Thursday, March 12, 2009

Tree wandered over to the kitchen area for coffee. The refrigerator was blazing its food verts and diet pills, its laxatives and gym memberships and home-toning instruments, its stomach-stapling surgeries and take-out menus. Tree opened it and got out some creamer. The coffee was on a timer, and as she walked over to it, it percolated and exhaled, greeting her like an apartment dog--post long day alone. Coffee was necessary for thought, part of thought's ritual. Tree thought about Chip. That Chip was psycho. He worked in financials, it was really no surprise he'd finally lost it. It was all a gamble these days: since the crash of '08, Wall Street felt less like J. Press and more like Vegas--old Vegas. America was the last stronghold of the consumer; the stuffists had waged a 20-year battle and they'd won. The rest of the planet had abandoned the U.S. and its bigGod bigBuy buyGod policies, except to sell there. They'd left Tree's country, a shrunken-yet-bloated first world of one, all alone in its piles and piles of misery. Except, of course, to sell there.

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