Kitchenette

We made a long list of what we imagined she did all day in that kitchen.

And then we numbered the list and found that it wasn’t as long as it had looked before: only six items.

It was difficult, we decided, to make a substantial list when our information was so limited, based only on the static picture of a woman across the street staring at a computer, staring without ever looking out of her window.

Her large, arched, flamboyant fourth-floor picture window.

The first thing on our list was “receptionist,” which was too bland, so we added “at an abortion clinic,” which was cheap, so we added, “for women who’ve already had a bunch of kids, at least five.”

It took us a while to get to number two on the list, because we really took to playing out abortion scenarios, like the one where the evangelical Christian mother of seven comes in pregnant with conjoined twins, who the Lord has sent to test the resolve of his faithful servant . . . Jobina . . . and says, in justification of her visit, “How we get where we’re going is much less important than getting there, after all, isn’t it?” She had ropes of scars where her belly had been.

Number two on the list was the result of a pendulum swing in our thinking: “Public Relations Specialist, Vatican City, New York City branch.” Such a position would explain her focus and commitment. She could not afford to look out of her window or dilly-dally about her work, which was sacred. And what pressure, to have God always just over your shoulder! Polly asked, “What does she do?” and Allen answered, “She writes epigrams and Catholic jokes.” Like, The Pope Saves, and, Save it for the Pope, and, If the Pope Shits in a Forest and The Pope Is No Dope.

Next on the list was “Keen, Hip Dramatist” a la Carrie Bradshaw from Sex in the City, except for the keen dramatist part, and though we couldn’t verify her hipness, it was clear enough from the way she chicken-pecked the keyboard that she concerned herself very little with the mundane minutiae of life and/or that she must be protecting an expensive and ostentatious, but artful, manicure. She was intent, and sponsored: she had an NEA grant and a rich, soulful lover, who was a closeted member of the literati, displaced from birth as an oilman in the Midwest. She was, at the moment of list-making, writing the second act, second scene of a stage play, bound to be gripping and achy, called Pinocchio Gets a Nose Job, Beverly Hills Style, in which our protagonist, after his longish nose initiates an unsightly champagne spill at Perez Hilton’s invitation-only New Year’s 2005 Rock-It-Like-A-Super-Rockette party, asks his bff, Jiminy (later to become principal foil in the wake of raucous jealousy, the nose will look THAT good), to lend him the price, out of his goddamn trust fund, of a nose job. While he’s at it, besides making it shorter, seemlier, chic, the doctor will coat the new nose in platinum for protection and paint a miniature, but deft, pirate ship floating just off the coast of his left nostril.

The fourth item on the list was “Guinness Book of World Records Record Contender” for the uncontested record of "kitchen sitting.” Of sitting in one’s kitchen,” said Pritchard, so Benny, who was scribe, wrote, “for being as boring as a metronome,” on another piece of paper, which, after a brief struggle, he safety-pinned to the front of Pritchard’s t-shirt, just over the little alligator logo. Polly thought, out loud, “To win a record like that, she’d have to have a pretty harsh posterior.” And we moved on.

Fifth—“Online Gambling Genius or Junkie, Depending on the Day’s Luck”—was our creative low-point, but it seemed a good round number to strive for and it led finally to number six, our favorite.

(6)—we didn’t know how to call this one, so we set to describing it—“She works for a telephone company, maybe AT&T, phoning people who’ve not used their phone service for over a year, and if they pick up, she says, ‘This is a public service announcement from your phone company: The cost of local phone service does not increase with use, so please feel free to make as many local phone calls as you’d like. Please do keep in mind that long-distance phone calls are charged per minute, so please feel free to make as many long-distance phone calls as you think you can afford. Thank you.’”

This is what she does all day alone in that kitchen at her computer. Grappling with the disconnected of America.

Once, when someone said something other than, “thank you,” after her spiel, the woman in the kitchen glanced out of her window. For the first time ever.

“What did the person on the other line say to make her look out the window?” asked Polly.
Benny answered: “It was a woman with a breezy voice and a cool manner, which is why the urgency in it sent chills down the kitchen sitter’s spine.”

“But what did she say?” said Polly, in an uncool manner.

“She said, after a pause, ‘And how much would it cost, per minute, for me to shove this receiver up your ass?’”

“She did not!” said Polly, still uncool.

“Okay, fine, what did she say then?” said Benny, losing his cool.

“She said, ‘Cookies will be ready in ten minutes, child.’”

“That’s stupid,” said Pritchard. “No grandmother has a breezy voice. They all have voices that are strained through cheese graters. She said, and I have this on very good authority, ‘I’ve been a selfish being all my life.’”

“Nerd,” I said. “Haven’t you missed your appointment for tea with Darcy and gang? She said none of those things. The woman on the other end actually said nothing. The woman in the kitchenette heard a gunshot, which she thought came from the street below, and the shivers down the spine, they came from the eerie feeling she got from the sound of the other receiver falling to the floor.”

And now, when we stare out of our fourth floor window at the woman in the building across the street—any building, any street—we each, in our own little, passing way, feel bad for her.