How It All Goes Down
St. Jude
- We open on St. Jude, a small suburban community in the Midwest. The stormy weather brings with it the feeling that "something terrible was going to happen" (1.1).
- Enid Lambert is rummaging through the coupon drawer, looking for a mysterious letter from the Axon Corporation.
- There's a lot of tension between Enid and her husband, Alfred. She wants him to pick up some hobbies in his retirement years but Alfred simply wants to sit in his basement laboratory all day.
- Tonight, Alfred is anxious and shaky—they're going to visit their children in a few days. But he thinks they're leaving today, and in his confusion he becomes "trapped in the space between words" (1.32).
- The long-married couple starts to argue. We get the feeling that this happen quite a bit around these parts.