S. returned home, we three in the living room were quiet and the house was dark. She entered the room and reached to turn on the lights without looking and squealed when she felt a hand rather than the expected plastic switch.
I turned on the light and welcomed her home. "Hello darling." Her eyes were still wider than usual, heavy breathing. "So I’ve been ignoring these two—" I began.
She stopped me."They’re going."
"They have names.”
From the table, in unison: "We have names."
"Not my problem. Stop talking to them." Arms held straight by her sides, she marched out of the living room and down the hall, so I followed.
Upstairs in our bedroom, where Hat and Briefcase couldn’t hear: "I want to come home and not be bothered. Those two—"
"Hat and Briefcase."
"Really, really, don’t get attached. They’re not staying. It’s a mistake—"
I felt sorry for them, pangs of conscience, it didn’t seem like it was their fault. They were as confused as I was. These two objects had arrived in a changed house, one that they insisted was their own, an owner who suddenly had disowned them, a city that they said had transformed overnight. But they were dangerous, S. seemed to think so, even if she wouldn’t say it openly. I knew they were, even if they wouldn’t answer any questions I had about S., because investigating only fed my paranoia. Anyway, we had the power and they didn’t. They were to go.
S.: "So I’m thinking we just put them in the fire."
"Cremation?"
"Sure, call it whatever you want. Destroy all the evidence."
During tightly-controlled interviews with the media, frictionless conversations with me at home, considering the immolation of a talking hat and briefcase, S.’s blunted expression remained the same. The same unchanging face, never looking a day older than her early twenties, despite the fact that we were both past thirty. It used to bother me that I looked older and older than her.
"But don’t you think that they feel pain? Or, you know—" My curiosity returned. "Why are we getting rid of them?"
Nervous, kneading her jacket’s fabric between two fingers, "Just consider it for a second. What will the media think? The public? Anyway, we don’t need this sort of stress. A talking briefcase, a hat?"
And what if they had souls? Rummaging through Briefcase’s innards was one thing. Almological imaging would be a whole other level of subterfuge. They had to go; there were too many things I wouldn’t be able to resist, curiosity.
Still, I didn’t want to burn them to death. "How about instead of incineration, we leave them somewhere? Maybe in a cardboard box?"
"Where?"
"I don’t know. A street corner several blocks from here."
S. didn’t look convinced. "And if someone finds them?" Then she stared into space for a moment, nodded and smiled, answered her own question: "There’s no need. I should have asked them earlier—" I made to speak and she cut me off. Even when smiling, her expression remained the same. "A high performer is already on his way."
"What’s a performer going to—"
"He’ll take them back to The Tower, that hat and the briefcase will get sorted out there, away from prying eyes."
Disappointment and relief at one, I hid my feelings beneath helpfulness: "Do you need me to call anyone?"
"Like I said, a high performer is already on his way," she said without facing me, already standing up and opening our cupboard, rummaging through it. My view of her was obscured by one of the cupboard’s doors, the sound of shifting clothes, crunch of something unknown, when she stepped back into my sight she was carrying a cardboard box. "To keep things discreet."
"Would we need to poke holes in it?"
S.: "What?"
"The cardboard box."
"Why?"
"So they can, I don’t know, breathe or something."
"If it makes you feel better, sure."
I thought for a moment. "What’ll happen to them in The Tower?"
"Does it matter?"
"They look like they have an internal life, or an experience of what it is to be a briefcase, or a hat. Whatever that is."
"True. Still, so what?"
My squeamishness was one reason why I became a radioalmologist and not a corporeal doctor. A squeamishness which, I discovered, extended to hats. I didn’t want them immolated, I didn’t trust a high performer to treat them well, I didn’t want them to disappear in The Tower: "What about a quick death instead? Is that mercy?"
"Behind the shed, give them two behind the ear, you know like—" she clicked her tongue twice, index finger pulling an imaginary trigger.
"Do hats die?"
"Very shortly, that won’t be our problem."
So we broke the news in our living room, that they would have to live elsewhere. S. was firm, I conceded. Briefcase was quiet and Hat vocal, blaming me, pleading with S. "But why? You took me to work the day before last, it was so recently! What did I do wrong? It’s you, isn’t it. You—" ‘You’, directed at me, "—you did this. S., get this one— this person here, he’s the one you should be throwing out. What has he ever done for you?"
There would be no quick death and no burning; a performer was inbound on foot, so S. said. Falling back into familiarity, I just went along with things, placing the cardboard box on the ground, closing Briefcase and placing it in first.
"Murderer and invader! You think you can do this to me? Imprison me, bury us somewhere in a cardboard coffin? A mass grave, the two of us! S.! S.! Stop him! Stop him now, you’ve got to stop him!"
Briefcase began quietly crying, or at least sounded like it. They were closed, which made them harder to hear anyway. Held at arm’s length between my thumb and index finger, Hat’s personal abuse and pleas for S.’s help grew more and more profane - I was afraid that, somehow, it would bite. My reassurances convinced nobody, not Hat, not Briefcase, not me, my insistence that The Tower was actually a really nice place where there were plenty of talking hats and briefcases to meet, where Hat and Briefcase could feel at home. I dropped Hat into the box and taped it shut, left it to sit in the doorway connecting our living room with the narrow hall, at whose far end was the front door. S. stood with crossed arms, watching us with a blank face and occasionally glancing through the window at The Tower.
"I don’t want a new home, I want to be in my home!" came Hat’s voice, pure venom.
Jaw tight, S. giggled through bared teeth before regaining her composure.
"What’s so—" I started, stopping to listen to the shouting in the distance, growing louder, footsteps like whip-cracks from outside.
S. stepped from the window, began walking towards the front door. "He’s almost here."
Having crossed the living room, she tried stepping over the box. Her impassive expression broke as she tripped and flipped the box on its side, rushed footfalls before she found her balance against a wall. Part of me enjoyed it, the momentary sneer, red face, insults to match Hat’s; a glimpse of real emotion, not S.’s usual bare distance, more barren with each post-slogan day.
Briefcase’s sniffs and soft gasps graduated to loud cries and moans, while Hat shouted itself hoarse. "Are you moving us now? Is this the end? What a way to go, Stolen, stolen— abandoned by my mount! Abandoned because of some bastard invader!"
The galloping footsteps outside came to a halt at our front door, a commanding voice, the only voice that high performers spoke in, rattled the house: "Chauffeur service right here buddy! The courier has come to collect!"
I glanced down the hall at the front door briefly, and when I looked back at S. she had returned to inscrutability. Briefcase continued to cry. Was I responsible? Hat seemed to think so. But I’d only agreed to S.’s plan, made some suggestions, I didn’t make any definite decisions. Picking up the box, which lay on its side, I followed S. down the hall, towards the hammering knocks on the front door and excited chatter from the performer standing outside our house.
Briefcase was screaming hysterically, Hat was pleading: "What was it? I’ll keep quiet, you won’t hear of me. I thought that I could stay, why can’t I stay like before? Is it you there, S.? What changed? What did I do? Just don’t do this, please don’t do this. If you don’t like me, well, I don’t know what I did but just put me under the bed or let me collect dust somewhere, just not like this, please not like this."
Luminous grin, a beautiful silk tie; S. opened the front door and there stood a high performer, dispatched here from The Tower without any request or command being spoken. I handed over the box without a word.
"You don’t have to do this," said Hat, quietly, before the performer turned and sprinted down the street, carrying the cardboard box above his head.
His cheers faded into the sound of traffic and behind a closed door our house was quiet again. An opportunity to dig into S.’s past had been missed and part of me was glad. I didn’t feel like talking to her and she didn’t have anything to say to me; we tried filling the silence with the radio, but they were talking about our company so we turned it off.