Famine

Chapter Eight

Chapter Eight

   A shotgun house became available on Hathaway Street.  The yard was short in front but deep in the back. The back alley alowed Jonah access to his small garage where he also stored his bicycles.  In the back were also a grape arbor and a white=rock patio with wrought-iron table and chairs.  The dome made the city warm enough for palm trees, banana plants, and tropical plants.  The grass was a hardy desert hybrid watered by unseen spigots timed to allow maximum absorption.  It never turned brown even in winter.

   Jonah and Cheryl picked out the furniture from a local store.  He depended on her to keep his new place look more like a museum because of his twentieth-century tastes.  They decided on Neo-Mediterranean for the living room.  The over-stuffed couh was long and low with two matching chairs.  The coffee table bor Greek-Roman carvings. Ancient-looking oil lamps decorated the table.  Cheryl showed Jonah how to acess the entertainment center, which has an access panel hidden in the wall.

   "Where's the entettainment center?" Jonah asked.  "All I see is a control panel."

   Cheryl laughed and placed her hands around his left arm. "Your whole house is its entertainment center.!"

   "What do you mean?" Jonah asked.  Before he was frozen, he had listened to a large Philco radio as a boy at his grandfather's house, and the latest thing in home entertainment were eight milimeter movies, maybe sixteen milimeter sound movies, screens, and stereos that used scratchy needles to play recordings.  They had just begun to include color TV's in stereo cabinets.  If it didn't have a knob that rotated, Jonah was lost.

   "Do you want music, Jonah?"  She asked him to name a song he wanted to hear while she tyed it in.  In an instant the Group Three Dog Night were singing Chambala almost blasting them out of the living room.  She slid her finger down and the music's volume was more friendly to Jonah's pre-Gen-Xer's ears.  "You can target the sound to a small pin point, contain it within your house so that the cops don't show up about neighors complaining about loud noise.  You can focus or surround yourself with music, target it, and play different music in each room at the same time."

   "Do you like art or history?"

   "Who doesn't?"

   "Pick a work of art."

   "Mona Lisa."

   "Would you like her displayed in the living room?  Would you like her to follow you into each room?"

   "Let her stay over my bed."

   "How big do you want her?"

   "Just like in the Louvre."

   "Think you're going to trip me up, do you?"  She entered the parameters and in an instant, she was smiling over Jonah's bed.  Cracked paint and all.  "We can arrange a virtual woman just like her to sleep with every night.  I won't get jealous over your being with a programmed lover."  She laughed again.

   "What about home movies?"

   "Home what?"  Cheryl had a puzzled look and then smiled.  "Oh, well, Jonah, how about We Ain't Got Dames?"

   "You know about the musical South Pacific?"

   A wrap-around scene of Tahiti appeared with Palm Trees overlooking white beaches and young girls in grass skirts frolicking among the incoming waves while shirtless men paddled outrigger canoes in the distance.  Bloody Mary was singing Bali Hai Calls You while muscle-bound sailors, some bare chested and others in blue uniform work shirts stood by in awe.