Free The Good Neighbor by William Kowalski Page B

live because the bookcases were already crammed full. When Colt had lived here alone, she remembered, he’d owned a couch, a bed, a television, and a refrigerator—nothing more. Man furniture. The place had looked like a gangster ’s hideout.
    These were all things that Francie had bought whimsically, but she could see now that they were destined not for the apartment but for some unknown dream home that she must have sensed in her future. At least, it seemed that way to her now. Finally, she thought, we will have room . To celebrate, she’d put on an old party hat and draped herself in a string of Christmas lights from the coat closet. She stood now, treelike, festooned in blinking red and green. “I should have looked it over more carefully,” Colt grumbled, ig noring her antics—although he had, in fact, hired a building in spector to go over the house with a finetooth comb. The inspector had found nothing wrong, at least nothing that wouldn’t be ex pected in a house as old as that. The wiring and plumbing were all up to code; the structural supports were sound. The basement didn’t leak and there were no termites. It was going to need a lot of cosmetic work, but there was no reason they couldn’t go live in it tomorrow, if they wanted to. In fact, said the inspector, he’d never seen a house of similar age in better condition, and he’d seen plenty much worse. All of this had only deepened Francie’s con viction that the place had been waiting for them all along; but Colt, his instincts honed on stone and whetted with blood, was
    waiting for the other shoe to drop.
    “Come on,” she said, holding out another string of lights. “Put these on. Let’s have a party.”
    “You look ridiculous.”
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    “ You look ridiculous. Sitting there as though something was wrong, when there clearly isn’t. A person would think you’re up set, after getting such good news.”
    “I can be upset if I want to.” “But what are you upset about ?”
    “Nothing. I just don’t want to put on any damn Christmas lights.”
    “Fine,” said Francie, unplugging herself from the wall. “Be a party pooper. Be a big old bucket of poo. All I care about is we got it, Coltrane. We got it!”
    “Yes,” said Colt. “We got it, all right. The question is, what did we get?”

    ❚ ❚ ❚

    Next day, Francie went furniture shopping for their new place, armed with a handful of sketches of what she wanted. This was something she was good at, picking out furniture. She had the ability to look at an empty room and envision it as it should be, sketching blank walls and filling them with interesting shapes, and then filling the shapes with furniture. It was almost as satis fying as writing a good poem, as long as she tried not to think about what a pathetic substitute it actually was. She went to a department store and purchased couches, coffee tables, chairs, a credenza, knickknacks, and a glass-fronted case to hold them. She bought an oversized wingback reading chair and a duvet cover. Af ter much wrangling, she succeeded in hiring—”bribing” was more accurate—the store’s deliverymen to bring everything all the way out to Pennsylvania, since there was certainly no room for any of it in New York. She was told it would arrive “soon.” In the lingua franca of furniture deliverymen, this meant sometime before all parties concerned were dead of old age, though there were not even any guarantees of that. Yet Francie knew it was best not to press for details, lest the deliverymen grow spiteful.
    68 W ILLIAM K OWALSKI

    Colt was in favor of waiting for everything to arrive at the new house before they went back to it, since otherwise, as he pointed out, there wouldn’t even be anything to sit on. But Francie com plained that the walls of the city were beginning to close in on her. Besides, she was too excited. She didn’t think she could wait any longer, she said; they should take the extra furniture from