They set the foundation of the new corporate headquarters in sinking swamp marshes. Neuman strode through the hallway on the day of the grand opening. New carpet gave way beneath his shoes, and fresh paint hung in the heavy air. Red, white, and blue streamers drooped in loose daisy chains from the ceiling. As he rounded the corner, a sharp heat struck his face from the floor-to-ceiling windows. He turned, paused, and watched the white-hot sun approach the epoch of noon. Below, sulfuric, fart-smelling gasses rose from the marshland and lay thick, in a membrane doona over the reeds and thrumming insects. A swamp cooking in its own juices. In the distance, through the shimmering horizon, Neuman saw tick-like cars scurrying across US192. One cool bead of sweat dripped from the back of his head and ran down his spine to the tight elastic of the underwear gripping his tailbone. Neuman shivered. His watch beeped. 13:00 on the green LCD screen. He was actually looking forward to lunch today. This new building had the latest microwave.

Neuman first saw a microwave in a TV commercial. This was back in the early ‘70s. The car salesman days. He was fresh from his journalism degree and green in the delusion that he would use it. The men he worked with were old, chain-smoking, pot-bellied, catcalling, grisled vets. Crocodiles. They were leathery, had deep wrinkles around their lips and crows feet around their eyes, scratchy sprouts of hair missed during the morning shave, and yellow-stained teeth. Their wives pressed their shirts every night while watching TV, standing afar at the ironing board. These men would exchange crude jokes with each other in between customers and publicly bemoan having to return to the “old ball and chain,” but Neuman knew that each and every one of them had deserted the lot by 5:07pm and was home snug by 5:45pm at the latest. Neuman was seeing a few girls off-and-on but spent most of his nights alone. He’d come home from a day on his feet, just about tear the sweat-slick shirt from his chest, throw his pants with the belt still in them across the room, and collapse on the sofa wearing nothing but socks and undies. His hair was moulded into stiff twigs by the glue-based hair gel given to him by the guys at work. They taught him the best way to slick it back. Neuman remembered how, on a quiet day, all five of them would stand together, sweating dark patches into their shirts on the white-hot concrete car lot, with their hair all black and shiny and, in general, extremely reminiscent of textured viscose tar; Neuman, by far the youngest, looked like someone trying to fit in with his uncle’s friends. When he watched TV, small balls of sweat formed below his stiff hairline. Opening the windows meant nothing but more humid air rolling into his already stuffy room. That apartment building was too old to have AC. But so, on one of these nights in his underwear, breathing the swampy air in his dark room, feeling the corduroy cushions leave impressions on his bare slimy flesh, he saw a microwave for the first time.

The commercial began with a shot of two uni-browed cavemen, clad in spotted animal skins with outlandish wooden clubs by their sides, bending over a pile of wood. One of them struck two stones together and produced a spark that flew, lens-flaring and arc-like, to instantly ignite the pile of wood. Their celebratory screeching faded as a deep, paternal voice began to monologue: Fire. Fire is what has set man apart from beast since the dawn of time. It was fire that preserved the kill, allowing the hunter to become the farmer, the farmer the writer, and the writer the modern man. The ‘modern man’ was just a shot of someone in a grey suit without slicked-back hair walking on the spot with a briefcase in hand. It was by firelight that George Washington wrote the Declaration of Independence. A shot of a man wearing a white tubular wig, hunched over a desk next to a candle and a roaring fire. Neuman sat up and forward and placed his hands on his knees. It was through fire that man reached the moon. The climactic upside-down eruption of Apollo 11, smoke billowing and rolling like thunder in a timelapse, the rocket sluggishly inching upwards. Neuman’s face, slightly agape, was washed in the white noise of flickering TV light. Long have man and fire been allies. A shot of a group of teenagers sitting around a campfire holding marshmallows on sticks, dangling like spokes on a wheel. But we have entered a new age. A space age. No longer do we need fire for light…a shot of a gas lantern morphing into a lightbulb…fire for heat…, a shot of a campfire morphing into an electric heater…and now, we no longer need fire for cooking. At this point, Neuman was sitting completely hunched forward. The folds on the back of his neck became tight and then slicked by sweat, which ran down his sides to the bottom of his hairless stomach. In the next shot, the microwave oven was positioned prominently in a Jetson’s-like kitchen with sleek, white, enamel everything. A young lady dressed conservatively in a tidy pink-and-white floral dress stood facing the camera with another actor sitting at the bench behind her, dressed like an astronaut. An ironing board sat just in the background of the shot. Nodding to the astronaut, she said, He was just telling me that NASA astronauts use microwaves just like this! It’s no wonder why: they’re so convenient! She gestured at a shiny black crosshatch button layout. It can steam, bake, simmer, and even has a removable browning element! The spinning timer on the microwave visibly ticked down to zero and went off with a ding. Oh! Looks like lunch is ready. She reached into the microwave, oven-mitted, to produce a fat brown chicken, oily in its own juices. Oh, boys! An adult tie-wearing man without slicked-back hair ran from his newspaper-and-cigarette position in front of the TV to the dining table, quickly followed by two young boys. The lady placed the still-steaming chicken on the dinner table, and the actor playing her husband pecked her on the cheek. The boys chirped in unison that it…smells great, Mom! She winked at the camera. The monologue voice returned one last time to state, Kenton’s: The Appliance That Makes The Home, as the camera zoomed out and the image of the happy family faded to black. Neuman saw himself reflected on the black screen, sweating like a pig, mouth ajar, hair ridiculously still in shape, stomach rolled and hunched over. Cooking in his own juices.

Now, he rounded into the staff kitchen. The bench was made of cork and overlaid with a splotchy multi-coloured enamel. Sitting upon the bench, gleaming under the pale fluorescent lights, emitting a warm buzz, was the microwave. A small piece of lasagna spun on the plate under the yellow light. The timer still had three-and-a-half minutes to go. Neuman’s face was slate as he scanned the room. Nobody. Nobody in the kitchen, nobody at the table, nobody looking out the window. He ran his fingers through his slicked-back hair. The muscles in his legs tightened, and he balled his hands and stuffed them into his pockets. Neuman dropped his eyelids and darkened his face. The lasagna spun on its plate. He strode over to it. Its top was craggy and burnt, and watery drops of the mince spilled out the side, pooling at the bottom of the dish. Neuman recognised this lasagna. He knew its maker. It made him retch. 

This was a piece from the lasagna that Cindy made for him a few nights ago. He remembered how little convection currents of bechamel sauce and beef mince had bubbled around the sides to create popped-pimple craters, how half the pasta sheet had been crunchy and the other half chewy, how it tasted like she’d tipped the contents of multiple salt shakers into the mix, how the watery mince made a puddle on his plate. In particular, he remembered how proud her pink-flushed face was to survey the disaster. He couldn’t wipe the curl off his lips. Now he recalled how her face fell when her eyes met his over the steaming pile of lasagna sitting between them on the dining table. He had nibbled around the edge of the piece she served him, leaving most of it untouched. He rolled a piece of meat through the puddle at the bottom of his plate. He forked it with a piece of the pasta sheet and used it to paint his plate the colour of beef mince and bechamel. 

Cindy ate her lasagna slowly. Cutting a piece off here and there and discretely slipping it between her lips. She thought about the comment he made on their first date and met his curled face in the eyes. Their first date was at his house. She had joked about how she couldn’t cook, and he’d invited her over for a home-cooked meal. She couldn’t tell if it was a joke when he’d pulled two ‘Spaghetti And Meatballs For One!’ packets out of his fridge. Halfway through the dinner, he’d dropped his cutlery onto the plate and stretched his face tight to ask her between her teeth whether she always smacked her lips when she ate. 

She held those words and looked at his plate of lasagna. Untouched. She dropped her chin to her chest. Soft, warm tears dripped from the sides of her closed eyes, slid down her face, and dripped onto her lap. Her nose began to run. She sat in her dining room chair and shrunk smaller and smaller while tears rolled down her face. Neuman didn’t notice for a few minutes. He was too engrossed by the gross little piles he had made out of her home-cooked meal. She asked him to leave and to not come back.

Neuman tapped his foot. The timer read two minutes and thirty seconds. He pulled his lips tight, and they curled up a little at the corner. Claw-like, he extended his hand from out of his pocket to the microwave timer. He turned it back all the way. Thirty minutes. Neuman turned and strode out of the staff kitchen back down the long, daisy-chain ornamented, freshly painted hallway. The lasagna continued to rotate on its plate. It spluttered and popped, flicking pieces of cheese and meat into the far crevices of the microwave oven. Cheese on the surface, melted, ran down the sides, browned, and then blackened like charcoal. It lost its structure and slopped down, primordial-soup-like, compressed into a puddle by its own weight. Each tiny fleck hardened and calcified onto the new microwave. Minute by minute, the lasagna morphed from a meal to a dark clump of matter. The timer went off with a ding. Long before the timer had counted to zero, the microwave had fried itself out, cooking the ashen lump of ex-food. The microwave sat on that kitchen bench like a set dressing until the swamp land rotted this new building’s foundation and it was replaced with a newer one.