Red Chaise Lounge

With hands full of books, Nora pushed open the cadet blue metal door. The room was small and it was certainly a fixer upper but it was all hers. She collapsed dramatically, letting the books slip from her fingers and hit the floor beside her. The ground was cold and dusty but there was nowhere else to sit. The room was empty. She had a million things she should be doing but instead she melted into the floor and laid there a while.

Startled by the sudden buzzing, Nora wrestled her phone from her tight jeans pocket. Lucas stared back at her. The first few times she ignored his calls it felt like the world was crushing her. Now, she was starting to feel free. Nora sighed, stood up, and grabbed her small black book.

She never went anywhere without one.

The building was old and the elevator always seemed to be out of order. The three flights of stairs made Nora’s knockoff apple watch send alerts about her elevated heart rate. “I know I know” she grumbled, as though the watch could hear her. Fortunately, most of her clients would be college students. Thirty-four-year-old Nora stopped to reminisce on the invincible bodies and minds of 19.

A couch. Shoot. Nora snapped out of her daydream and remembered she needed to put one foot in front of the other to get anywhere. She swung open the entrance doors and greeted the bitter wind with a huff of disappointment. Winter had overstayed its welcome this year.

Down the block, Nora stared through the glass at the color sorted aisles of The Salvation Army. She went in. Furnishing her first office with a used couch wasn’t ideal but she knew there would be sacrifices when she walked out on Lucas. In the back of the store a 6 year old tried to convince his mom that a light up pair of sneakers he had found fit him perfectly. She wasn’t buying it. Wailing from what he clearly believed was the ultimate betrayal, he threw himself down on a red Chaise Lounge. His screams caught Nora’s attention, but it was the sofa that stole her gaze. She sat beside the crying child and nodded to herself. This will do. It wasn’t comfortable but it had character. Lucas preferred neutral colors, “it’s calm and orderly” he would say. With every wall they painted beige in their 2 story suburban house, Nora had lost a part of herself. Now red felt exciting. “I’ll take it!” she exclaimed to no one in particular.

To the universe, perhaps.

Two young men, most likely college students, delivered the Chaise to her door. “The elevator is out of order!” said the one with his glasses sliding off the tip of his nose. With one finger Nora pushed them back in place for him as if they were her own. They put down the couch. “uhhh… thanks?” he said almost as though it was a question. She over tipped and then sat down as they let themselves out.

The next few days Nora spent every moment in that room. Sweeping, hanging art, framing her certification, sweeping again. She was convinced that all the Chaise really needed was to be broken in the way she had broken in her new cleats every season for soccer. She and her teammates used to shower with them or stuff them under their mattresses at night. She couldn’t really do either of those, but she thought maybe if she slept on it a couple nights it would soften, so she did. On the fourth night, it was a Sunday and Nora’s neck was throbbing worse than an untreated cavity. She locked up and left.

Tomorrow would be her first client.

Nora’s last semester in graduate school was when she met Lucas. He was tall, charismatic and could make a mean cocktail. His first time at her apartment he put Danny’s Song by Loggins and Messina on the record player and was singing while whipping up a couple Moscow Mules. Nora was infatuated by how comfortable this stranger seemed to feel in her home. Lucas pulled a little black notebook from the kitchen cabinet and raised his eyebrows in her direction, “these things are everywhere!”

“I know,” Nora smiled, “I have a petit probleme!” She chuckled in her best attempt at a French accent.

Now, nearly ten years later, she didn’t have her record player and her kitchen was no longer stocked with bourbon and ginger beer.

But she was okay.

Nora sat tapping her foot waiting for Lucy to arrive. She was late. Suddenly an aggressive knock filled the small room. “Come in!” her voice cracked. In stumbled a girl with Nordic blue eyes and even bluer hair. “Sorry I waited for the elevator foreeeeeevveerrrrr, I think maybe it’s broken.” Lucy was anything but shy. Within minutes she was confidently unraveling parts of herself. Finally, after a long-winded dive into what Lucy had decided was a satisfactory introduction, she asked “Okay so what do you think?”

Nora stared at blue Lucy on her red chaise lounge. She wasn’t a painter, but she felt this strange urge to capture the moment. So much…color. She scribbled in her black notebook and then Nora said the only thing that came to mind “I’m impressed with how self-aware you are.”

“Yeah, well I took this class last semester called Discovery of Self,” Lucy said, “it was just a game changer. By the way, has anyone told you this couch is kind of stiff? There’s a lot of really good DIY stuff out there now, you could probably fix this bad boy up yourself.”

Lucy left as abruptly as she came. Nora got the feeling it would always be that way.

Nora moved from her grey office chair onto the Chaise and wiggled a bit. She tried to imagine what kind of things she could stuff the couch with. A knock on the door brought her to her feet. Adam had jet black hair and looked lost even though he was in the right place. “I think I just got half my steps in for the day on my way up here” he remarked. Nora smiled and invited him to take a seat. “Dude is this a Chaise Lounge? My dad used to have one of these in his office. He’s a doctor. Was a doctor. He died. Anyway, I don’t remember it being so…hard. But I’m still into it.”

Adam was a little awkward. He looked like he had grown out of his khakis and never bothered to buy a new pair. He wasn’t comfortable in his own skin but Nora could tell he wanted to be. He was cute. Unlike Lucy, Adam only spoke when Nora asked direct questions. When given the opportunity to speak without prompted, the room fell silent with the just the murmur of the radiator to fill it. On his way-out Adam turned to Nora and asked, “same time next week yea?”

Like anyone else, the new year rung in a lot of self-reflecting for Nora. Just a couple days into January she stumbled upon a new cafe. Lucas was at work and her unused counseling license was long tucked away somewhere in the attic. Nora had gotten good at finding creative ways to fill her time, like trying new places and writing extravagant reviews in one of her little black notebooks. Every now and then she would secretly publish one under a fake name on yelp and the rush of adrenaline would last her nearly a week.

She found a small table by the register and settled in. She particularly liked watching the series of interactions as people ordered. Witnessing people’s lives cross for just a moment and then going their own way, each face the main character of their own life story. A woman with red curls and silver boots smiled at Nora from the register, Nora blushed and looked down at her notebook. The coffee was good.

At home, Nora tossed her little black book on the kitchen counter and then pulled it back towards her, suddenly feeling inspired to write. But the pages staring back at her felt unfamiliar. She succumbed to a state of sheer panic. She must have accidentally swapped books with someone! After all, Moleskine notebooks are rather popular. Nora grabbed the strange notebook and ran back out the door. Fixated on the idea that someone somewhere had her notebook, Nora kept a fast pace shaking her head over and over and over again. The little book fell out of her clammy hands and flung open onto the sidewalk. Staring back at her was a childish doodle that said only:

Are you where you want to be?

Nora stood there as though someone had just told her that her sister died. Nora didn’t have a sister. But the reaction was all the same. It’s moments like these that we realize our lives aren’t set in stone, but rather a snow globe, at the mercy of anybody daring enough to shake it up.

Nora’s room started to feel like a revolving door for college students. Some were like Lucy and others were like Adam, many of them were their own concoction of wonderful and entirely screwed up all in one. Nora adored them all. Every word vomit, every awkward silence, every quirk. After one Friday that had felt particularly longer than others, she collapsed in exhaustion the way she had that very first day in this same room. Only this time the floor wasn’t dusty, the room wasn’t empty, and she had her red Chaise lounge to fall back on.

She grumbled as part of the chaise dug into her shoulder. Nora sat up concerned about a small tear in the red fabric. She had been working for a month now, maybe it was time for real couch. In her own way she felt like the Chaise was the first piece of herself she had invested in since she was 25. She could move it to her apartment? Nora googled “DIY reupholstering.” Empowered by the idea of fixing it herself, she spent the following day, a Saturday, collecting the necessary materials.

Nora was nervous to make her first incision with the exacto knife. She knew the couch wouldn’t feel it but she was also the kind of person that felt sorry for a broken pencil. Nora held her breath and began to cut.

Sliding out from the hole she had just created were stacks of bills.

One after the other after the next. And again and again.

Nora wanted to tell someone. Anyone. But she had lost touch with most of her friends over the years. Towards the end Lucas was all she had left. She picked up the phone as though she was going to call him. Nora was shaking. She hung up.

She could have done a million amazing things in that moment. Treated herself. Booked a flight. Anything.

But this is Nora’s story. In a room full of little black books, she grabbed the first one she saw. She wanted to write. But before her pen touched the paper, she realized she was holding the same black book that changed her life.

In the small room, surrounded by messy stacks of money, $20,000 to be exact, she flipped through the notebook. Struck by the words on the page on the sidewalk, Nora had never bothered to flip through the rest of the book. Now she would see what she had missed that day. She had never switched notebooks with anyone at all. It was hers all along. A notebook from a Nora that existed before Lucas. A Nora that she wasn’t even able to recognize.

Some might say it was fate. Others may say it was coincidence.

I’d say that in any given moment we have the power to shake up our own lives.

Just like a snow globe.