On the wall was a portrait of Nixon and a bust of a deer. That's really all you had to see to have an understanding of the household. You can picture the furniture, the lampshades, the ashtrays filling up. The lawnmower leaving every blade of grass behind. It was a place firmly planted in the past—or the present, depending which side of the curve you're on.
The past never stays the past for some people. Even in its constancy, it remains the here and now for all-time. It is the masses who shapeshift, the ones in their infinite insanity that choose the "other." They revoke, and they question, and they rapidly progress into something that could only be called devolution. There are people who get to a certain age, and they become that certain age forever. They've learned all they'll ever learn. From a certain point on they only hear. But they are already too busy thinking of a retort. It is already there.
In the fireplace was nothing. It wasn't real. They'd had it installed because they liked the look, the idea, of a fireplace, but didn't want to bother with the flames. They drank Tom Collins and went to bed at ten. In the morning they rose with the sun, and called the day their own.
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