Heavy Furniture

“It’s the 31st…we on for tonight?” With a swooping sound effect, my text was sent.

It’s a quarter till five. There aren’t many customers left in the shop. A lone man sits in the back hunched over his laptop, and a handsome couple chats flirtatiously near the window. Their plates and mugs sit empty save for foam and crumbs.

“Can I get this out of your way?,” I asked, being sure to switch on my ambiguously Southern charm.

“Oh, yes, thank you,” answered the woman.

“And just to let y’all know, we close in fifteen minutes.” I said with a smile.

“Oh,” she said. “That’s so soon! No problem, um, we’ll be out in a minute.”

She and her companion locked eyes as I picked up his plate.

“We can just walk around, I guess. See what we can find,” muttered the man, forgetting to mask his displeasure. I dropped their dishes in the tub and returned to stand at the counter, awaiting their departure so I could wipe down their table.

I still find it truly miraculous that people seem to ignore store hours when they visit a new place, especially considering Google adds it in red at the top of each search for ‘coffee shops near me.’ It’s even more inconceivable that these same people expect a cafe to stay open into dinner time. And the most outrageous: their pure lack of recreational imagination whilst living in one of the world’s largest cities. Go to a museum, sleep in a park, throw a stone and head where it lands. You can do it, people.

It’s finally autumn in the city. The leaves have only begun to brown and the wind is light yet strong. The end of summer always comes just in the nick of time. Once the novelty of the heat wears off and you tire of showering every time you get home, fall rears her pretty head. It’s romantic, really. And a shame that I’ve spent the day inside.

The couple and the man with concerning posture got up and left. I cleaned their tables in a flash, wiped down the kitchen surfaces and the espresso machine, and locked up the shop exactly at five — just in time to take the biggest, freshest breath of temperate, autumn freedom amidst the chaos.

Traffic forms the loudest choir. Horns blare, speeding cars swoosh, brakes squeak. Cranky men yell harsh expletives. Sirens wail. The sounds of Manhattan cradled me as I strolled down Lexington on my way to the train. Pulling out my phone, I checked to see if either of my roommates had responded yet. They had.

“Yeah, very down!” was Beck’s response.

“y’all im not sure. Have a lot of work tonight so have to stay at the office for a while. Can we do a late night excursion?? I really need a bookshelf !” was Mel’s.

Then a missed call from Mom and a text that read, “call me.”

My stomach balled into a fist as I waited for her to pick up. Always one to avoid inconveniencing others, especially her own children, my mother had never made such a curt command. In fact, she teeters so close to accommodating that we haven’t spoken in two weeks. I’d been meaning to call her.

“Hey,” she said, finally.

“Hi, what’s up?” I asked.

“Your dad’s sick.” She almost sounded annoyed. I stayed silent.

“It started with a really bad cough, then a fever that got worse and worse, then he started wheezing awfully. He’s in the hospital now on a ventilator. The doctors won’t tell me anything.”

I could hear the faint sounds of footsteps and doors shutting behind her. I could hear the sound of my breath. The air became colder. Slower.

“What?” was all I could muster.

“I’m sorry for the bad news,” she said. The sturdiness of her voice communicated that she had yet to catch up to reality. She was in the midst of doing her job: keeping everyone up to date. I had only once heard her sound this way — when she told my siblings and me that Grandpa had died. Her own father. She turned around to face us from the front seat while we sat in the school parking lot, and she told us, from point-blank range, “kids, Grandpa died.”

“Wait, so is he okay or not? What’s going on exactly? Do they know what he has?” I spat out.

“No, they don’t know anything. Or at least they haven’t told me anything yet. They didn’t let me stay in the room. But it was just breathing problems and now he’s on a ventilator. I’m sure he’ll be okay.”

I thought I heard a crack in her voice.

I’ve always been fascinated with the water cycle, since I was a kid in school. The water which is on the ground, be it in soil or puddles or bird baths, dries up from the heat of the sun. It dries up because the energy in the sun’s rays heats up the water’s atoms, and they start moving so fast that they break the bonds between them and become light. So light that they start to float. Gas beats gravity. They rise to live in the sky. Then so many collect up there that they start to form shapes that look like cotton candy. Like a dog, like a dragon, like an ear of corn, like Tina Turner doing the Proud Mary. Then they become heavy with each other. And fall back to the ground.

It’s going to rain tonight, I notice as I stand on the corner near the entrance to the subway, phone to my ear.

“He’ll be alright, baby. Don’t worry. I’ll keep you in the loop. Alright, I’ve gotta go call your sister now. It’ll all be okay.”

She hung up.

“I’m home!” Mel sang as she burst through the front door.

I woke with a shudder from my nap on the sofa.

“Good morning, sleepy head,” Mel said. “Still down to stoop? We can’t break tradition...Beck, get your butt up here and put on your boots!”

Since we moved in together a couple years ago, it has become tradition amongst Mel, Beck, and myself that on the last day of every month, we take a long walk around the neighborhood in search of abandoned furniture to inhabit our ground-floor apartment. Mel requires constant change as a fundamental aspect of her personality, Beck greatly enjoys interior design and the promise of a change in aesthetics, and I enjoy the time spent with them. The pastime stuck. We often come home empty-handed, but I’ve grown to rely on these outings for the conversations with people I love dearly, and for some semblance of consistency during the tumult of my mid-20s.

The damp roads outside glowed with the gleam of street lamps and stop lights. The post-rain air smelled of licorice and fresh mint, and Beck and Mel discussed the events of their day. Beck detailed the adventures and tribulations of nannying three small children of a well-off Cobble Hill family while Mel discussed the misgivings of her tech start-up job. My favorite thing about Mel and Beck was their insistence that everything contains the potential for a deep, belly laugh. I could never have imagined child care and software would provide the perfect comedic material — performances for which I was often the only audience member. I shook with laughter as we walked together through the tight streets of our little neighborhood. How lucky I felt. And loved.

We rounded street corners, skipped through the deserted night roads, and analyzed the design and condition of file cabinets, picture frames, old dressers and TV stands sitting on stoops for the taking.

Mel let out a loud gasp before she bolted ahead of us.

“Guys,” she said in disbelief as we caught up to her. “This is it — the one we’ve been waiting for.”

She removed her sweater and began mopping up the droplets from the cushions of a stylish, brown leather sofa in ideal condition. We plopped down with a squish and let out squeals of delight. A perfect fit for the three of us.

“And lift!” Beck commanded with gusto, myself on one end and him on the other, Mel holding up the middle.

“This thing’s kind of heavy,” he said.

“We can do it,” Mel said. “We only have about seven blocks.”

We made our way grunting through the dark, setting the sofa down every block to take a break.

“I want to do something,” said Mel. “Take it this way.”

Following her guidance, we hoisted the sofa and began to head diagonally through the intersection. As we made our way through the middle of the crossing roads, Mel stopped.

“Drop it here,” she directed excitedly.

“What?” grunted Beck as we haphazardly released it to the asphalt.

Mel giggled and jumped over the top of the sofa, plopping onto the center cushion. She patted the seats next to her invitingly, donning a huge, toothy grin on her lips.

“You’re insane,” I said.

“You’re not wrong,” she replied.

Beck and I joined her, chuckling. From the center of the intersection, I looked around at the streets stretching toward and away from us, lined with leafy trees and bricked brownstones connected to one another. The wind seemed to race from every direction, meeting us exactly here to run through our hair and over our cheeks. I thought of all the people around us in their homes, cuddling up to the television, dancing to their favorite record, washing the dishes, snoring in their sleep. Some alone, others not. I wished I could see them.

“What happens if a car comes?” asked Beck.

“We die,” answered Mel. “Or they drive around us.”

The voices of the men at the bodega traveled to us. They were arguing. Or laughing. I watched the stop light change from red to green. To yellow to red. To green again. The whole intersection glowed with color. Beck stared up at the stars. Mel began to hum. I didn’t recognize the song, but it was beautiful. I took a breath deep into my stomach, and I held it there. I shut my eyes and felt the wind on my face. I became heavy, so I began to cry.

After a while passed, Mel broke the silence. “Shall we head home?” she asked.

“Let’s” answered Beck, followed by a long sigh.

I stood up and checked my phone. Eleven missed calls from Mom in the last fifteen minutes.

She was so good at her job, I thought.