adventure in the woods, even the light of the clearing he came he could no longer see, he would realize that the crumbs that he refused stock of birds eaten , silent deft stinging, he could not be seen entirely in the dark, but so much and swarming in their hunger , they appear dark, as if the darkness was not uniform, was not an absence of light, but a teeming and corpuscular thing , as a hardworking teenager he encountered the word " crepuscular " in McKay's Treasury of English verse of the corpuscles of biology had bled in his understanding of the word, so that his entire adult life in the twilight he saw a corpuscularity , such as the granularity of the high speed film for photography required under conditions of low ambient light , as a kind of eerie decay and thus the panic of a man deep in the woods , the darkness , the darkness of starlings eliminate the sunset or black ants storming a dead opossum, a darkness which not only gave was betrayed , but feel actively consume camp that he founded himself that he is not lost , but at the moment of realization he was lost time wonderfully slow and he discovers more widely in the space between a word and the next , or rather he is stuck in undreamed of space between the words and could only watch as the time to hunt without him, the thoughtless boyish part of him crashing on out of sight blindly through the forest when he captured the Al mature , in strangely impersonal looked anxiously to see or panic little boy , in spite of not knowing where he is or when he was the forest of this set still manage to stumble into the clearing where Enid was waiting for him , unaware of any forest - " packing my suitcase ," he heard himself say . It sounds right . Verb, possessive noun. It was a suitcase in front of him , an important confirmation . He betrayed nothing .

It is the fate of most table tennis home basement eventually to serve the ends of others, more desperate games. After Alfred retired he is the eastern end of the table for his banking and correspondence. On the west side of the Enid was the portable color television, in which he referred to the local news , while seen in his big blue chair, but is now fully by Good Housekeepings and seasonal sweets devoured cans and baroque but cheaply made candle holder , never quite found the time to transport to the nearly new consignment shop . The table tennis was the only area where the Civil War raged openly . At the eastern end of the Alfred computer is attacked by floral print pot - Owner and souvenir coasters from the Epcot Center and a device for pitting cherries which Enid thirty years used in the possession and never while in turn absolutely on the west side , for no reason that Enid could ever fathom , ripped pieces of a wreath of pine cones and spray paint hazelnuts and Brazil nuts made ​​.

On the western side of the table tennis Alfred was big blue chair. The chair is overstuffed vague governor. It is made of leather, but it smells like the inside of a Lexus. Like something modern and medical and impenetrable that just the smell of death could not wipe with a damp cloth before the next person sitting to die in it. Although Enid ostensible foe was Alfred, who was a guerrilla her the house that they occupy both . The furniture was of the type that does not tolerate disorder. There were chairs and tables by Ethan Allen. Spode and Waterford in the break . Duty ficuses duty Norfolk pines. Stoked copies of Architectural Digest on a glass topped coffee table. Tourism prey - Email China , a Viennese music box that every so often wound Enid out of a sense of duty and compassion and the lid . The melody is "Strangers in the Night . " The madness of an autumn prairie cold front coming through . You can feel it : something terrible would happen. The sun is in the sky, a little light, a cooling star low. Gust after impact of the disorder. Trees restless, temperatures falling, the whole northern religion come of things to an end. No children in the yards here . Lengthening shadows , the yellow zoysia . Red oaks and pin oaks and swamp white oak rained acorns on houses with no mortgage. Storm windows shuddered in the empty spaces . And the noise and hiccup of a clothes dryer , the nasal contention of a leaf blower , the ripening of local apples in a paper bag , the smell of gasoline with which Alfred Lambert, who brushes his morning painting of the wicker love seat cleaned . ( It was a way of recognizing places of enchantment: People slept as this fall . ) It was hoped that they would go away. He said that the brush was dry, it was so long was going on. He said that scraping wicker was like an ice shell. He said there were crickets. She felt a shortness of breath or not, but maybe it's just the smell of gasoline and the humidity of the workshops, which smelled of urine (but not urine be ) . She fled up to search the letter of the axon. The gray matter of the evil spells and magic thick cobwebs of the old sheathed electric arc furnace , and the jars of exotic rhodium and creepy cadmium and brave bismuth , and the hand - labels by fumes from a glass colored - sealed bottle aqua regia and the Quad Notebook decided in which the last entry in Alfred hand goes back to a time , fifteen years ago , before the betrayal began. Something like the daily and friendly as a pencil still occupied the random spot on the bank where Alfred put it in a different decade , which fulfills many years the pencil with a kind of hatred. Asbestos gloves from a nail hanging under two certificates of U.S. patents, twisted and moisture threw the frame. On the hood of a binocular microscope makes great chips of paint from the ceiling peeled off. The only dust-free objects in the room was the sound bed, a can of Rust - Oleum and some brushes and a couple of Yuban coffee cans that elected despite increasingly strong odor proof Enid not to believe that they fill her husband's urine to which earthly reason he was able , with a small half bathroom twenty meters away, you can pee in a Yuban ? She pushed the coupons back in one of the candles and closed the drawer. It is for a registered letter search came a few days ago . Alfred had heard the mailman knocked on the door and shouted: " ! Enid Enid " So loud that he heard her scream again! " , Al, I understand," He went to her name called out , getting closer and approach , and because the sender of the letter was the Axon Corporation , 24 East Industrial Serpentine , Schwenksville, PA, and there are aspects of the situation , who knew and hoped Enid that Alfred not fast they tucked the letter somewhere in the axon fifteen feet from the front door. Alfred from which roar like a piece of earthmoving equipment Keller: " There's someone at the door " and she fairly shouted : " The Postman : The Postman ," and he shook his head , the complexity of it all. The fear of coupons in a drawer with designer candles in fall colors. The coupons are bundled in a rubber band , and Enid is to recognize that they have an expiration date (often heavily circled in red by the manufacturer) lay months and even have years in the past that these hundred coupons, whose total exceed nominal value sixty U.S. dollars (potentially hundred and twenty dollars to the Chiltsville supermarket coupons doubled ) has gone bad. Tilex sixty cents . Excedrin PM , one dollar from . The dates were not even close. The dates are historical. The bell rang for the year. Soon, however, Alfred hands were spilling decaffeinated coffee on the beige carpet and the huge forest berries grandson left feet and crayons, and Enid began to feel that the carpet was a mistake. It seemed to her , in an attempt to save money they made ​​many mistakes in life like this. She was the point of thought it would have been better not to buy carpet as the mat. Finally, as Alfred nap deepened in the field of magic, they got thicker. Her mother gave her a small inheritance left before years. Cipal certain files just fine, and now she has an income - interest has been added. They redesigned the family room in green and yellow . She ordered materials. A decorator come and Alfred temporarily to sleep in the dining room , jumped up like a man with a bad dream. "You're renovating again? " Ringing in the house was an alarm clock that no one could hear directly except Alfred and Enid . It was the bell of fear. It was like one of the large cast iron dishes send with an electric door , the school children on the street in fire drills . At this time it is working for so many hours that the Lamberts Bay the message of the " bell " does not belong , but as with any sound, which for so long that it sounds more relax its components learning ( as with any word you stare , until it dissolved into a string of dead letters ) , instead a clapper rapidly collision with a metal resonator , not a pure tone but a granular sequence of percussions with a plaintive overlay of overtones ; ringing for so many days that it only blended into the background , with the exception of a few early morning hours when one or the other of them awoke in a sweat and realized that a bell rang in their minds , as long as they can remember rang for so many months that the sound gave way to a kind of meta - music, the rise and fall was not the beating of compression waves, but much, much slower and removing their consciousness of the sound. Which consciousness was particularly acute when the weather itself was in an anxious mood. Then Enid and Alfred - they open drawer was on her knees in the dining room , put them in the basement with an overview of the catastrophic Table Tennis - every feeling near exploding with fear. " Everything you do?" But Enid spoke again. The audiologist said that he was a little concerned. He frowned next .