The Hammer

By the third quarter it was twenty-eight to nine and Mr. Osten had stopped saying anything about it.

He sat forward with his forearms on his knees the way he did, and the room had gone from a room where a game was on to a room where a television was on, and Roz’s mother had taken the bowl out to the kitchen and not brought it back.

Gene was on the floor with his back against the front of the couch. Roz was on the other end of the couch with her legs up under her, not watching, going at something on a pad with the pad turned away.

Then the picture changed and the sound changed and the room stopped.

It was sixty seconds.

Nobody said anything during it. Mr. Osten did not sit back. Roz’s pencil stopped somewhere in the middle and stayed stopped. In the kitchen the water shut off, which meant Roz’s mother had come to the doorway, and nobody turned around to check because nobody moved.

At the end there was type on the screen and a voice read it, and then it was over and there was a commercial for a truck.

“What was that,” Mr. Osten said.

“It’s a computer,” Roz said.

“That was not a computer.”

Roz’s mother came back in with the bowl and put it down and did not sit.

“What is it?” she said.

“They didn’t say,” said Mr. Osten.

They fought about it for three days.

“There were rows of them,” Gene said. “Guys in rows. Gray guys. Sitting in rows watching him on the screen.”

“There were rows of them at the start,” Roz said. “At the start. They’re not sitting at the end, they’re — she comes down the middle and they’re all turned to the screen and then it goes off and their mouths are open.”

“Their mouths aren’t open.”

“Their mouths are open. That’s the whole last bit. The mouths.”

“She’s got a hammer,” Gene said.

“Obviously she’s got a hammer.”

“She’s got a hammer and she winds up like the — like a discus, she goes round —”

“She spins twice.”

“She spins once.”

“She spins twice, and the second one’s the one that’s slow, they slow it down, and there’s the two guys with the sticks coming up behind her and they don’t get to her.”

Gene, who had not seen the two guys with the sticks, moved on.

“It said nineteen eighty-four won’t be like nineteen eighty-four.”

“It didn’t say that.”

“That’s exactly what it said. That’s the whole — that’s the joke of it. ‘And you’ll see why nineteen eighty-four won’t be like nineteen eighty-four.’”

Roz looked at him.

“It said something about January,” she said.

“January twenty-fourth. Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh.”

“I don’t remember that.”

“That’s what it said, Roz, that’s the words, they read them out —”

“Then it’s what it said,” Roz said. “I’m telling you what was in it.”

Nobody in either house had taped it. There was a machine in the Ostens’ den that could have and no one had thought of it, because it was the third quarter of a game that had stopped being a game and nobody knew it was coming.

So there was no way to look.

The ad ran once and went, and after it there was a truck, and the only place it existed after that was in the two of them arguing on a couch about how many times she turned before she threw it.

Roz was right about the spins.

Gene was right about the words.

Neither of them ever found out.