“You, Mr. Rapp?”

Stanley Rapp blinked, considering the matter. He always thought over everything very carefully. Of course, some questions were easier to answer than others. This one, for instance. He had very few doubts about his name.

“Uh,” Stanley Rapp said. “Yes. Yes.”

He stared at the bearded young man. Living in the Village, even on the better side of it, one saw beards every day, all shapes and sizes of beard. This one was not a psychoanalyst beard, or a folk singer beard; not even an actor beard. This was the scraggly variety, almost certainly a poet beard. Mr. Rapp, while holding no particular prejudice against poets, had not sent for one, he was sure of that.

Then he noticed the toolcase in the bearded young man’s hand, lettered large LIGHTNING SERVICE, TV, HI-FI.

“Oh,” Stanley said, nodding. “You’re the man to fix the TV set.”

“You know it, Dad,” the young man said, coming in. He shut the door behind him, and stared around the apartment. “What a wild pad. Where the idiot box, hey?”

The pleasantly furnished, neat little apartment was not what Mr. Rapp had ever thought of as a “wild pad.” But the Village had odd standards, Mr. Rapp knew. Chacun a son gout, he had said, on moving into the apartment ten years ago. Not aloud, of course, because he had only taken one year of French, and would never have trusted his accent. But chacun a son gout, anyway.

“The television set,” Mr. Rapp said, translating. “Oh, yes.” He went to the closet door and opened it. Reaching inside, he brought out an imposingly large TV set, mounted on a wheeled table. The bearded repairman whistled.

“In the closet,” the repairman said, admiringly. “Crazy. You go in there to watch it, or you let it talk to itself?”

“Oh. Well, I don’t exactly watch it at all,” Mr. Rapp said, a little sadly. “I mean, I can’t. That’s why I called you.”

“Lightning’s here, have no fear,” the bearded one said, approaching the set with a professional air. “Like, in the closet, hey.” He bent over the set, appraisingly. “I thought you were a square, Pops, but I can see you’re ... Hey, this is like too much. Man, I don’t want to pry, but why is this box upside down?”

“I wish I knew,” Mr. Rapp said. He sat down, and leaned back, sighing. This was going to be difficult, he knew. He had already had to explain it to the last three repairmen, and he was getting tired of explaining. Although he thought, somehow, that this young man might understand it a little more quickly than the others had.

“I’ve had a couple of other repairmen look it over,” Mr. Rapp told the bearded one. “They ... well, they gave up.”

“Dilettantes,” commented the beard.

“Oh, no,” Mr. Rapp said. “One of them was from the company that made it. But they couldn’t do anything.”

“Let’s try it,” the repairman said, plugging the cord into a wall socket. He returned to the set, and switched it on, without changing its upside down position. The big screen lit almost at once; a pained face appeared, with a large silhouetted hammer striking the image’s forehead in a rhythmic beat.

“ ... Immediate relief from headache,” a bland voice said, as the pictured face broke into a broad smile. The repairman shuddered, and turned down the sound, staring at the image with widened eyes as he did so.

“Dad, I don’t want to bug you,” the repairman said, his eyes still on the screen, “only, look. The set is upside down, right?”

“Right,” said Mr. Rapp.

“Only the picture--” the repairman paused, trying to find the right phrase. “I mean, the picture’s flipped. Like, it’s wrong side up, too. Only, right side up, now.”

“Exactly,” said Mr. Rapp. “You see, that’s the trouble. I put the set upside down because of that.”

“Cool,” the repairman said, watching the picture. “I mean, so why worry? You got a picture, right? You want me to turn the picture around? I can do that with a little fiddling around inside the set ... uh-oh. Dad, something’s happening.”

The repairman bent closer, staring at the picture. It was now showing a busty young woman singer, her mouth opened, but silent, since the sound was turned down. She was slowly rotating as Rapp and the bearded repairman watched, turning until her face, still mouthing silent song, hung upside down on the screen.

“It always does that,” Rapp said. “No matter which way I put the set, the picture’s always upside down.”

“No, man,” the repairman said, pleadingly. “Look, I took a course. I mean, the best school, you dig? It don’t work that way. It just can’t.”

“It does, though,” Rapp pointed out. “And that’s what the other repair people said, too. They took it out, and brought it back, and it still did it. Not when they had it in their shops, but the minute it came back here, the picture went upside down again.”

“Wow,” the repairman said, backing slowly away from the set, but watching it with the tense gaze of a man who expected trouble. After a minute he moved toward it again, and took hold of the cabinet sides, lifting.

“I don’t want to put you down, Pops,” he said, grunting. “Only, I got to see this. Over she goes.” He set it down again, right side up. The picture, still the singer’s face, remained in a relatively upright position for another moment, and then slowly rolled over, upside down again.

“You see,” Mr. Rapp said, shrugging. “I guess I’ll have to buy another set. Except I’d hate to have it happen again, and this one did cost quite a lot.”

“You couldn’t trade it in, either,” the repairman agreed. “Not to me, anyway.” Suddenly he snapped his fingers. “Hey now. Sideways?”

“You mean on its side?”

“Just for kicks...” the repairman gripped the set again. “On the side...” He set the cabinet down, on one side, and stepped back, to regard the picture again.

Slowly, the picture turned once more, and once again, relative to the usual directions of up and down, the picture was stubbornly, completely inverted.