Good News, Bad Furniture

Julian Reed was dead.

I learned this while sitting on my couch, playing a game, and eating pretzels out of a mixing bowl because all my other bowls were in the dishwasher.

“Evan, I have news,” Miles said.

“You always have news. Last time, it was that your landlord had finally replaced a faucet.”

“This is bigger.”

“Did he replace two faucets?”

“Julian was in a car accident this morning.”

My hand stopped halfway to the pretzels.

On the television, my character walked into enemy fire and collapsed.

I barely noticed.

“Is he okay?”

Miles was quiet long enough that I sat forward.

“There’s a report saying he died.”

I pulled the headset off.

“What?”

“I sent you the link.”

I opened it, expecting a mistake. There were plenty of people in the world named Julian. Unfortunately, this one had Julian Reed’s face.

He looked exactly as he always did in photographs: dark suit, straight back, mildly offended that someone had insisted on taking his picture.

The headline beneath it said he was dead.

I read it again.

Then I stood up on the couch.

“Oh my God.”

“I know,” Miles said.

“Oh my God. I might finally get to eat dinner without somebody inspecting it.”

“Evan, don’t.”

“And nobody’s going to send me links to sensible winter shoes.”

“You’re standing on the couch, aren’t you?”

I bounced once.

There was a crack beneath my feet.

One end dropped. I grabbed the backrest, my phone slid between the cushions, and Miles shouted my name through the speaker.

“I’m fine,” I said, leaning at an angle no human should have to maintain. “The couch isn’t.”

I climbed down and retrieved my phone.

“Are you actually celebrating?”

“I’m appreciating the possibility of peace.”

“Then appreciate it from the floor.”

I crouched beside the broken leg.

Julian had told me to replace this couch six months ago. He had even sent three suggestions, all of which cost more than I had paid for my laptop.

I had told him my furniture was none of his business.

Now the furniture had taken his side.

“You should come over,” I said. “We can order food.”

“I’m working late.”

“How late?”

“Late enough that I won’t make it. Eat something, okay?”

“I was going to.”

“And don’t spend the night drinking.”

“Why does everyone think I drink whenever something happens?”

“Because you keep sending me pictures of beer when something happens.”

A voice called his name in the background.

He sighed. “I have to go. I’ll check on you tomorrow.”

“I’m fine.”

“I heard you the first time.”

Then he hung up.

I picked up the broken couch leg and carried it around the room while deciding where to put it. On the bookshelf? Too depressing. In the kitchen? Too likely to become a weapon if I tried cooking.

I finally left it beside the television.

The game asked whether I wanted to play again.

For once, I didn’t.

***

Julian had been irritating me since our first week of college.

I was twenty-one, having worked for three years before enrolling. He was eighteen and had arrived early after skipping a grade.

We were assigned the same four-person suite despite studying different subjects.

On the first afternoon, he appeared in my doorway while I was unpacking.

“Hey, kid. Could you pick up a package for me?”

I looked at him.

Then I looked behind me to see whether he was addressing an actual child.

“I’m older than you.”

“Are you?”

“By three years.”

He leaned against the doorframe.

“Then you should be responsible enough to handle a package.”

I decided I disliked him immediately.

“I’m busy.”

“I’ll give you twenty dollars.”

I put down the box in my hands.

“I didn’t say I couldn’t help.”

He smiled.

I held out my phone with the payment app open.

“Up front.”

The money arrived before I reached reception.

After that, he kept finding things for me to do. Coffee. Books. Deliveries. A sandwich from a place that required walking past three other places selling sandwiches.

I accepted the money because I believed in helping people.

Especially people who paid promptly.

The trouble was that Julian rarely behaved like a normal customer.

He ordered two coffees and claimed the second was a mistake.

He bought too much dinner and told me to finish it.

Once, when I returned with his groceries, he took the bag, looked at my damp sweatshirt, and said, “You walked in this weather?”

“You asked me to.”

“You could have called.”

“And asked you to come get me?”

“Yes.”

“That would defeat the purpose of paying me.”

He opened his mouth, then closed it.

I enjoyed that so much that I brought it up for weeks.

By the end of our first year, our roommates had begun treating our arguments as entertainment.

By graduation, people who barely knew us had opinions.

“They’re basically dating,” someone said at a party.

“We’re basically not,” I replied.

Julian, standing beside me, lifted his drink and said nothing.

That annoyed me more than a denial would have.

After college, I expected him to disappear into a life of expensive offices and people who answered emails without using exclamation marks.

Instead, he kept turning up in mine.

At Miles’s birthday. Outside my building. Beside me in the grocery store, looking disappointed in the contents of my basket.

He once asked whether a bag of frozen potato bites was dinner.

I bought a second bag.

Two months ago, he offered me a job.

“You need a designer,” I said. “Hire one.”

“I’m trying.”

“No. You’re trying to hire someone you already boss around.”

“I wouldn’t boss you around.”

“You told me how to stack my dishwasher.”

“You had a wooden cutting board in it.”

“It survived.”

“It warped.”

“So have you, and I still tolerate you.”

He looked at me for a long moment.

Then he said, “The offer stands.”

I declined.

He continued texting.

I continued answering.

It was a perfectly ordinary arrangement between two people who couldn’t stand each other.

***

At seven, I ordered dinner and beer.

At eight, I ate half the dinner.

At nine, I began searching for a replacement couch.

One listing showed a green monstrosity with enormous rolled arms. Julian would have hated it.

I took a screenshot and opened our conversation.

Only when his last message appeared did I remember.

You left your scarf in my car.

Beneath it sat my reply.

Keep it. Maybe you’ll develop a little warmth.

He had answered:

Come get it yourself.

I stared at that message until the screen dimmed.

Then I put the phone down and opened another beer.

At eleven, the apartment went dark.

The television stopped in the middle of a sentence. The refrigerator fell silent.

Across the street, the windows remained lit.

“Of course,” I muttered.

I considered investigating, but standing up made the room tilt slightly, and I had already broken one piece of furniture.

Tomorrow seemed sensible.

I finished what was left in the bottle and went to bed.

The last clear thing I remembered was pulling the blanket over my knees.

Later, the mattress dipped.

Something tugged at the blanket.

I tried to pull it back, failed, and decided being drunk had made me weak.

“Stop fighting it,” a familiar voice murmured.

“Then stop stealing it.”

A pause followed.

“You haven’t changed.”

I wanted to answer, but the room seemed too far away.

***

I woke with a headache, an aching shoulder, and no idea why my shirt was folded at the foot of the bed.

My phone was charging.

A glass of water stood on the nightstand.

I stared at it.

Apparently, drunk me had become organized.

In the bathroom, I discovered unfamiliar marks near my collar and other signs that I couldn’t account for from the night before.

I stood still, trying to remember.

Nothing useful came.

“Mosquitoes,” I said, because the silence was becoming uncomfortable.

It was late October.

Even I knew that explanation needed work.

I pulled my shirt on and looked toward the bedroom.

For a moment, I could almost hear Julian telling me not to ignore something I didn’t understand.

I hated that he could still get on my nerves without being alive.