Chunghop Rm-l688 Universal Remote Manual -

The TV, however, stayed on. The man in the fedora turned around. His face was a blur of static, but Arthur knew the shape of the jaw. The slope of the shoulders. His father, thirty years younger, stared out from the cathode ray.

Silence.

Arthur pressed 9-9-9-9. Then SET.

He tried 4011. The TV shut off.

Arthur found the manual in a shoebox under his father’s bed, sandwiched between a broken watch and a yellowed gas bill. The cover was smudged with fingerprints: Chunghop RM-L688 Universal Remote Control – Programming Manual .

Arthur had just moved back into the house to clear it out. The silence was the worst part. His father, a man who filled every room with the roar of cable news and baseball, had been reduced to dust in an urn. Now, Arthur sat on the carpet where the La-Z-Boy used to be, holding the manual.

Arthur set the Chunghop down on the carpet next to the manual. He didn’t put batteries back in. He didn’t wrap it in a bag. He just left it there, under the shoebox, where his father had kept it.