Hi, is this still available? 

Hi, is this still available? 

Hi, is this still available?  

Hi, is this still available? 

Hi, is this still available? 

With my head craned back—the full weight of it hanging there, limp—a stream of metallic molasses travels up my nasal cavity, all the way into my throat. “I’m so sorry, this never happens,” I tell the man, lying. “Um, do you have a napkin or something I could use?”

I peer down at him through a wince. His face doesn’t give much away, but the pause he takes before answering speaks volumes. “Sure, let me get you something.” He closes the door, leaving me on the porch. I hear him say something to the woman waiting inside, but can’t quite make out the words. I imagine it’s gay-blood-freak adjacent.

Of all the ways to die I’ve considered, I think one of the worst would be getting hate-crimed while buying a piece of furniture off Facebook Marketplace. I tried to wear something neutral, but a black hoodie and jeans can’t hide my limp wrists and gay voice. It’s not that I think they’ll kill me, it’s that I think they could. I’m out in the suburbs and I’m outnumbered. 

Nervous: a disorienting ringing in my left ear, stark white, itchy feet.

The door opens and he hands me a wad of toilet paper. It’s the cheap kind too, not soft at all. “Aren’t you supposed to squeeze your nose?” he asks me, skepticism wafting off him. 

He’s technically correct. The medically accepted way to stop a nosebleed is to tilt your head forward slightly and pinch the bridge of your nose for 10 minutes to promote blood clotting. My preferred method is to create nose plugs and replace them until they come out clean. Handsfree, much more effective, and avoids me turning his doorway into a bloodbath. 

“So, can I see the piece?” I ask all nasally, a pile of white obstructing my face. “Promise I won’t bleed on it or anything,” I add, laughing.

His face pulls in towards his nose like he just bit into a lemon. “Sure, give me a sec.” He only shuts the door halfway this time. “We’re gonna bring it out…No… No, I don’t want him coming in here all bloody,” I hear him whisper to the woman. 

Her response is muffled, but the peaks and valleys of tone feel like a reprimand. A clatter of wood swallows up whatever he says next.

When the door opens again, the man is carrying a bouquet of five-foot-long wooden slabs. The woman follows with the metal brackets that are meant to frame the shelving unit. 

“Great,” I say, handing him two one hundred dollar bills folded into fours. 

The aluminum poles don’t fit in my car, so I strap them to the roof with bungee cords and drive home very slowly.

Hi, is this still available? 

Hi, is this still available? 

Hi, is this still available?  

Hi, is this still available? 

The crowd erupts in a standing ovation, the score swells, the judges jump to their feet in slow motion, the stage lights turn gold, and confetti falls from the rafters onto the contestant. “You’re amazing! I really mean that. Well done,” Simon Cowell tells him.

The shelving unit sits unbuilt in my living room, and it watches me watch a compilation of the best auditions from various televised talent competitions on my laptop. My therapist calls this microdosing emotion. 

Sometimes it’s tasteful wedding videos, other times it’s supercuts of emotional movie scenes and, in rare instances, it’s soldiers reuniting with their dogs. The common goal is to safely get my bumps goosed and eyes to well.

Recently, my feelings seem to always be a football field away when I look for them. I’m sitting all the way up in the last row of the bleachers having to remember what they’re supposed to feel like. From my vantage point in the nosebleeds, it’s usually a pale approximation.

Joy: bright sun rays warming my face, golden yellow, pinched chest.

“Ugh, he’s so fucking good,” my sister blubbers through a snotty cry. I was so focused on finding emotion that I barely registered her sitting next to me mid-audition.

“He’s good, but the original is better.”

She wipes her nose with her sleeve. “I don’t know, I like the slow version. It’s like you can really feel him meaning the words,” she says.

“That’s why I don’t like this guy. He covers a Robyn song, changes the pronouns, and every straight person thinks it’s the original.”

“Isn’t he gay?” She asks. Within seconds, she pulls up his Wikipedia page that states he is in fact openly gay, and smugly shoves her phone in my direction.

“The point remains,” I say, shutting my computer for emphasis. “He’s no Robyn.”

“Whatever!” She gets up to storm off, but stops in front of the pile of shelves on the ground. “Can you sell this Marketplace crap up if you’re not gonna build it? It’s fucking with the energy in here!” She slams her bedroom door shut. 

My sister doesn’t have a problem finding emotion.

What she doesn’t understand is that it’s not just a shelving unit. It’s vintage IKEA, from a time when IKEA was a Swedish word for good. Solid wood shelves, minimalist design, and I got them for a steal. One can’t just resell it like they would a half-dead houseplant.

It carries on its planks a life well-lived and a promise of lasting, not something that will just wither away prematurely. I find that sturdiness comforting.

Of course, there’s the issue of the missing screw. Either I lost it along the way or the one-ply toilet paper guy didn’t have it to begin with. Impossible to find out since he blocked me the second I left his house. 

Hi, is this still available? 

Hi, is this still available? 

Hi, is this still available?  

It starts with an itch somewhere at the back left of my brain. The urge sits there, getting bigger and stickier, until I’ve seen that day’s newly listed items (all) and checked my saved searches (14) twice, sorted from newest to oldest. 

The apartment doesn’t need anything, but could it use a ‘Mid-century TEAK Wall unit’? Sure. Could I find a place to put a ‘solid mahogany console’? Definitely. Could I replace our hand-me-down couch with a ‘70s Leather Sofa (Worn but Chic)’? Absolutely. One man’s trash could be my treasure.

Five pages of search results in, something catches my eye. I let out a groan when I see who is selling a ‘Set of 2 Genuine Paul Boulva Lotus Chairs’: P. Teller, my Marketplace rival. 

There’s a special place in hell for career resellers. The kind of person who sees a set of Paul Boulva lotus chairs being sold for fifty bucks by some unsuspecting grandmother trying to declutter, then turns around, takes pictures of them in an industrial loft and lists them for four hundred dollars each. P. Teller is one of those people. 

They have virtually no public information available on their profile and their display photo just shows a train. I’ve hovered my cursor over the ‘Add Friend’ button so many times, eager to get a glimpse at the person behind the serial overpricing, but can never bring myself to actually click.

One week, six not-quite-right attempted hardware store replacements for the missing screw, and four cataclysmic toe stubbings later, the shelving unit still sits unbuilt in my living room. In a moment of weakness, or maybe clarity, I decide to list it for sale. ‘Vintage Ikea Shelving Unit (missing screw)’ goes up at a very reasonable price. It deserves a home without being the furniture conduit for a ripoff. 

When I look back at my listing for typos, I notice something in the sidebar. Sitting there as a suggested item under ‘MOVING everything must go’ is a banker’s lamp. Brass base. Square foot. Free.

I’ve been looking for a lamp just like this one: a classic banker’s lamp with a brass base—not the cheap plastic or polished aluminum modern imitations have—and a simple square foot. I thought I would be able to find one easily, but it’s been my needle in the Marketplace haystack.

“That looks like dad’s old lamp,” my sister says, eyeing the screen over my shoulder.

Her presence startles me. “What?”

“Yeah, it’s exactly like the one from his office. I remember because the foot was just a square.”

The square foot of the banker’s lamp is warping under the pressure from her shiny pink index nail. I push her hand away and say, “Maybe. I’m not sure.”

She rests her hands on her hips and cocks her head to the side, embodying her Oldest Sibling final form. “Why are you being weird?” 

Sliding back into our childhood dynamic, I reply with a singsongy, “Am not.” 

“You loved that ugly thing.”

“Did not.” I sigh.

“Ok, I so don’t have time for this.” She turns, and as she continues to speak with her back to me, four red letters appear on my screen. 

S-O-L-D

Rage: bubbling lava threatening to spill out, deep crimson, hot throat.

A macrodose of anger courses through me and a drop of blood drips from my left nostril. Eyes locked onto my sister, a wail leaves my body and bounces all over the walls.

Hi, is this still available? 

Hi, is this still available? 

The next day, the lamp—my lamp—is photographed in a beautiful loft space and listed for sale on P. Teller’s profile. 

“Of course,” I mutter under my breath.

I want to end P. Teller’s reign of terror. I want them to know that someone knows what they’ve been doing. I want them to think of all the lives these objects could’ve had and how they’ve cut every single one of them short. Do they even care? Have they ever thought of the people being hurt in the process? How can they sleep at night?

I want my lamp.

I send them a message. Not the generic one, something eye-catching they can’t ignore. After pressing send, I stare at my screen, willing an answer to appear. Every so often, I have to rub my trackpad to keep the screen’s backlight on.

Seen finally appears under my missive and I gulp down any possible outcome in which the lamp doesn’t become mine. With seasoned ease, P. Teller sends me an address and we set a meeting an hour from now. They’re just 5 kilometres away from me, right there this whole time.

When I pull up to the modest bungalow, the first thing I notice are the kids toys strewn about the front lawn. It looks like a dinner party table that hasn’t been cleared, so many things taking up so much of the space. The smell from the freshly-cut lawns on either side is the next thing to assault me, then I hear the yelling—high pitched, drawn out squeals coming from the house. 

I double check the address before ringing the doorbell. More squealing. 

My face is pulled into a scowl, a disapproving finger wag holstered at my waist. A man, glasses-askew, greying beard, and toddler on hip, answers the doors. “Hey! You’re here for the lamp, right?” His face is round and immediately inviting. Disarmed, my eyebrows iron out my frown to neutral.

“Y–yes,” squeezes its way out.

Two children run past the man and I, spilling out onto the yard. “Dani, Ryan, be careful!” He looks back to me. “I’m sorry about that, I swear they normally behave.” 

When I don’t answer, he adds: “Let me get the lamp.”

I motion to the house. “You—Your photos look like they were taken in a loft.” It’s a statement, but it’s meant as a question.

“Oh, yeah, my wife—well, my late wife—has—” He takes a sharp breath. “Had, she had a studio space around back. She was a potter.” He motions to the toddler on his hip. “With these guys redecorating constantly, it’s the only place I can take a decent picture.”

Sadness: soggy cardboard left out in the rain, midnight blue, stinging eyeballs.

Pity: papers flying in a big gust of wind, slate grey, sweat-slicked shoulder blades.

Guilt: the metal slap of a fender bender, seaweed green, throbbing temples.

“This is a great lamp,” he tells me, handing over the brass base and square foot. 

The overdose of emotion swirling in the deep end of my stomach sloshes to the surface. “My dad had one just like this,” I say, holding it up. The things I wanted to tell him, the piece of my mind I wanted to give him, even the witty insults I prepared, everything just vanishes. All I’m left with is a front-row seat to the truth. “He died last year. Heart attack.”

“Oh. I’m sorry for your loss.”

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

He shimmies the toddler higher up on his side. Our grief standstill hangs in the doorway between us. The child snatches the glasses off his face, and I can see the interaction is coming to its natural conclusion. But I want to ask him about his wife. I want to know how she died. I want to know how she lived. I want to see her pottery. I want to know if he thinks about the things she made living in other people’s homes. I want to know if he’s sad. I want to know what his sad feels like.

He clears his throat. “So, did you want to e-transfer me the 250 or…?”

My phone vibrates in the crook of the passenger seat next to my new lamp. I look down and see someone has messaged me about the shelving unit.

Hi, is this still available? 

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