The laundromat was packed this afternoon, and I had to wait to get a dryer. While I was sitting and reading, waiting for the clothes to run through, a guy sat next to me reading an anthology of what turned out to be revenge stories. At first I thought it was a book of humor because he kept cracking up. At last, unable to contain himself any longer, he turned to the man sitting on his other side and said, “Get this! There are these people, right. and they’re standing on a wall, and they see this mother cat with her kittens down below. So this guy, he decides to drop a stone down near them so they’ll wonder what it is. So he does it and….” (here the guy could hardly contain his laughter) “he kills a kitten with it!”

The other guy laughed a little weakly, and the reader said, “I guess you had to be there.”

He was, of course, reading Bram Stoker’s short story, “The Squaw.” A few minutes later he began chortling again, presumably at the part where the man who’d accidentally killed the kitten gets crushed inside an Iron Maiden.

At home, Tim spent more than an hour trying to set up the television. Much consultng the manual, muttering, curses. The cats, delighted with the boxes, styrophone and packing, wrestled and rolled in the rubble. Tim swore. We needed two cables. After he had rested awhile, we drove to the Tower on Noe (It’s open until midnight) and bought the cables, one movie (Rope). We used the free rental coupon we got when we purchased the VCR and rented Sleeper.

Once we were back and everything was set up, we turned out the lights, opened some Doritos and dip, and watched first Rope, then Sleeper.

An historic occasion. I do believe this was the first time we rented a movie. Certainly it was the first time I ever purchased one. I can remember walking to our car in the Tower Parking lot, feeling like I was living in a science fiction movie because we now had a movie we could watch any time we wanted.

The next stop was Pier 1. I had wanted a bedspread for my office, but the twins available were high over my head, unreachable, and not pretty enough to induce me to ask someone to take them down. I settled for a folding chair for my desk (Up ’til now, I’ve been sitting on the cat carrier.) A stop at Noble Pies for lunch, then on to The Good Guys.

It was late afternoon by now, and the weather was changing, the sky still clear but the hills beginning to look murky. The Good Guys was packed with customers and TVs showing the evening news. Tim bought a Mistubishi color TV and VCR. The act of writing such a huge, perfectly good check seemed to exhilerate him. He was very cheerful as we drove home.

Two more lost franchises. Pier 1 in all its shabby-chic glory had been a favorite of mine since high school. What I mainly remember about its stores are the shadows and the mingled scents of cotton fabric and dried plants. Now it only exists online so that sneezy ambience is gone forever. The Good Guys was, like most electronic stores, my idea of Hell.

As for the TV, it was what was then considered the height of TV technology at the time — a large bulky cube. Buying TVs seems to have made the men in my life inordinately happy. I remember years ago purchasing a flat-screen with Michael, and him riding in the back with it, holding it upright, his cheek pressed against the box as though comforting a newly adopted pet.