bed

Today there is a new 6’ by 7’ area of wadded batting and individually-pocketed 13-gauge springs in my bedroom. I have pushed the lonely old twin mattress into the guest bedroom and now there is half the space there used to be in my room. I am glad to be rid of the twin mattress not only because I saw its narrow berth as direct evidence of the end of my partnership but also because it smelled slightly of cumin when I bought it from a 24 year-old South Asian man who was on his way to New York after graduating from business school – am I racist? I aired it out for a few days but the tang remained embedded in the fabric. I said none of this on the Craigslist posting, of course. Also going on Craigslist is the cheap-ass Ikea futon whose slats you can feel on your butt through the cheap foam mattress – also something I am not planning to advertise on Craigslist.

I decided to go with a Chicago mattress dealer that practices a unique business model. There is no showroom; they come to you. I set up a time online for the store to come to me, and lo, at 7:30 p.m., a man named Michael called me and said they were waiting for me outside. He would come meet me at my door. Seconds later he was standing on my stoop under a golf umbrella. We walked together to a truck parked on the end of my block. There was a trailer that looks like a box truck on the outside but has sliding patio doors on one side, and is set up to look sort of like a bedroom on the inside. There was bad ambient jazz playing quietly on speakers, and a flatscreen mounted on the wall with a female voice that droned on about the details of the mattresses in stock.

Michael chatted with me about the composition of my mattress choices (I had pre-selected three) and then drew a curtain to reveal about fifteen mattresses standing on end, like books on a shelf. He pulled one selection onto a rolling box spring, then said he would wait outside while I tried the mattress and I should take my time with it. Then he and Lou, the silent sales gnome, waited together on the corner under the golf umbrella while I lay on plastic sheeting on three mattresses in succession. There was no discernible difference in the mattresses other than the price - well, the second mattress was clearly unsuitable, as I sunk immediately into the thick layer of batting on top and could already feel my spine twisting into a garlic knot even in the thirty seconds I lay on the mattress. I tested the mattresses by laying in almost all possible configurations of laying. I bounced a little. I did not lay on my stomach because I did not want my face to touch the plastic sheeting.

After a few minutes, I called Michael in from the rain and asked him if he had another, firmer, cheaper model. Miraculously, he did. I knew immediately I would buy that bed because it was the same model as Raj’s, and I like Raj’s bed. I am Chinese so I tried to wheedle, but Michael had none of it. “U.S. Mattress is selling this model for cheaper,” I said. “You are welcome to buy it from U.S. Mattress if you want,” Michael said. I said why not and bought the bed. Michael and Lou moved it immediately into my bedroom, taking off their shoes at the front door because, Michael said, "Dog poop." It cost me as many dollars as years between the birth of Christ and five hundred and six years before the creation of the Magna Carta, which made my heart catch in my throat, but I don’t really care anymore. In September, Jason said these are investments amortized over the lifespan of the furniture. He’s in business school; I only have the vaguest idea of what that means. It is comforting nonetheless.

I lay on the mattress last night practicing my German pronunciation for forty-five minutes. This entails reading the dialogues from my German language learning book without making any effort to understand them. The dialogues are stupid anyway. In one, Frau Clark goes to the supermarket and demands to know: “Wie viel kosten die Eier? Wie viel kosten der Aufschnitt? Wie viel kostet das Brot? Wie viel kosten die Steaks?” While this is a very efficient way for a student of German to learn grocery-related vocabulary, it is sort of implausible that a polite hausfrau would go into a store and scream HOW MUCH ARE EGGS HOW MUCH ARE COLD CUTS HOW MUCH IS BREAD HOW MUCH ARE STEAKS??? Die traurige Verkäuferin! I find the pronunciation of the words much more fulfilling than my comprehension of them. German is a fun language, because its guttural sounds encourage one to act as angry as possible when speaking. I sound brutish when I speak. "Justizgebäude" is my favorite word to say in German - yoo steets gay boy duh - and it means "courthouse," which is my favorite place to work in America.

German made me sleepy. I had a series of vivid dreams on my new bed last night, including one about three office workers struggling with a man in a trench coat. I watched them struggle to a standstill before turning away. Then the workers gave up and walked away also, and it became clear that they had been trying to wrest an assault rifle away from the man. The man pointed the rifle at the workers' backs and killed them with an arc of gunfire. I ran away. Everyone ran away. The gun was oiled and black and glistening all over. A hero tried to rush the gunman but was killed instantly. What happened next was skipped in the dream. Then analysts explained on the evening news how one could disarm a man with an assault rifle: come into extremely close range, grappling range, so that the weapon could not be pointed and fired. These were empty words, because everyone had already died. I woke at four with my Homer Simpson slippers filled with sweat. I had another dream which I don’t remember. I will try harder tonight.