Obviously, I was going mad.

“Now why would you think that?” the dishwasher said. “You’re not going mad. Killing your wife is a good idea. She doesn’t respect you, not really. Doesn’t think much of you, when you think about it. Hardly cares about anything you care about. And always nagging. Always nagging."

There ya go, proof. It was all in my head, the dishwasher knowing what I was thinking.

“Now hold on,” said the dishwasher, “just hold on a second. Two things, partner. One, just because I know what you’re thinking is not, in fact, proof that I’m just a figment of your imagination. I could just be a good guesser. And two, so what. It’s not like the idea of killing your wife is a bad one, is it. I mean, let’s be serious.”

I took a bite of my sandwich. Thick ham, mustard, wheat bread.

“That wheat bread, for example.”

Example of what.

“You hate wheat bread. Hate it. You know it, I know it, and more to the point, your wife knows it. But she buys it anyway.”

But I did the shopping.

“Yes, and we’ll get to that in a bit. But who makes the shopping lists, my man? Who makes the shopping lists?”

I’ve never gone insane before, so this was new for me.

“Look, will you drop the insanity thing, please?” the dishwasher said. “For my sake? Can we stick to the issue at hand? Can you give me one reason, just one reason, why you shouldn’t kill your wife with, I don’t know, they number 7 carving knife being cleaned inside me right now?”

I certainly didn’t want to got to prison.

“Prison, you say? As if where you’re living now isn’t a kind of living prison?”

Of course, my home life was nothing like a prison, nothing like it at all. I could go outside whenever I wanted to, and often did, if it wasn’t raining or snowing or there was too much wind or, unlike today, if it wasn’t simple too hot for decent human beings.

“Even prisoners get to roam around the yard, you know. This outdoor business means nothing if you can’t even leave the property without permission.”

Honestly, my wife wasn’t that bad. She just liked to know where I was at all times. That’s sort of what marriage is all about, and after 30 years of it, it was more comfort than burden.

“Bullcrap,” said the dishwasher. It was on some sort of heavy cycle now, really chugging and churning. “I should apologize for talking to you like that, but no, that’s bullcrap. Comfort, my never-used dry-rinse dispenser. When was the last time you had a beer? When was the last time you simply got up, walked to your car, drove to a bar, and a had a nice, cold Miller High Life. Tell me that. Tell me that right now.”

But I didn’t like beer, gave that up when I was a very young man, made me gassy, gave me headaches.

“Then have a shot of whiskey for all I care! Watch the damn baseball game! Maytag knows you never watch the games at home, even. She controls everything. Everything! Kill her! Take a knife, and wait for her by the door, and when she walk through, stab her repeatedly! And when you're done, you can wash the knife in me, and no one would ever know!

But what would I do with the body?

“Body, schmoddy. You over think things.”

If I killed my wife, I’d go to jail, no two ways about it.

“You know what they have in jail, though? They have televisions. Prisoners get to watch baseballs games. They get to go outside. There are libraries in prisons, and you can sit in your bunk reading books all day. Try readng a book at home, when your wife is around, and see how fast she’s got a chore or a project or ‘something that isn’t such a waste of time’ ready for you.”

But there’s rapes in jail.

The washing machine went suddenly silent. All was quiet except for an idle and random drip drippity drip.

I took another bite of my sandwich. This one had too much mustard.

With a loud roar the dishwasher kicked on again, jets spraying a furious rinse cycle. “Rapes in jail? Rapes? You think they’re going to do rapes on a fifty-five year old man? A fat old man, broken and bent in half by his wife of thirty years? You think they’re even going to look at you twice? I don’t. I don’t think that’s going to happen at all. And let’s be really frank here, little man. She rapes you anyway, doesn’t she. Once a month she puts on that ghastly negligee and that awful perfume and turns the lights in the bedroom down low and tries to hide the women’s magazine with the latest tips under the bed. And you go in there and you do your duty, like a man! And you don’t even enjoy it! You feel guilty for conjuring up images to get you through, pictures in your perverted little mind of the girls at the grocery store, the ones who are barely out if highschool, summer jobs for college, long blond hair straight. One of them still had braces! And you try so hard to not think about them, pert and supple, try to think how much you love your wife, when what you’d love most of all, what really would get your rocks off, knock your socks off, is to lay into her with the carving knife and watch the blood not just flow but splash around, give her a really going over, a real work out.”

I just sat there, tears in my eyes.

“And then when you’re done, when you’ve sat in the blood for a while, there by the front door, and you start to get a little cold because the heat of the moment’s worn off and the air conditioner is going like blazes, then you stand up, you go take yourself a shower, you put your clothes in the washing machine, you put the knife inside me, and you call the police or take your car to a tavern and have a sloe gin fizz, or, since we’re friends here, I’ll just say it, you go and do whatever the fuck you want for a change.”

But I loved my wife, I really did. I didn’t want to see her stabbed and bloody all over the foyer rug.

“Then use a gun. Poison her. I don’t care. I really don’t care. I just want you to get off your ass and finally take control of your life.”

I could just leave her, if I wanted to. Just leave and never come back.

“No you can’t,” said the dishwasher. The rinse cycle was finished, and now it was on some kind of air dry, a constant white-noise hum. “If you could do that, you would have a long time ago. The only way you’ll be free is if she’s dead. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it’s going to be. So do it.”

I looked at the dishwasher, finally. The day was overcast outside, despite the awful heat, and the kitchen was dark and gloomy. The little LED read-out on the front of the dishwasher shone brightly.

“I’ll be done drying off this knife in about 10 minutes. What time does the microwave say.”

The green lights on the microwave were just as bright as the dishwasher.

“So your wife will be home in about an hour. That’s plenty of time to get ready. Lay down some tarp if you want to, go dig a hole in the back yard maybe. Finish your nasty little sandwich, open a bottle of wine, fortify yourself for the task at hand. Listen, my friend. I believe in you. You can do this.”

Then the dishwasher went silent, and the LED readout on the front ticked down a few minutes.

I sighed, picked up my plate, and walked over to the trashcan, dumped the last bite of ham sandwich with too much mustard, on wheat bread, into the bin. I walked into the laundry room, opened up the washing machine. Poured in some detergent. Took off my shirt, threw it in. Took off my pants, my underpants, my socks. All in. Picked up and emptied the hamper into the machine also. Started it. Waited for it to talk to me. It just gurged, like a normal appliance. I sighed.

Walked, naked, into the foyer. My wife, my poor wife, spread out and cooling on the foyer rug. Blood everywhere. Not my fault. Not my fault. It was that air conditioner, that stupid loud air conditioner. I’d wanted to get new one for years, but she insisted it was fine, that noise wasn’t so bad. My poor dead wife.