One day, the sun goes out. Pfft, like a light bulb. And then the light bulbs, too. Suddenly, noon is midnight black. Stars come out, but they don’t help.
Bloom, as usual, barely notices. Draped like always, like an raggy old blanket in his easy chair.
Mrs. Bloom, is now a voice in the dark. She moves towards Bloom. “You should have bought candles like I told you,” she says, her voice like a potato peeler.
“Don’t you care, the sun went out? And right when I’m making your lunch,” she continues. “I can’t make tuna salad in the dark.”
Bloom shifts deeper into his chair. “It’s okay,” he says. “They’ll turn the switch back on. Just be patient.”
“What about ham?” Mrs. Bloom says. “I got it on special.”
“You know ham keeps me awake.”
“Mr. Picky,” Mrs. Bloom says. “And enough already with the switch nonsense. This is what you said when the river stopped, or when we went to the beach that time and the waves went dead.”
“They got switches for all of it. All of it,” Bloom says. “They got switches in North Carolina.”
“I’m making you a ham sandwich and you’ll eat it.”
Her voice sweltering the apartment like a heat wave, like the time the cold weather switched off, boom, just like that. Bloom’s stomach rumbling now and it doesn’t matter how loud, he can still hear Mrs. Bloom’s voice.
And Bloom doesn’t know why he didn’t think of it before, but he slugs himself up out of his chair and finds his way to the room they only use now for old magazines. Way in the back, a tiny closet, the switch for Mrs. Bloom.
He can still hear her nattering like a rainstorm, and then with a simple flick, it stops. She stops.
Bloom finds his way back to the chair. Contentment filling him, even his stomach. Quiet now, Mrs. Bloom frozen in place in the kitchen. Tuna waiting to be mixed in the bowl when he turns her back on, later, when the sun switches back on. Her mouth open till then wide and empty like a forgotten cave.
