Free In Memoriam by Suzanne Jenkins

fucking kidding me?” Natalie’s arms dropped at her side, mouth agape.
    “Remember, this is one of four,” Ted said.
    “We need to furnish homes for poor people,” Deborah said.
    “To hell with that,” Ted replied. “After everyone takes what they want, we’re having an auction. We might all be able to retire on the proceeds. Ashton said he owned hundreds of items stashed away, representing every style period in American history from Colonial to retro to space age to current.”
    “Let’s not get defeated already, folks,” Deborah said, interested. “This is a viable business.”
    “You’re going to have to hire someone to come in and inventory all this crap,” Natalie said.
    “Wait,” Deborah said. “It’s barcoded.” She pointed to a grouping of items, and sure enough, everything had a label.
    They went from aisle to aisle as Ted gained a new respect for Ashton the businessman and experienced his first regret; he wished he could compliment Ashton on the organization of such a vast collection of stuff.
    “Okay, well, if he’s got everything inventoried, where’s the paper?”
    “He must have an office in here somewhere,” Ted said.
    Confused, Natalie wondered what was going on. How could Ted be married to someone and have no idea how he conducted his business? “Did he go off to work every day?” she asked.
    “No, not really. He had appointments. He’d go to look at a space, determine what would compliment it and then have pickers go through the warehouses to gather the items. I guess they must have had barcode readers.”
    “Wow, I’m so sorry I didn’t spend some time doing this with him. It’s pretty fascinating,” Deborah said.
    “He kept his business pretty close to the cuff,” Ted said. “I don’t think he wanted me to know how much stuff he had. When he said four warehouses, I was thinking storage units. Not four 10,000-square-foot buildings.”
    “Come over here for a minute,” Deborah called. She stepped out into the aisle again so they could see her. She’d discovered a file cabinet loaded with papers and receipts. “I think I hit pay dirt. It looks like his inventory records.”
    They each took a file folder and started leafing through it.
    “He was very organized,” Natalie said. “At the top of each receipt, he has a stock number. It looks like he used a simple system with the item type, a number for the building it’s in, and if it’s out in a project or housed in the warehouse.
    “We’ll have to figure out what projects he’s working on. Ted, did he use a computer for this? If it’s all paper, he must have a current jobs folder somewhere, and I don’t see one here.”
    “Maybe in your office at home?” Deborah asked gently.
    Ted didn’t know. He wasn’t interested in Ashton’s work and zoned out when he tried talking about it. Getting a glimmer of why having Natalie and Deborah in his life had become so important to him, Ted slipped further into depression.
    “Let’s go back to his apartment,” Ted replied. “I’ll go on the computer and hopefully find what we need there.”
    “Wait one second,” Natalie said. She’d found a stack of transparent shoeboxes with lids that appeared to be filled with videotapes, the old-fashioned VHS kind. “I bet this is Ashton’s version of Home and Garden TV.”
    “Bring them along,” Ted said. He was anxious to leave, the atmosphere oppressive in the extreme. He had so much regret. Maybe the things Ashton said about not respecting him were true. Ted didn’t really know Ashton; that was the problem. And of course, now it was too late.
    The women each picked up several shoeboxes, he grabbed what looked like one of the primary file folders, and they left the building. Ted didn’t know how many people had keys, but he planned to have the locks changed right away.
    “Are we going to the next warehouse? He has another here in the Bronx and two in Queens,” Deborah said.
    “No, do you mind if we stop for now?