Still, Stairs

1.0 — Cheez-Its

Profile shot of a heavyset man sinking into an armchair holding a box of Cheez-Its. He struggles to his feet and heads toward the kitchen with a pronounced sideways lean. The camera cuts to a full-body frontal shot. His bathrobe hangs open, revealing a T-shirt and boxer shorts. He shakes the box, listening for what's left. “Shoot! This ain't never gonna last. I need at least forty-five minutes' worth for this show.”

2.0 — The Grid

On the TV the camera opens on an aerial view of cookies cooling on wire racks. It slowly moves across several racks positioned close together, zooming in until their intersecting grids become the primary subject. Thin blue superimposed lines begin tracing the smallest squares, radiating outward from the center of each rack. Where the grids meet, the lines collide, doubling in width and intensity before turning bright red, equal in brightness and saturation to the blue.

Camera cuts to a conference room. Several engineers are sitting around a table watching the sequence on a monitor. All wear nearly identical white, short-sleeved, button-down shirts tucked into black or brown trousers with black or brown shoes and white socks. Some hold their heads in their hands. Others stare at the screen or exchange increasingly desperate looks. Finally, one screams, “F******K! WHAT ARE WE GONNA DO?”

Apparently, something has gone terribly wrong with the grid. The precise nature of the problem is never established, although the implications for modern civilization appear to be enormous.

1.1 — Slow Dry

Back to the heavyset man, now settled into his armchair, his left hand buried in the Cheez-Its box and the remote, or “clicker,” in his right. Cut to a commercial playing on his television. A flamboyant actor stands beneath a dress shirt hanging from a hook overhead. He gently touches the fabric, admiring it with exaggerated satisfaction. “Oh, we slow-dry our shirts. Mmm-hmm.” He nods repeatedly at the camera, as though conventional dryers, clotheslines, and laundry racks were embarrassingly inadequate alternatives.

2.2 — Back to the Engineers

The engineers are still watching the grid.

1.3 — Back to the Armchair

The man is still watching television and eating Cheez-Its.

2.3 — Back to the Engineers

The situation has not improved.

3.0 — Don and Rodney

Don and Rodney are carpet installers. Both are pretty rough around the edges, although in entirely different ways. Don is tall, top-heavy, and a little wobbly on his feet. He has a glass eye, Mickey Mouse teeth, and a noticeable weakness on his right side. Rodney has a soft, almost boyish voice that seems perfectly suited to his round head, at least from a distance. Up close, though, he looks like a man who's spent a lifetime covering up pain with smiles, leaving wrinkles across his face like well-earned fault lines.

One snowy Saturday morning, they're sent out to start a carpeting job. The homeowner greets them at the door. Upon meeting Don, he's nearly speechless when Don asks, “You got a glass eye, too?” As it happens, the homeowner's right eye is also a little botched. The encounter is so unexpected that the homeowner immediately forgets which man is which. Turning toward Don, he attempts to recover.

“Rodney, right?”

“Don't insult me,” Don replies.

He says this as though being mistaken for Rodney were an especially serious offense, or as though one of them were obviously better-looking than the other.

Despite the awkward introduction, Don and Rodney do a fine job. They finish most of the installation and arrange to return Monday to carpet the stairs. Stairs, by the way, are probably the most technically challenging part of a house to carpet. Unless, of course, somebody asks you to carpet a ceiling. But until then, it's still stairs.

Author’s Note

Most of these scenarios are based on events that actually happened. Others are imagined, exaggerated, or remembered slightly differently than they probably occurred. Originally conceived as short experimental observations, they eventually came together as something else.