“Rrrrr……whirrrrrrr”… The conveyer belt whirred to life as a fresh batch of customized husbands rolled off the assembly line. “Number 3 is yours Ms. Doe. Please sign for it....err.. sorry, him, at the Collection Center and he’s all yours. Enjoy!” the architect grinned devilishly as she walked away. Eleanor stood there hesitantly looking at the three handsome men smiling back at her. She walked out back to the Collection center and gave her name and invoice number to the receptionist. “Please sign here, and collection is in the back”, chirped the annoyingly perky woman at the desk. “Thank you, enjoy your purchase! At The Perfect Husband, we aim to pleeease!” she squealed.  Eleanor grimaced and tiptoed gingerly to the room at the back. “Am I doing the right thing? Maybe I can still back out now…but how long do I put up with that lout anyway?!,” she thought angrily to herself, as she squared her shoulders and marched in to collect her brand new customized husband.

“I’ve made up my mind. I’m taking this gorgeous man home and telling Stanley it’s over!” Eleanor had decided for herself and she looked over smugly at the handsome man sitting next to her in the car. Although he was staring out of the car a bit vacantly, she still felt he was perfect. After all, he was chivalrous enough to have opened the car door for her! “He’ll come around once he gets used to our life… together..”, she thought.

The next few hours passed in a blur. She calmly informed her plump, balding, and sedate husband of eleven years, that she had ordered a customized husband for herself from a website, and that he should move on with his life, and that she had had enough of his snoring, his wet towels on the floor, his lack of imagination and romance, and the predictable life that they had together. He looked at her sadly. “Are you sure this is what you want, Ellie?” he asked her in a slightly shaky voice. “Be strong, be strong!” she told herself. “Yes Stan, I’m sorry”, she steeled herself as she stared back at him. He shook his head sadly as he walked out the door. She felt a pang of grief but hurriedly told herself, “This is fine, this is a small price to pay for this amazing guy!”, as she gleefully looked at her new husband loitering around the house and opening closets and drawers.

The next morning, she woke up bright and cheerful, excited about starting her new life with - ”Wait, what’s his name? Oh I bought him – I can name him what I want. Shall I call him Jake? He looks like a Jake”. But where was Jake? She looked out of the bedroom window to see him on the front lawn, talking to a gorgeous woman on the street. She frowned as she made her way down the stairs. As she entered the kitchen she looked for her coffee…which Stanley used to brew fresh for her (just how she liked it) every morning…but now, no Stanley, no coffee. “Never mind, it’s a small price to pay for Jake!” she thought. She cooked breakfast and sat across the table from Jake as he entered the house and sat down. As they ate, she tried to get to know her new partner. “So Jake – what do you do?” “Nothing” he replied and stared out the window blankly. “Hmmm, this may be more difficult than I thought” she muttered to herself. “Alright, well how about we talk about getting you a job?” she said to him brightly. “My functions are limited to only being a husband, I am not required to have this…job, as you call it” he said smoothly.  Slightly taken aback, Eleanor had a quick flash of Stanley smiling at her every evening when he came back from work as he set his briefcase on the kitchen counter. “Shake it off,” she told herself. “So I’ll be doing the cooking, cleaning, and earning around here. So what? It’s a small price to pay for Jake!” she told herself.

She spent the next couple of days observing Jake and noted how he would open doors and pull out chairs for her, help with errands and chores when asked, and smiled and stayed pleasant all day long. But he seemed oblivious to her mood when she had a bad day at work and had no idea when she needed a hug or a kiss; he had no funny stories to tell her over her morning coffee or the dinner table, and he didn’t laugh when she tried to make jokes.

In brief moments of remorse, Eleanor’s mind wandered back to Stanley – the fact that only he knew that nothing other than a glass of red wine and a bowl of cheesy spaghetti could cheer her up after a hard day at work, or that white lilies made her smile when she was upset, or that watching Miss Congeniality for the 356^th time was the only way for her to forget about her fight with her boss. Or that hugging her even when she didn’t want to be hugged was the only way to make her stop crying.

“Why doesn’t Jake understand these things? He’s supposed to be the perfect husband, isn’t he? Why can’t he do all this?” she fumed in a sudden fit of rage. She made up her mind to talk to him about all this, when suddenly as she walked out to the car, she saw him kissing the same gorgeous woman she had seen him talking to.  She couldn’t believe her eyes! Stanley had never once looked at anyone else in the 13 years she had known him! She walked up to him and said, “C’mon, I’m done with you. I’m returning you.”

Wordlessly, she drove him back to the premises of The Perfect Husband and marched him into the office where she had collected him. “This is terrible. He refuses to work, or talk to me or even listen to me, and NOW – he’s cheating on me!” she screamed at the woman at the desk. “He’s nowhere even close to perfect, in fact, I preferred my old husband to him! I want to return him”. “Sorry Ms. Doe, you should have read the purchase contract carefully, this is a no-returns purchase,” said the receptionist. “But, why doesn’t he know anything about me, why doesn’t he care about me? At this rate, how can he love me?” Eleanor’s voice quivered as her eyes welled up with tears. “Love? Ms. Doe – you said you wanted the perfect husband. You never said you wanted one who loved you. Love comes from years of sharing your lives together; how can assembly line humanoids give you love? - I’m so sorry Ms. Doe, but this can’t be reversed” she said as she walked back and opened the door to the assembly line…”RRRR…Whirrrrrr”.

Eleanor woke up with a start…it was just Stanley snoring in bed next to her.

She blinked, looked at him, and smiled at her snoring, slightly plump balding husband of 11 years next to her. “It’s a small price to pay for Stan”, she thought happily as she settled back to sleep.