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Show T3 But about that time Bill surfaced from die depths of his obsession and said why didn't they buy a house. A house? she said, drawing back. And leave our clever little apartment 1 Whatever for? Sound is reproduced better in larger rooms, he said, eyes strangely aglow. Especially with wooden walls and floors and like that instead of brick and concrete and steel. This place is like a prison! No soul! It is not, she said, amazed that he would even think of buying a house just for his old hi-fi, and she said No, they were not buying any house, never. The apartment was just fine-at least until they had babies and needed more room, and then most certainly it would not be a wooden house, a fire-trap! Absolutely not! So diat was that, too. Except she didn't get pregnant even with the help of temperature charts, and he wouldn't drop the house business, one day insisting like a maniac that she at least come and see one he had found. So she gave in, the better to refute him. And dien she could hardly believe the neighborhood he took her to, not a new one at all, definitely a run-down one, an old one. And the house left her aghast. It was ancient, it was narrow and tall, it was ugly. The paint was bad, the roof falling off. As in a nightmare unable to protest, she followed him: the porch floor was unpainted and splintery, die inside smelled musty, dirty, nasty. She followed him up stairs which actually shook and there all she saw was bare floors, peeling wallpaper, and five bedrooms. Five! And all the time he was talking about fixing it up, renovating it, with a mad wild glow in his eyes. Downstairs again. From the front a hall ran straight back, past the stairs, past living room and dining room to the kitchen, a place which hadn't been touched by paint or carpentry, and looked as if it hadn't been cleaned, for twenty years. And then Bill revealed die climax of his tour, the dining and living rooms, both large and high-ceilinged rooms which had been sometime remodeled to make a dance studio, all separation between them removed so that they made one large rectangular room with hardwood floor. And this large room, he said, was perfect for the hi-fi he was going to build. The walls had cracks, the ceiling was sagging, filth and probably roaches everywhere, but the dimensions were just right! The neighborhood was falling into a slum, but the acoustics were beautiful! She looked at him, her eyes opened to the monstrousness of his obsession, she 170 |