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himself in California? Apparently he’s some sort of relationship counsellor.” He shook his head, chuckling. “Which is a bit rich, when you think about it.”

seven
    “I have a question for you, Mr. Romance. Do you think it’s possible for a mattress to be cursed?”
    The question was a needle to his drifting thoughts. Deflated, Kenneth Deller came back to the radio studio with a bump and noted that the coffee in his mug was cool. It was only two minutes since he’d last looked at the clock on the wall. During some shows, like this one, its hands actually seemed to click backward, like a toddler slipping down the stairs. His mind would wander as he responded with stock answers — You have to learn to value yourself, or how will he ever learn your true value?
    He cleared his throat. “Well, I guess that depends. Are we talking about a curse in the classical sense — that is, a hex placed by a supernatural force, in order to bring about painful retribution? Or are you just having bad luck in the bedroom?”
    The woman on the other end hesitated, but only for a moment. They didn’t call in to radio talk shows because they needed to be drawn out. “Bad luck, I guess is what I’m saying. You see, Mr. Romance, I bought it a year or so ago, and I’ve only managed to, you know, get lucky on it once. And that was with my ex-husband. So it’s only, um, been christened once, and that was because we went out and got drunk after our divorce papers were signed. And no, um, party for two since then.”
    Where did they come up with these euphemisms? Boinking, schtupping, doing the baby dance, getting laid, scoring. Their shame radiated down the phone line. Where he came from, people were just as prudish: shagging, getting a leg over, on the pull. One word for love, a thousand for sex.
    “And you blame the mattress for this?”
    “You should see how fellas look at it. Like they know nothing good has happened there in a long, long time.”
    His producer, sitting outside the soundproof box of the studio, shook her head in disbelief.
    “I think,” he said, “that you’re giving men a little too much credit for imagination. Usually when a bloke’s in the bedroom he’s not trying to channel supernatural messages from the furniture. He’s thanking whatever kind fate brought him there in the first place.”
    “Actually, it’s been longer than a year . . . the drought.”
    “It has?”
    “More like five.”
    He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Have you thought about getting rid of the mattress?”
    “Well, my sister’s moving house. I’d thought she might want it, but I can’t very well pass the curse on to her. She’s already got fibromyalgia.”
    That was the highlight of his afternoon. The rest of the calls passed in an undifferentiated rush — boyfriends with porn addictions, boyfriends who wouldn’t commit, boyfriends who were losers, wasters, slackers. Men rarely called; they were terrified someone they knew might hear them on the radio, asking for advice about love.
    It was more than that, though: men seldom realized when their relationships were in trouble, usually not until an exasperated wife rose like a viper to disturb their lethargy. “I had no idea anything was wrong,” they’d say, when they’d finally worked up the nerve to call. “Seventeen years, and we were happy. She never said.”
    “Are you sure?” he’d ask. No clues? No taut silences that stretched over days, no floods of inexplicable tears, no suggestions that you find a couples counsellor? “It wasn’t that there were no clues,” he would say gently, “it’s that you chose not to notice.”
    When the hour was up, he slipped off the black padded headphones and stretched. The bottom button of his shirt popped open under the strain, and he reached down to do it up. His stomach may have grown, but at least it was still hard. His dad and uncles were big men with hands like Christmas hams and bellies like cement. “Soft