Chapter 24: Keys

Kyle carried the green couch up the bank steps by himself, with Brenda's nephew carrying nothing and holding the door.

"It's from the curb," Kyle said. "It weighs nine hundred pounds. Why do you own this?"

"It's a good couch."

"It has a spring in it that I can feel in my soul."

Cyrus stood on the top step in his shirtsleeves, with a mug of tea he did not drink.

He watched my life come in through his steel door.

A stack of boxes, every one of them labeled in marker.

My grandmother's pierogi table.

The mug tree, the bookshelf, the photograph of her with her hands in the flour.

By eleven at night the lobby looked like a yard sale.

Kyle and the nephew had gone home with a pan of leftover noodles.

Cyrus and I stood in the middle of it all in the lamp's yellow circle.

"Where does the couch go?" I said.

"Anywhere."

"Anywhere is not an answer."

"The window, then. You'll be able to see the street."

"You'll be able to see me see the street."

"That," he said, "has always been my main objective."

I slid the couch to the window with my hip and sat down on it.

The spring was exactly where Kyle had said.

Cyrus watched me wriggle.

"I'll buy a new one."

"No. This is the one."

I stood up and took his hand.

"Show me where my toothbrush goes."

He took me down the hall to the vault and then, instead of the vault, turned left through a door I had never noticed.

It was a bathroom, with a claw-foot tub the size of a boat, and a pedestal sink in white marble.

On the edge of the sink was a glass, with his toothbrush standing in it.

Next to it was another glass, empty.

I put my toothbrush in it.

It clicked against the rim.

Neither of us said anything for a moment.

"There," he said, very softly.

"There."

He put his hands on my face, and I put mine on his waist.

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