ou need to come over.” Mika was on the phone. “I’m having trouble with my new couch.”

“You want me to lift something?” Allison was confused. Mika could bench 150, while Allison got out of breath carrying her groceries four blocks from the co-op.

“No, not like that. I’ll explain when you get here.”

“I’ll be there in half an hour,” said Allison.

Allison was there twelve minutes later, panting from the bike ride. Mika led her down the hallway to the living room, where a long, dark green couch sat under a Modigliani print. “Ugh,” said Allison. “Did you call me over here to disgust me with your sense for interior decoration?”

“Ha ha,” said Mika. “Sit on it.”

“On what?”

“On the couch.”

Allison sat on the leftmost cushion, which was what she had wanted to do anyhow. As she sat down, she became overwhelmed with sadness; a depressive gloom settled over everything she could see: on the afternoon light streaming in through the blinds, on Mika’s blue and orange surfboard leaning against the wall, on the footstool Mika bought at a Goodwill two weeks ago. It was now a very gloomy looking footstool.

“Well?” asked Mika.

“Mika, I’m not in the mood for your whims right now. I’m feeling very depressed.”

“Right, I thought so. Now sit on the middle cushion.”

Allison sighed. What was the point? Mika was so bossy, and in such arbitrary ways. Allison lifted herself up with exaggerated slowness.

As her rear raised off the cushion the feeling of gloom and darkness lifted just as quickly as it had fallen. Where did it go? Allison realized just how odd, how foreign the emotion had felt. She looked quizzically at Mika, who shrugged.

Allison sat on the middle cushion. She felt nothing. “Well this one’s better,” she said.

“Just wait,” said Mika, smiling.

A moment passed. Allison felt a tingle, starting in her buttocks, then racing up through her spine. “I think I feel something,” she said.

It felt like smoke, rising through her body, obscuring her vision. A moment later she felt the fire, centered at a spot directly between her legs and up, hot enough to melt a hole through her jeans. She looked at Mika, appreciating anew the soft glow of the woman’s spiked dark brown hair, the mysterious recesses between her folds of tummy flab, the delightful curves of her thick upper arms. Allison tensed her muscles, feeling acutely the pressure of her thighs against one another, and prepared to jump on Mika. She looked so delicious, so tender, it would be a shame not to take her and consume her right now.

Allison jumped up, lifting her rear off the couch. She stopped mid-pounce and stood, blinking, surprised at herself. “Wow.”

“Yeah. Intense, isn’t it?”

“Seriously, very much so. Why does it do that?”

“Look at that cushion close, the middle one.”

Allison looked. It didn’t stand out from a distance on the dark green fabric, but the cushion was covered with irregular stains. It was the sort of thing that Allison normally put her bedsheets through the wash twice to get out. The residue of a thousand couplings, fluids of all sorts that doubtless steeped down, soaking the stuffing. “Ew,” said Allison. “I can’t believe I sat on that.”

“I think the cushion must be saturated. I mean, so many people must have done it on this couch cushion over the years that it got full up, and now whenever you sit on it all that spills out into you.”

“And what about the first one, the sad one?” Allison asked.

“Well, I found this shoved into the crack behind it.” Mika handed Allison a white envelope, already torn open, letter folded inside.

Allison opened the letter and read aloud. “We regret to inform you…” it began, going on to say that “This was a particularly competitive year to apply to dental school,” and “Though we took in as many as we could, we had to turn away many qualified applicants,” and concluding, “We hope that you find success elsewhere, and that your passion for teeth remains unabated.”

“That’s it?” said Allison. “One guy,”

“Or girl.”

“Or girl,” Allison continued, “getting rejected from dental school, one person was sad enough to make the cushion sad forever?”

Mika shrugged. “He must’ve taken it really hard.”

“So what does the third cushion do?”

“Oh, you don’t want to sit on that one.”

“Why not?”

“Just, don’t, please. It took me three hours to recover.”

“Oh, now I’ve got to try it.”

“Allison, don’t..”

Mika reached for Allison’s hand to hold her back, just as Allison dove for the rightmost cushion. As she hit the couch a wave of feeling powerful enough to short out every circuit in her brain blew through her like a hurricane cutting through a wheat field. Her eyeballs rolled back into their sockets, the pupils lodged somewhere looking up into her skull, the room exploded into a blackness that felt like a warm residue coating her skin.

Allison shuddered, blank-faced, her thin limbs trembling with the unbelievable power of her high. After two minutes of the trembling, Allison dropped into stillness, her lungs letting out air in a heavy, heart-rending sigh. Mika kept hold of her hand the whole time, nervously stroking a thumb over Allison’s knuckles.

Mika watched over Allison’s wicker thin body, and Allison saw nothing at all. After some time, Mika shrugged and gave in. She sat down on the middle cushion. It seemed like the best thing to do, under the circumstances.