daniel ilan

Imagine a house set back from the curb on a main road. Face brick. A few concrete steps to the front door with a wrought iron balustrade, painted white. Imagine a lawn and some recently pruned rose bushes. A mandarin tree. Or is it cumquats?

Inside is a man in his seventies. He bought the house in ’81 with his wife. They raised two kids, buried a dog. Kept budgies for a while in a small aviary that’s still there next to the washing line out back. Next to the patch of grass where the kids played splash cricket with a hose and a bucket.

The man is eating his breakfast. Two slices of toast with butter. The house is quiet except for the sound of traffic. It sounds like the ocean, but without crescendo, more regular. Every so often a motorbike or a truck or a loud-piped pride and joy. Then it sounds the most like traffic.

“Good time to sell this house, I reckon. All them electric cars coming in. People won’t mind a main road so much.”

The man has a friend over. He talks about selling sometimes. Moving to Kangaroo Island. He jokes that he’ll set up by the water with a deck chair and a fishing rod, but he’ll have only a sinker on the end of the line.

“Who wants to unhook a fish anyway?”

The men laugh. They both know the joke, which makes the laugh that inside kind. Warm and knowing.

Truthfully, the man doesn’t want to sell his house. Not because of the memories he finds when he sleeps in the kids’ bedroom. Or when he fetches the old secateurs from the back shed. Or when he turns out the lights every night.

He says he likes the traffic. Which is strange. After all, it’s traffic.

“I like traffic the way I like that toaster.” The man’s friend hasn’t heard this one before.

“I like to watch the little metal chassis pinch the bread when I push the lever. Imagine the circuit board, the tiny electromagnet that holds the lever down ‘til there’s enough charge in the capacitor to free my bread from the red hot nichrome! It’s brilliant, really, sometimes I watch the whole thing.”

“You watch the toaster? Mate, sell the house.” They laugh.

“Anyway, these things, you know? Toasters and kettles — they keep me company.” “And the traffic?” “Engines! Every day. Hundreds of cylinders, pumping up and down, up and down, turning cranks and cams, opening valves, closing valves —the whole thing timed by belts and pulleys to perfection! Thousands of revolutions per second, hundreds of horses — ” “Just to get the kids to school.” “Exactly! Just to make toast. That’s the beauty.” “Ha. Maybe I’ll move in with ya.” They laugh.

Two years later. The man sells his house. He gets a good offer, and truthfully, ever since his friend died the noise is a bit much. Toast for one doesn’t have the same meaning.