Free First Contact by Evan Mandery Page A

Professor moved aside six sets of undershorts and three pairs of soggy socks, including a particularly wet pair of hosiery Mrs. Fendle-Frinkle had placed directly on the yellow legal pad containing the Professor’s current calculations.
    The Professor set the socks and underwear down on a small foldable tray table. This table had been designed and marketed as a place for people to rest their microwavable dinners while they watched television. In the Fendle-Frinkle household it was used exclusively as a place for the Professor to temporarily rest laundry while he contemplated the nature of the universe. Mrs. Fendle-Frinkle could have used the tray table in the same manner—thus sparingthe Professor’s papers some unnecessary smudging—but she chose to use the desk instead, leaving it to her husband to clear his work space. Earlier in the marriage, the Professor protested this practice, but he had long ago capitulated on such matters. In fact, when the Professor finished his work for the evening, he would return the socks and underwear to their original places on the desk.
    Professor Fendle-Frinkle noticed some of his underwear contained holes, several of which were rather large. Professor Fendle-Frinkle noticed this because Mrs. Fendle-Frinkle had drawn rings around the holes with a pen. The Professor paid the ink circles little attention. Professor Fendle-Frinkle did not care much about socks, underwear, or any of the other quotidian details of life.
    When he finished dealing with the laundry, the Professor sat down, at long last, at his desk. A black leotard hanging from the overhead clothesline dripped water onto his head, so he moved his chair to the right. In this position a second leotard—this one aquamarine—dripped water onto his head, so he moved the chair slightly to the left. Finally, he managed to find a narrow dry space between the soggy nylon bodysuits.
    The Professor’s desk was situated between the Fendle-Frinkles’ washer and the Fendle-Frinkles’ dryer. There was no choice but to place the desk along the same wall as the washer and dryer; the basement was quite small to begin with and one wall was occupied by the boiler, another by a slop basin, and a third by a set of plastic bins containing Mrs. Fendle-Frinkle’s old shoes. It would have been possible, though, to put the desk to the left of the washer or to the right of the dryer. But the Professor’s wife insisted on keeping the desk between the two appliances. She found the space useful for transferring clothing.
    Because the dryer vibrated when it ran and because the washing machine produced a high-pitch squeal during its spin cycle, the positioning of the desk led to further disruptions of the Professor’s work whenever his wife ran the washer or the dryer or, as was the case that evening, both.
    When clearing clothing from his desk, the Professor sometimes wondered why his wife didn’t put the underwear in the dryer together with the other clothing. He had asked his wife about this once. She had offered an explanation, something about elastics, which he did not understand at the time and had long since forgotten. The Professor also wondered, from time to time, why his wife did not run the wash during the day, since she did not work and spent most of the day watching soap operas. He had asked her about this once too. For this his wife offered no explanation. The Professor suspected, correctly, it was a passive-aggressive way for his wife to express disapproval of his work and, perhaps more relevantly, him.
    On top of everything else, the vibration of the dryer caused the lightbulb above the Professor’s head to flicker on and off. This single bulb, fastened to a socket hanging tenuously from the ceiling by a slender wire, was the sole source of light in the basement. Mrs. Fendle-Frinkle had steadfastly opposed the placement of a lamp in the cellar, saying it would disturb the aesthetic milieu. It would have been of no use anyway since