The Furniture Store

She swallowed hard, looked to Bruce for a second and then back to me. Taking a deep breath, she squared her shoulders and, with a vaguely defiant tone, announced that she could certainly make up the difference for a while. Bruce smiled at her and she smiled weakly back and they left with Bruce walking with a little more confidence and Olivia with her shoulders sagging in disappointment. As I held the door open for them I left them with one last admonition.

"Remember, Bruce, I don't care how. I just want the money."

"You'll get your money." He spat back at me.

Olivia looked worried.

---()---

Over the next few months I kept on trying to find solace in my work. Businesslike and efficient with everyone, I continued to avoid any kind of personal conversation at all cost, completely eschewing any social opportunity, preferring, instead, to work or to be alone. I was desperate to keep the betrayal and treachery of my wife off my mind, but everything seemed to remind me of her, even, of course, the monthly check from Bruce came across my desk. The check brought a kind of bitter satisfaction, a sense that, to some degree, I'd been able to drag the authors of my unhappiness down into misery with me.

Things got a little worse when Mindy contacted me. She e-mailed me a couple of times and even called me on the phone. I was rather surprised to find out that Bruce and Olivia had come clean to her, no doubt with a watered down version of their affair, and that she'd taken it fairly hard at first, but eventually forgave them both. To my disappointment and horror, she vaguely implied that she'd had some idea that they had been lovers, and that they'd come to some sort of an arrangement in which Bruce and Olivia continued to see each other. She even made a half-hearted attempt to get me to consider taking back Olivia. My answers to her were bitter and abrupt and I was fairly sure I'd left her in tears by the end of the second call, after which I didn't hear from her again.

Mindy's apparent tolerance made it clear that the emotional price that Bruce and Olivia were paying was far less than I hoped. My great fear now became that somehow, someway the store would become solvent, that Bruce would pay off his debt, repay Olivia and that they'd all be satisfied with the outcome financially as well as emotionally. That they'd leave me behind, shaking their heads collectively at the poor wretch who simply couldn't understand what modern love was all about.

I needn't have worried.

---()---

The furniture stored burned to the ground nine months after my meeting with Bruce and Olivia. The fire was a spectacular two alarm job that threatened some adjoining structures and headed up the nightly news. I hadn't seen the story, but Bernie had and he called me immediately to discuss the ramifications. He was livid with me for taking on the risk because he was certain that the trust had flushed a fairly large amount of cash down the toilet. I mollified him by promising to buy out the liability of the loan personally if default were to occur assuring him also that the properties themselves were worth something simply because of location.

The obvious questions about the fire were asked and, when accelerants were detected, the insurance company immediately balked at payments. With no income from the store, Bruce completely defaulted on the loan and I acquired a smoking ruin of a lot and 35 acres of duck hunting land on the Mississippi.
The criminal investigation proceeded for nearly six months. The detectives put together a fairly good circumstantial case against Bruce and Olivia. They could show that the store was hemorrhaging money and that Olivia was forking out larger and larger monthly sums to keep it afloat. Bruce had made several desperate attempts to get loans from other sources but failed and then, as quietly as possible, made a last ditch attempt to sell the business. But, there were no buyers, even for a steeply discounted price.

The investigators couldn't produce any evidence that Olivia or Bruce were near the store the night of the fire or that they'd acquired anything to start or accelerate it, but their case was built on the theory they'd hired a pro to torch the store. They found numerous searches containing the term 'arson' on Olivia's home computer, phone records that showed communication with at least two men with arson convictions and noted that she'd withdrawn fifteen grand in cash one week before the fire occurred.

Olivia and Bruce had fairly good representation, undoubtedly bought with whatever money she had left, and the DA knew he'd be in for a fight, so he started to deal. I guess they started with first degree arson and fraud charges and started dealing down from there. The defense wasn't budging for anything less than fourth degree arson, and so a game of chicken started with a court date set.

I was on the witness list, waiting in the outside foyer on what was to be the first day of the trial. I was sitting on a hard wooden bench, reading the paper and absentmindedly tapping my foot on the tile floor when a court official came out and announced that the trial was off, that they'd finally cut a deal and that we could all go home. As I was gathering up my stuff to go, Olivia and Bruce came through the room, accompanied by some officers and their attorney. A couple of reporters jumped up and shoved microphones under their noses, but they declined to comment and the reporters turned to their lawyer instead.

Bruce met up with Mindy and left the room with some officers, but Olivia looked in my direction and without hesitation, she approached me to talk. I have to admit, I admired her courage to face me under the circumstances.

"Well, Mike, is this your happy day? Is this what you wanted, for me to be punished for my sins?"

I gave a bitter laugh and shook my head derisively. "I wanted a faithful wife and a successful marriage. I was never going to get what I wanted from you. Absent that, I just wanted my money. "

She sniffed at me. "Well, you aren't getting any of that now, are you?"

"Oh, I got some of it back and I've got the store."

She laughed. "And what will you do with that? Has it stopped smoking yet?"

"You'd be surprised what a competent business man can do with a good piece of property, even a smoking one."

Her nostrils flared and her face hardened a little. She took in a deep breath and paused for a moment before talking again.

"And you're happier now? Alone? Without anyone? Married to your work for the foreseeable future?" She gave me a knowing smirk. "Don't deny it, I know you. I know how terribly distasteful it is for you to go out and meet new people."

"I'm working on that, Liv. I loved you, but you aren't the only woman in the world you know."

She smiled confidently. "No, I'm not. But I don't think you are going to be able to find a...what do you business types call it? An equivalent replacement? Whether you like it or not, you are going to miss me."

I leaned close to her and whispered into her ear.

"I might be a little lonely, but you won't be, will you? I mean, the good news is that you'll be holed up in close quarters with a bunch of fairly androgynous women that you can share all this abundant love you have with. It will be a win-win for you and the dykes."

Olivia surprised me by suddenly losing her cool at my last comment, recoiling from me as though I was radioactive, her face a mask of contempt and her eyes flashing with anger. She breathed in deeply, her chest heaving aggressively a couple of times, and then she exploded.

"You fucking, prudish, self-centered, emotionally dwarfed asshole." She screamed as the officers pulled her away from me to the door. "You're going to be in a shithole just like I am. Alone, without anyone. Married to your fucking job......"

Watching her scream at me, recognizing how the love she'd had for me had evaporated completely, leaving only a kind of contemptuous hatred, I was struck with a sudden wave of melancholy. I fought the urge to react in a way that would betray my pain, smiled thinly, and mumbled out some kind of crack about her public use of rather offensive language. But, she simply continued her diatribe as though I'd said nothing.

"...but it won't be long before I'll be out of my prison and moving on, but you'll still be alone, wishing you could be with me. And then....and then, years from now, when you're married to some boring little ex-secretary, you'll still wish that you'd just accepted..."

The door closed on her, abruptly snuffing out the rest of her rant. I turned and walked out of the courtroom.

---()---

My afternoon had been cleared for the trial, so now, without any appointments or meetings and fighting a growing sense of gloom and loneliness, I went to the burned out lot and thought about my life.

The temperature dropped and the wind continued to whip my jacket and burn my face as I looked around, still considering what I could do with the wreckage. I wasn't sure if I could salvage the situation at all, and my main inclination was to sell it off, forget about the loss and concentrate on what I'd always done. That was the safe thing to do, maybe even the smart thing to do.

But I knew there was another option. I could take a risk and rebuild, maybe even put up another furniture store. I mused about the possibility of successfully selling furniture from the same place where Bruce had failed. I thought about making a big deal of it with lots of advertising, billboards, maybe even some TV commercials; things that Bruce and my ex couldn't possibly miss. Just to rub it in, I might even name it 'Olivia's' and have lots of 'fire sales'.

It struck me that the decisions I'd be making about the lot were similar to those that I'd been unconsciously making about my life in general. Olivia had been right about me. My natural tendency, really my only social inclination before I met her, was to withdraw, to avoid the risk of intimate relationships and concentrate on work. I could see that I was drifting inexorably to a lifetime as a loner, a financially safe but relatively joyless existence. I was becoming, again, what I was comfortable with, doing the safe thing.

I sat down on a block of concrete and took another look around, still weighing my options, still considering my future. I was stuck between my fears and my wants, the ingrained habits that had served and defined me and the desire to change, to be different.

I was about to leave and return to work, to let things ride on and put off the decision for another day, when a few rays from the late afternoon sun filtered through some clouds and between some buildings to illuminate a wall painted with graffiti on the other side of the street. The lighted glinted off the wall with a burnt orange glow, giving an incandescent quality to the concrete and the writing. The words were written in bold, white letters, clear and easy to read.

"Go for It."

I'd always been dismissive of superstitious people and the way that they let inconsequential, objectively irrelevant things rule their lives as signs or habits. But here, sitting on a slab of concrete in the November cold, the words struck me as fate, like a message from God.

I pulled out my cell and made a call to the office, getting my assistant.

"Hey, Sherry, who was the architecture firm that designed the new mall that got all the press? The one with all the glass and the fountains."

"Uh....Hammer-something I think....." She hummed lightly to herself for a couple of moments while she checked. "Yeah, Hammerstone. They're based here in Chicago it looks like."

"OK, look, could you set me up with a meeting as soon as possible?"

She hesitated a second. "Are we...uh....building something?"

I looked around the lot, seeing the new store in my mind's eye and suddenly felt a surge of confidence. "Yes, yes I think we...I think I am."

"Uh...ok. Sure boss, anything else?"

I chewed my lip for a second as my eyes came to rest once more on the graffiti across the street, reading again the imperative to 'Go for It'.

"Yeah, Sherry, there is one more thing. You know that rep for the knock off jeans, the tall blonde girl, Brenda? Brenda White I think..."

"Yes...." Sherry's voice was becoming more incredulous and I had to wonder if she thought I was having some sort of a breakdown.

"Can you get her number for me?"

"Sure, sure boss. Uh....do you want me to get her on the line?"

"No. No, I'll make the call myself. Thanks."