How to get murdered by a guy selling a couch on the internet

It took 4 days for the nicotine poisoning to wear off. I feel less guilty about buying a big clawed hammer to violently pry the shelves and molding off the walls. I don’t know what kind of leftover refuse they used for baseboards, but it is cut out in u-shapes that collect every bit of soot and dirt and dead bugs in the room, impossible to clean. I could bang 2x4s on there and that would be better.

The nesting instinct has a grip on my neck, I can’t shake it, even with my tiny bank account. I scraped out some cash and went questing for Facebook Marketplace used goods. I met a pregnant woman for a $15 Victorian tufted chair. I met a woman doing renovation and hauled away a beautiful $30 desk. I squinted my eyes at messages from a guy who was pressing to meet up to take money for a couch set, sight-unseen. Hmm. “If I disappear this afternoon, Devin did it,” I texted family, and after work I drove down past Smuggler’s Cove to meet the couch guy in Burin.

I have listened to too many murder podcasts to be murdered by a guy with a couch, I told myself as I pulled up behind a car in an empty gravel lot. 

A rangy young man in a plaid flannel shirt got out of the car. “You want to follow me to my workshop? I’ve got them stored down there,” he said. He was cute, in a high-school-weed-dealer kind of way, with blue eyes, a shaggy mullet, and a wispy youth’s mustache.

I could take him in a fight, I told myself as I followed him to a second location.

We walked down to the water, where three rotting wood planks made a bridge from the shore to an old garage on a pier. “Just in here, mind the soft spots in the wood,” he said, walking gingerly across the bridge, the boards bending under him. 

I could survive hypothermia if I fall into the ocean with a couch on top of me, I told myself as I followed him across the planks and into the structure.

It was immediately apparent why he was hoping to do the transaction before I saw the couch set. The chair was torn and mildewed, the couch was filthy and damp, and the ottoman had a fatal oil stain which he had tried to wipe off with a wet rag. He offered to knock off another $20, looking hopeful. I considered the furniture. The couch could be saved with cleaning and a cover, but the other two were a loss. He seemed really keen to make a sale, so I shrugged and said, “How about we see if it even fits in the car?” We each took an end, he pivoted so I wouldn’t have to walk backwards across the planks, and we hauled the couch with little creeping caterpillar steps across the bridge and up to the car. Best efforts couldn’t get that thing into my Subaru, thank god.

“Well, it was a good try, but it’s not meant to be,” I told him, and we carried the couch back to the garage. “It was worth it just for the drive down here, though, it’s so beautiful.” It really is. I had veered off the road a few times, struck with awe as I rounded curves and saw the view of the bay, with its islands, craggy snow-covered mountains, and ducks flying over the water while the light turned gold and pink. I have lived in many rural places and driven through nearly every state in the US, along with half of Scotland and Canada, and the drive to Burin is right up there with the road to Hana and the mesas in Northern Arizona. Wild beauty, terrible poverty.

“Ah yes, I’m blessed to be born here,” he said, smiling and turning his blue eyes up to their highest wattage. I might have given him some money anyway, if it had been in smaller bills. There’s a line in one of the Sookie Stackhouse books that has always stuck with me: Folks here are the same as folks anywhere; some are poor and proud and good, and some are poor and mean and worthless. Maybe I can hire the boy for a painting some time. Poor and proud and good.

In Herself’s efforts to renovate the house for selling, I can guess she let Himself buy some clearance light fixtures from Canadian Tire, and that is why the walls are tastefully painted and an ugly silver three-headed track light ended up on my bedroom ceiling. It’s not bad for the studio, though, so when school was canceled for snow on Thursday I shoveled our way to the car and we spent the morning at the house, learning to install a ceiling light. I have seen Mike electrocute himself enough times to know what not to do, and managed to get the fixture switched out on the first try. Zenny and I jumped down from our chairs, flipped the breaker back on, turned on the light, and crowed about our electrical engineering skills. 

“And people think that’s a man’s job!” she said.

“If anyone says that to you, you tell them that if they’re using their penis to install a light, they’re doing it wrong,” I told her.

Now I want to do every light in the house.

Our beds should arrive this week, and some silverware. I’m itching to take the hammer to the studio and do some painting this weekend, with promises to christen the oven with cookies for Valentine’s Day. I finished a couple paintings in the evenings last month, and now that they’re dry I’m going to prepare to upload to a print-on-demand art site, so I can hopefully sell a few prints to help pay for things. If anyone is in the market for Dutch-style floral paintings with Tim Horton’s donuts and Mary Brown’s chicken sandwiches, they are going to be in luck.