The afternoon sun hit the vinyl couch at precisely the angle required to make getting up feel like a crime against physics. In the living room of Maisonette 4B, the founding members of the Lazy Club were in peak operational form. This meant they were doing absolutely nothing. Leo was draped across the armchair, his legs dangling over the side while staring at a fly on the ceiling. Marcus occupied the couch with a bag of crisp packets balanced precariously on his chest. Toby, the housemate who had technically initiated the club by refusing to unpack his moving boxes for eight months, lay flat on the rug.
‘The remote is on the TV stand,’ Marcus murmured. His voice lacked the energy to carry across the room.
‘It’s a whole metre away,’ Leo replied, not moving a muscle. ‘Just use the app on your phone.’
‘My phone is on the kitchen counter.’
Silence reclaimed the room. The television remained stuck on a desperation-filled pitch for a specialised vegetable slicer that none of them would ever buy, let alone use.
The Lazy Club was not born out of a desire to rebel. It was born out of pure, unadulterated efficiency. Why expend energy today when you could expend it tomorrow, or better yet, never? They had optimised their lives for minimal exertion. They bought shirts that did not wrinkle. They ordered groceries online, specifically choosing the delivery window where the courier would bring them up the stairs.
A sharp knock at the door shattered the peace. All three men froze. Toby closed his eyes, pretending to be a piece of furniture.
‘Are we expecting anyone?’ Leo whispered.
‘If we do not move, they will think we are dead,’ Marcus whispered back.
The knock came again, louder this time. Then, a voice called out, ‘Delivery for 4B! I need a signature!’
Marcus groaned.
‘Toby, it is your turn to get the door.’
‘I got it last week,’ Toby mumbled into the carpet.
‘You answered the buzzer, but you did not open the door. Leo did that.’
‘Opening the door is higher cardio,’ Leo argued. ‘I am still recovering.’
The delivery driver knocked a third time, sounding annoyed.
‘Guys, I can see your shadows through the window.’
With a collective sigh of defeat, Marcus used the momentum of his own weight to rock himself forward into a sitting position. He dragged his feet across the lino and cracked the door open. The driver handed him a clipboard and a massive, heavy cardboard box.
‘Sign here.’
Marcus scribbled something that resembled a flatlining pulse and dragged the box inside, letting it drop with a heavy thud.
‘What is it?’ Leo asked, rolling his head over.
Marcus looked at the label.
‘It is from my uncle. He said he was sending a vintage hand-pumped espresso machine. Says it makes the best coffee in the world.’
Toby finally sat up, staring at the box with horror.
‘Hand-pumped? As in manual labour?’
‘For a single cup,’ Marcus confirmed, staring blankly at the package.
The three of them stared at the box. It sat in the middle of the living room, a monument to effort. To open it meant finding scissors. To use it meant grinding beans by hand, boiling water manually and cleaning individual parts. It was an artefact from a world they actively avoided.
‘We cannot put it away,’ Leo pointed out. ‘The cupboard is full of the exercise bike we bought three years ago.’
‘We cannot leave it here,’ Toby said. ‘It is blocking the direct path from the couch to the bathroom. That adds three extra steps to my journey.’
Marcus looked at the box, then at his friends and finally at the television stand where the remote still sat out of reach. A spark of tactical genius ignited in his mind. He walked over to the kitchen, grabbed a permanent marker and wrote two words on the top of the cardboard box in large, bold letters:
FOOT ЯEST.
Marcus dragged the box over to the edge of the couch. He sat back down, kicked his legs up and rested his ankles perfectly on the top of the unopened espresso machine. Leo looked at it, nodded in deep approval and shifted his weight to get comfortable again.
‘Perfect,’ Toby said, laying his head back down on the rug. ‘Problem solved.’
The on-screen teleshopping changed to a standard programming loop, but nobody cared. The Lazy Club had defended its title, and the afternoon was saved.
