Paul Di Filippo

THE THREE OF US - I, my wife, and the Realtor - stood on the sidewalk, amid broken glass and candy wrappers, crumpled cigarette packages and bottle caps, looking up at our house.

Even though my wife and I had never been inside, you see, I already had the habit of referring to the place as ‘our house.’

From the moment I had first seen it, driving past one evening on a new route home from the office, I knew we would one day own it. Its strange proportions and unique charms attracted me as no other structure ever had. It seemed to promise a certain domestic serenity to anyone lucky enough to live in it, a kind of natural ease, as if it could mold itself to its inhabitants, becoming an extension of their bodies, rather than a stiff shell or clumsy carapace, like most houses. Perhaps this was entirely fancy on my part. All I really knew was that the house attracted me.

Our house was situated in a rough section of town that was now undergoing the early stages of gentrification. At one time this neighborhood had been several square blocks of Victorian and Edwardian respectability and pomp. (How they had loved their cluttered neatness, their elaborate classifications, the people of that age!)

Now, however, the area enjoyed a status barely above that of a ghetto. There were many empty, fire-blackened lots. The houses that had survived were mostly shabby. Youths with bad intentions congregated on corners. Liquor stores did a thriving business. Still, here and there a building stood out, either having been maintained throughout the years of general neglect, or now being renovated.

Our house was one such.

Despite being surrounded by a weed-filled yard, it was in decent shape. I could see that its slate roof was intact. Its clapboards were sound, if in need of paint. Its foundation appeared firm. I have already alluded to the uniqueness of its overall appearance. Three stories tall, our house was a whimsical structure; what I believe is called ‘a carpenter’s gothic’ - reflecting the unknown intentions of its long-dead Architect. (In a way, its lines, from certain perspectives, seemed almost arbitrary, as if the edifice had grown willy-nilly, an organic thing, rather than having been planned and constructed deliberately. An evolutionary sport, perhaps.)

Our house sported gables and towers, gingerbread and scrollwork, stained-glass and leering wooden gargoyle bas-reliefs. At moments, it seemed almost like three separate houses jammed together. At others, its disparate elements were miraculously fused into a whole that, as I have said, struck one - struck me at least - as very appealing. I hoped, of course, that my wife, seeing our house for the first time, would feel the same way.

Turning to her now, I tried to gauge her reactions to our house. Her brow was wrinkled, her lips composed in a straight line, her gaze a bit remote. Not a face of disapproval, I thought, but merely her familiar abstract look of weighing and evaluating, which often settled on her appealing features when she was working on a case at home, prior to writing a brief. Her judgment was still in suspension, and I could only hope it would eventually be made in favor of our house. Wishing to sway her, I turned to the real-estate man, the third member of our party.

‘What’s the asking price?’ I inquired.

He named a ridiculously low figure, and I nodded sagely.

‘It’s the neighborhood, of course,’ he continued. ‘Puts quite a few people off. But I can see that you two wouldn’t be bothered by that. You look like folks who enjoy being on the cutting edge of things. That’s just the situation we have here. This whole district is turning around. The smart people are buying into it now. Pretty soon you won’t be able to touch a house like this for even twice the price. And believe me, this would be a lot of house at even twice what they’re asking.’

I caught my wife’s eyes, now focused again. She nodded slightly to me, and I knew that the outside of our house, at least, had not put her off. I wasn’t sure if her feelings were as intense as mine, but at least she didn’t dislike it. In time, I was sure, her enthusiasm would grow to match mine.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘we won’t learn any more standing out here. Shall we go in?’

At this point, the real-estate man grew nervous. He absent-mindedly ground a bottle-cap into the concrete with the tip of his shoe, as if trying to expunge something distasteful.

‘There’s a slight problem,’ he said. ‘We won’t be able to see the whole interior. Oh, the bulk of the house is perfectly accessible. Very nicely remodeled too, all the modern conveniences . . . It’s just the third floor and the basement that we can’t inspect.’

‘And why is that?’ I asked.

The agent ground the inoffensive cap down more forcefully. ‘It’s the tenants - ’

‘Tenants!’ interrupted my wife. ‘The reason we’re buying a house is to escape tenants. We’re tired of renting, we need more room, a house of our own. We plan to have a child in two-and-a-half years, and we were going to devote the third floor to it. Part of the second floor has to be my home-office - ’

‘They’re very good tenants,’ the agent temporized. ‘Always pay their rent promptly, never make any noise. Why, their rents will almost completely cover your mortgage payments . . .’

Before my wife and the agent could further antagonize each other, I interceded.

‘Do they have leases?’

‘No, I don’t believe so. Nothing actually signed, anyway. But they’re tenants of long standing. From what I’ve heard, they’ve always lived here, even before the current owners.’

‘Still, without leases, they’re in something of a precarious position, wouldn’t you say? Times are changing, and if we should see fit to raise the rents above what they could afford, I can’t imagine what alternative they would have, except to move.’

My wife smiled. The agent just shook his head. He seemed unusually tender-hearted for someone in his chosen profession.

‘This is really nothing for you to worry about,’ I offered. ‘Why not just show us the portion of our house that’s open, and let us make a decision based on that?’

The agent acquiesced. We began to move up the front walk, crushing the weeds that grew up between the flagstones.

‘I won’t have people living in our cellar and in our attic,’ said my wife forcefully, as if demanding the death penalty in a murder case.

‘Don’t worry, dear,’ I said, not really bothered by the prospect of evicting the unseen tenants. For she had said the words that let me know she was as much in love with the place as I.

‘Our cellar.’

‘Our attic.’

IT WAS A WEEKDAY EVENING. We were idling in the cozy parlor on the first floor of our house. We had been living in our house for three weeks. Already, as I had anticipated, it felt as if we had always lived there. Our house seemed a natural layer on our existing personalities, a kind of second skin, comfortable as a wrinkled pair of favorite jeans. With our house as a refuge to retreat to, away from the pressures of the daily world, both my wife and I were functioning more efficiently at work. We really couldn’t have been happier.

Except, of course, for the matter of the tenants.

I had discovered - by making careful inquiries among the neighbors and at City Hall - the names of our unwanted lodgers.

Huddling cravenly in the basement, a Mr and Mrs Ab.

Perched insouciantly on the third floor, a Mr and Mrs Meta.

Illegal immigrants all, I was certain, with names like that. It was an angle I was willing to exploit, if necessary. No pressure seemed too unethical to apply, if it would force them to leave. Why, they probably didn’t even belong in this country, much less in our house. Every time I thought of them, practically trespassing on our property, I became as angry as I ever did. I knew my wife felt the same way. Tonight, I had resolved, was to be the occasion of my speaking sternly to at least one set of these disreputable squatters. And I had decided - rather arbitrarily - to buttonhole the Abs first.

Although it might seem queer, I had not confronted either couple previously for several good and sufficient reasons.

First, I had had to contend with the expected, but nonetheless taxing exigencies connected with uprooting oneself and transporting all one’s possessions to a new home. This had been very debilitating. (Not that the stress hadn’t been worth it, in order to possess our house. Quite to the contrary . . . )

Second, the unwanted couples were - to be fair about the matter - so innocuous, so quiet, so hidden, that they slipped my mind for days at a time. No noise ever intruded from above or below, and we had yet to witness our tenants coming or going.

Third came my natural reluctance to cause a scene, even knowing that by all civilized standards I was absolutely within my rights as the new owner of our house.

In any case, these hindrances were no longer operative. Tonight, I had finally overcome them all.

This very evening I was determined to venture downstairs, into the terra incognita of our basement, and break the news to the Abs that they had better think about moving, and soon.

I rose from my chair and turned toward my wife.

She was sitting in a rowing machine on the floor. The ultramodern and slightly diabolical looking apparatus appeared absolutely incongruous amidst our heavy Victorian furniture, which we had been accumulating for years in anticipation of one day living in just such an immaculately restored house. I marveled, not for the first time, how the old and new managed to coexist in our society . . .

Clad in a blue lycra stretchsuit, she faced the television set, which was on and tuned to PBS. (I had not been watching, instead sitting pensively, anticipating the various possible objections the Abs would raise, and how I would counter them.)

‘I’m going downstairs now,’ I said to my wife, who pulled vigorously on the oars, rowing to nowhere.

‘Great,’ she huffed. ‘Give ‘em hell.’

I hesitated, suddenly reluctant to confront the Abs. ‘What’s that you’re watching?’ I asked, seeking to delay the inevitable.

‘Nova. Something about the brain. Three-part structure. Cortex, cerebellum . . . I don’t really know. Not paying attention, I guess.’

Then she began to stroke harder, effectively precluding further talk. With no further excuse to delay, I left the parlor.

In the hallway, I abruptly stopped. A thought had occurred to me: where exactly was the entrance to the cellar?

There was no exterior door or bulkhead set into the foundation. I had mowed the weedy lawn just yesterday, making a complete survey of our house’s perimeter, and would surely have noticed any possible exit. Such a lack could mean only that entrance to the basement was from within the house.

This seemed incredible. How could the prior owners have consented to this kind of arrangement? Who would want one’s tenants trooping daily in and out through one’s own private quarters? I couldn’t conceive of such a setup. Yet what alternative was there? There had to be some sort of access to the cellar, and if it wasn’t outside, it had to be inside. The Abs must come and go while we were sleeping or at work . . .

I set out to find the hidden door below.

After much opening and closing of hitherto undiscovered closets, I came upon the door I sought in a shadowy corner of the kitchen. It was secured with a rusty nail hammered into the doorframe then bent at an angle and rotated into the body of the door. The nail had bitten so deeply, and for so long, that I had to use a claw-hammer to remove it . . .

I opened the door onto a Stygian stairwell, a benighted shaft. The light from over my shoulder illuminated only the first four or five steps. After that the substantial darkness was complete.

I looked for a lightswitch on either side of the door.

There was none.

I found a flashlight in the kitchen junk-drawer. Its batteries were dead, a corroded and fused acidic mass. Perhaps, I thought, I should postpone this encounter until I caught the Abs venturing upstairs... But then, imagining what my wife would say if I told her I had failed to confront the Abs, I knew such a course was out of the question.

Reluctantly, my left hand on the railless wall on that side, my right hand extended out into the blank abyss in the other direction, I began the descent.

The stairs seemed to go on forever, with many twists and turns. The wall beneath my left hand changed from plaster to stone. The stone became damp, then actually wet. I could feel the movement of small rills. My right hand encountered nothing. A reptilian smell filled the air, as at the snake-house at the zoo. I shuffled on, carefully lifting each foot and seeking out the next step.

Eventually I reached the bottom. Beneath my shoes, the floor seemed made of stone and lightly scattered with sand.

So - this was our house’s cellar. It seemed somehow fitting that such an impressive edifice should have a correspondingly deep and solid foundation. I was not alarmed. In fact, I was rather proud.

My eyes having adjusted to the gloom, I noticed a lambent, reddish glow emanating from one direction.

I moved toward it.

After navigating several bends, I realized the glow must be the familiar radiance cast by naked flames. My shadow, in fact, now danced behind me.

One last turn brought the source into sight. The corridor opened out into a cave, at the center of which was a small crackling fire. Its smoke spiraled upward and vanished into the gloom that hid whatever ceiling - our floorboards? - there was. The cave walls - much dryer here - were decorated with primitive yet affecting drawings, consummated in charcoal and organic paints: mammoths, giant sloths, sabertooths, and the outlines of hands, created, I knew, by blowing powdery pigments through a hollow reed as the actual digits lay splayed against the wall. There were various implements of bone and stone arranged around the cave: spears, fish-hooks, knives . . .

By the fire crouched a lone figure. It looked up as I entered the circle of light.

I instinctively recognized Mrs Ab.

Moving closer, I lifted my empty hand in a greeting. Mrs Ab did likewise.

At first I thought she was clothed in the fur of some animal. Then I realized the covering was her own dense pelage, and that she was naked. Her dark rubbery nipples poked through the fur. The short, thick, not unappealing pelt covered even her massive brow. Her brown eyes were those of an innocent beast.

I squatted by the fire. For several moments neither of us said anything. I was unsure of Mrs Ab’s ability to converse at all, and did not wish to embarrass her. Yet what alternative did I have? I had to say something to explain my presence. The musky, primeval smell I had noticed at the head of the stairwell was incredibly pungent here, I realized, and it was beginning to make it hard to concentrate. I had to speak, before I forgot how to.

‘Uh, Mrs Ab,’ I began. ‘Is your husband home?’

‘Ab hunt,’ she replied, coarsely but intelligibly.

Well, that was a relief. At least she could speak. I felt on more solid ground.

‘I hope I haven’t come at an inconvenient time,’ I said. ‘Allow me to introduce myself. I’m the new owner of the house below which you dwell. Your landlord, so to speak. As such, I have come here to make new arrangements regarding your tenancy. To put it plainly, Mrs Ab, my wife and I do not wish to have lodgers sharing our house. Nothing personal, you understand. I’m certain just from seeing your home that you and Mr Ab are fine folks, decent hard-working members of the lower middle class. And to be sure, you haven’t made any disturbance that would be cause for complaint. It’s just that we desire our privacy, you see, and the arrangements that exist now - the exit through our kitchen and all - Well, it just can’t continue.’

Mrs Ab cast a hairy hand behind her, indicating the depths of the cave. ‘Ab go that way, not your way.’

Aha, that explained it. There was another entrance to the cavern. I pictured Mr Ab, spear in hand, exiting from between, say, two boulders in the city’s park at night, hunting squirrels, dogs and cats. Amazing. Still, they had to go.

‘Mrs Ab, I’m afraid you and your husband must find different lodgings as soon as possible. It’s as simple as that. My wife and I plan to finish off the basement. Perhaps we shall install a Jacuzzi. No prejudice involved, I assure you. The Metas will be receiving their notice next.’

Mrs Ab shivered charmingly. ‘No. Ice. Too much ice. We almost die once. No go again.’

‘Mrs Ab,’ I countered reasonably, ‘you’re prevaricating. There is no ice outside. In fact, it’s been one of the hottest summers on record. No, I’m afraid the old ‘ice’ excuse won’t cut it. You must make plans to leave...’

Mrs Ab laid back on the floor. Bracing her feet, she spread her legs. Her inner thighs were hairy all the way to her genitals, which the firelight illumined in flickering detail.

I felt myself becoming aroused. The thick air seemed a primal aphrodisiac.

‘Mrs Ab, get up,’ I begged. ‘This is not the way to behave . . .’

Still offering herself, she said, ‘No move. Please no move. We mate. No move.’

‘Mrs Ab,’ I faltered, ‘what you’re proposing - I simply couldn’t - It’s out of the question.’

Mrs Ab reached between her legs and spread the wet lips of her vagina.

It was more than I could withstand. Before I fully realized what I was doing, I was naked and atop her.

Our mating was the coupling of wild animals, brief but all-consuming, like a storm or wave.

When we were done, lying together, naked flesh against furred skin, Mrs Ab whispered over and over, ‘No move, no move . . .’

I must have dozed. When I awoke, the fire was low and Mrs Ab was gone.

I dressed and sleepily made my way back to the stairs. The journey seemed shorter the second time.

Upstairs, once more in our house, I shut the door and poked the nail into its old hole, so that the door would look permanently shut, yet allowing me easy entrance if I wished to return.

My wife had gone to bed. I took a shower to rinse away the ancient odors that clung to me, then joined her.

IT WAS SEVERAL DAYS before I was able to contemplate with any equanimity the events that had transpired on my uncanny visit to the Abs, our intrusive and unwelcome basement-dwelling tenants. (If only they would just pack up their chipped flints and scraped mammoth hides and depart voluntarily, how wonderful everything would be! Our house would begin to assume the homogenous, unified nature we so desired . . .)

During this period my wife maintained a continuous inquiry as to how I had made out. Employing all the legalistic tricks of her trade, she probed and cross-examined me at breakfast and each evening on the reaction of the Abs to my demand that they depart.

Feeling as if I were on the witness stand, I grew tongue-tied and hesitant, and was unable to answer her questions satisfactorily.

‘Well, just tell me: did they agree to vacate or not?’

‘It’s not as simple as getting a yes or no. There was, ah - a slight communications problem. As I suspected, they turned out to be, um, foreigners. It was hard to make myself understood . . .’

‘We’ll see if they have any trouble understanding the police enforcing an eviction notice!’

Naturally I couldn’t tell her the truth of my seduction by the hirsute Mrs Ab and the awkward position of acquiescence it had placed me in, so I temporized, just as the Realtor had done - and probably for the same reason.

‘There’s no need to take such a step yet. Just give me a little more time. I’m perfectly capable of handling this little matter.’

‘All right. But I won’t put up with living this way much longer. And don’t forget, you still haven’t tackled the Metas yet.’

Ah, yes, the Metas . . .

I had managed to push those unknown upstairs upstarts to the back of my mind. My wife’s mention of them now brought them forward. Suddenly they seemed less like a hurdle than a convenient excuse to postpone revisiting the Abs.

‘Good idea, dear. I’ll deal with them tonight.’

‘It’s about time!’

That evening I rose from my chair - where I had been pretending to read the newspaper while actually worrying about the upcoming encounter - and regarded my wife once more.

Dressed in her blue exercise suit, she was hanging upside down in a set of padded inversion cuffs attached to a braced chrome framework similar to a chin-up apparatus. She had detached the antenna from the television and inverted the set, so that she could watch it in her bat-like position.

I was momentarily overwhelmed by a strange sensation as I contemplated both her and the image of the documentary narrator standing on their heads. For an instant I was convinced that the whole world had flipped over, and that only I alone was left wrongside-up, falling, falling, falling . . .

When the queasy feeling dissipated, I asked, ‘What are you watching?’

‘It’s all about Freud and his theories. Id, ego, superego - you know.’

I nodded, wondering what the mundane gesture looked like to my wife, from her novel perspective.

‘I’m going to speak to the Metas now,’ I said.

She grunted a wordless reply, reminding me of Mrs Ab during her bestial climax. I left her thus.

Wandering throughout the second floor’s many halls and rooms (our house was much bigger than it looked front the outside, due to many convolutions and curious folds), I pondered the problem of how to secure entrance to the third floor, where the Metas resided.

Just as there was no exterior access to the basement, so was there no outside flight of stairs that would lead to the Metas. Entrance, therefore, had to be made from somewhere within. Yet the main staircase ended at the second-floor landing.

But just as I had located the inconspicuous cellar door, I finally found the hidden way upward, in a dark corner at the end of a hall.

Obeying a nameless impulse to look up, I detected the hair-thin outline of a square trapdoor in the high ceiling. Fumbling about in the shadows, I discovered wooden rungs set into the wall.

Grasping an upper one and lifting my right foot to the first, I began to climb.

It seemed to take an inordinate amount of time to reach the ceiling. When my head was nearly touching the trapdoor I placed a hand against it and pushed. The panel resisted slightly, as if long disused, then yielded.

As soon as the smallest crack showed, the panel was yanked away by unseen inanimate forces, a torrent of white light flooded out, blinding me, and I was snatched bodily, as if by suction, up and through the square hole in the ceiling.

I found myself standing in a medium-sized white room, lit by a harsh, pervasive light whose source was hidden. The walls and floor of were padded in a substance that seemed at once both organic and artificial, giving way slightly under pressure, like skin, yet firm and tough as plastic. There was no furniture, nor any door.

And the panel in the floor, by which I had hoped to return to the familiar portion of our house, had been in some manner seamlessly closed. I could detect no trace of it.

As I stood, baffled, contemplating my prison, I sensed a presence behind me. I turned.

There had somehow appeared a man clothed in a form-fitting white jumpsuit of some synthetic material that merged imperceptibly with white boots. His head was completely bald. His features were smoothly regular and extraordinarily placid, as if he surveyed the world from a lofty perch, far removed from any of its foibles and cares. He looked utterly imperturbable.

This, then, had to be Mr Meta.

Before I could quite recover my equilibrium, he spoke.

‘What are you doing here, sir? You really don’t belong up here.’

Mr Meta’s voice was a sensible, rational monotone that completely infuriated me. To suffer such treatment in our own house - ! It was too much. I’m afraid I lost my temper, and began to rant.

‘You listen to me, Meta, it’s you and your wife who don’t belong here. I’m the new owner of this house, with clear and incontestable title. If anyone belongs here, it’s my wife and me. We’re sick of having half our house occupied by oddball tenants. We want it all! We’re the owners, goddamn it, and we’re serving notice! You’ve got no lease, and no right to live here without my sufferance. It’s out on your ass, Meta, as soon as physically possible! Go try to find another landlord who’ll have you!’

Mr Meta’s face remained unmoving throughout my tirade. He failed even to cross his arms on his chest, as any normal person might do when confronted with hostility. Instead, those somehow arrogant limbs continued to hang, relaxed yet competent-seeming, by his side.

When I finally spluttered down, and the silence began to grow discomfiting, Mr Meta spoke.

‘We’ll have to discuss this with Mrs Meta. Please follow me.’

Then he disappeared. As cleanly as imploding vacuum.

‘Meta!’ I called. ‘Mr Meta, where are you? Damn it, Meta, I can’t follow like that. Don’t leave me here, you bastard. Meta!’

Mr Meta’s head and shoulders poked neatly through one wall, so that he looked like a mounted trophy.

‘Please don’t bellow, sir. Keep calm. We cherish our even-temperedness on this level. Please try to maintain an objective perspective on affairs, sir. Put yourself beyond emotions. It’s the only way.’

Mr Meta extended a hand through the wall, as in a Cocteau film.

Instinctively, I grasped it.

He pulled me through.

We were in another room identical to the first, save for an antiseptic white couch. On the couch sat Mrs Meta.

She was dressed identically to her husband, and was just as hairless. Her skull resembled a china egg. Save for a few different contours, she and Mr Meta could have been twins.

‘My husband tells me you wish us to vacate our residence. May I ask why?’

Mrs Meta’s voice was, if anything, even more disconcertingly rational than her husband’s. Once again I was put off, and could speak only haltingly.

‘Well, it’s just that the wife and I need the space you’re occupying. We’re going to have children someday, you see . . .’

I faltered. It all sounded so lame and insignificant and somewhat bestial, in the presence of the noble sexless Metas. Still, now that I was here, I had to press on.

‘Besides, it’s unnatural, the kind of life you lead. I’ve never seen either of you leave our house. Who knows what you two do up here all day. How do you even survive? No, it’s too creepy. We want you out.’

Mr and Mrs Meta exchanged a glance pregnant with meaning. Then one of them - I confess to being so confused that by now I could hardly tell them apart - said, ‘Well, if we show you how we spend our time, will you reconsider?’

‘I don’t know. I - ’

‘Here, sit down with us.’

Seeing no reason not to comply, I took a seat on the white couch, between the Metas. Mr Meta then gripped my right hand, Mrs Meta my left. I felt a strange sensation race up my arms. Then the Metas linked their free hands across my lap.

The room vanished. Disembodied, I was in a place filled with cold equations and numinous symbols, all gold and silver, pure and instantly apprehensible, yet infinitely deep. Totally disoriented, I tried to grasp the meaning of this new world. After a dimensionless time spent probing the symbols, I realized what I was viewing. It was a complex schematic representation of our familiar universe, all the people and objects and relationships therein, a structured, scientific version of our familiar jumbled mess of emotions and ethics, desires and compulsions, needs and wants. I could even distinguish the icons that represented the Metas and me, and our relationship. Their import was unmistakable: I was acting like an irrational idiot.

I felt utterly humbled and minuscule. For an indefinite period I remained in this pitiless abstract world, face to face with my own insignificance. In a stern kind of way, it was rather bracing. Finally, I returned involuntarily to the Metas’ couch. They had broken the circle of hands.

‘Now you see how we spend our time,’ said Mrs Meta. ‘Perhaps, in some slight fashion, you now understand why we cannot be disturbed.’

I was speechless. I allowed Mr Meta to lead me back through the wall into the original room. There, he bent over, grabbed my ankles, and effortlessly lifted me up, so that I hung suspended in the same position my wife had occupied when I left her.

Then he pushed me head-first through the floor.

Somehow, without having landed heavily, I was lying on the carpet in the hall outside our bedroom door. All the lights were off. It took a moment for my eyes, dazzled by the illumination of the Metas’ apartment, to recover.

When I felt that I could make my way without stumbling, I stood and entered the bedroom. My wife, again, had gone to sleep without awaiting my return.

Exhausted, I crept into bed beside her, still clothed.

AFTER MY FAILURE to evict the Metas, my wife’s importunings became unbearable. When I couldn’t stand them anymore, I burst out: ‘If you think you can handle the Abs and the Metas then, go to it!’

‘I will!’ she feistily replied.

That night, descending the long staircase, she visited the Abs. I went to sleep before she returned, feeling not one whit guilty.

In the morning, she looked unnaturally disheveled, and had nothing to say. A male musk permeated her hair.

Two nights later, somewhat recovered, she set out for the Metas. I generously pointed out the location of their trapdoor.

Sometime around three AM, I sleepily sensed her fall into bed beside me.

Over breakfast, I asked, ‘Did you convince the Metes to seek new lodgings?’

‘Shut up,’ she wearily replied, as if embarrassed and confused.

After this, there was no more mention of our inherited tenants.

OUR LIFE SETTLED into an easy routine. Months passed.

We adapted quite nicely to sharing our house. Despite being excluded from cellar and third floor, we felt the house mold itself to our personalities like a favorite set of weekend clothing. We still planned to have children, but had resigned ourselves to housing them on the same floor as our bedroom. It would probably be more convenient anyway.

The Metas had, of course, been right: the house was big enough for all of us.

I have just said that we were excluded from the basement and the upper story. This was not entirely true.

There grew up a pattern of visits between the levels, with my wife and I acting as solo intermediaries. (Naturally, the Metas never went slumming down with the Abs, nor would the Abs ever have dared to visit the Metas. In fact, I doubt whether the cave-dwellers even knew or could possibly conceive of the existence of the Metas, beings so far removed from the life the Abs experienced.)

By far the majority of our separate visits were made downstairs, to the Abs. Their company was simply much more congenial than the chilly hospitality of the Metas. Far down below our house, sitting mutely for hours in the damp cave around the flickering flames that alternately disclosed and hid the painted walls, rolling on the gritty floor in animal passion, Mrs Ab’s hairy legs locked behind my back, I felt utterly connected with my roots, cast backward in time to a more primal, aboriginal existence, where words and abstract concepts meant nothing, failed even to exist.

I believe my wife experienced the same sensations on her unaccompanied visits to the Abs. I knew, from the apish scent that clung to her the mornings after, that she regularly had carnal relations with Mr Ab (whom I had met one night, when heavy rains kept him from hunting; a fine fellow, the salt of the earth). But I wasn’t jealous. How could I be, considering what I did with Mrs Ab?

No, my wife and I both gained from our separate visits below, and our own relationship was only strengthened.

Even the much rarer visits we made to the Metas were beneficial. The mental jaunts to the land of symbols, made with the Metas as guides, were as frigidly character-building as a January dip off the coast of Maine. Still, it was not something one cared to do every day, whereas visiting the Abs was. But alas, this happy coexistence was not to last forever . . .

One night I was taking my leave of Mrs Ab. We rose from the cave floor, I dressed, and, as was now her habit, Mrs Ab kindled a resinous, piney torch from the flames and accompanied me back to the foot of the stairs, lighting my way.

At the base of the wooden stairs, Mrs Ab was overcome with lust. (I believe her physiology included an actual period of estrus.) Dropping the torch, she ripped my clothes to shreds with her sharp nails and tripped me to the floor. Soon we were coupling as if we had not done it for weeks.

Unnoticed, the torch passed its flame to the staircase. The ancient wood quickly accepted the gift, and just at the climax of our union, I became aware of the spreading conflagration, which now lit the rocky walls with an awesome radiance.

The way upstairs was impassable. And fire was climbing two steps at a time toward the first floor.

I jumped up and managed to wrap a scrap of fabric around my loins. Grabbing Mrs Ab’s furry hand, I raced back clown the tunnel and out the exit I had never ventured down.

As I had once speculated, the tunnel emerged in a public park not far from our house, occupied during the day by addicts and drug-peddlers, winos and children. Mrs Ab and I hurried through the deserted city streets track to our house.

The entire building was ablaze, a hopeless pyre lighting the night. On the lawn stood my wife and the Metas, looking bewildered. Yes, even the imperturbable Metas were reacting in their subdued fashion to the destruction of our beloved house.

Mrs Ab and I joined them. As we watched, out of the night forlornly slunk Mr Ab, dragging a club.

The six of us, huddling together, watched in silence for a time. Sirens began to fill the night.

‘Ab cold,’ said Mr Ab at last.

‘I’m heartsick,’ said my wife.

‘There’s just no making sense of this,’ said Mr Meta.

Further silence, save for the crackling of the flames.

In the end, I felt compelled to speak.

‘Don’t worry,’ I said.

‘There are other houses in this neighborhood just as nice. We only have to stick together, exert ourselves, and we’ll surely find one. The important thing is not to split up.’

‘New safe cave?’ inquired Mr Ab tentatively.

‘Enough room for my office?’ asked my wife.

‘Privacy to meditate?’ ventured Mr Meta.

‘Yes,’ I said. They were all watching me hopefully. ‘Yes and yes. Something for everyone -

‘- in our house.’

Paul Di Filippo has a story in Disco 2000. Author of many stories and one published novel, Ciphers, he lives in Rhode Island. Another novel, Joe’s Liver, is due for publication in March 1999.