The arrangement of furniture offers a faithful image of the familial and social structures of a period. The typical bourgeois interior is patriarchal; its foundation is the dining-room/bedroom combination. Although it is diversified with respect to function, the furniture is highly integrated, centring [sic] around the sideboard or the bed in the middle of the room. There is a tendency to accumulate, to fill and close off the space.

— Jean Baudrillard, The System of Objects

Among the possessions that I owned with my fiancé was an antique desk that we found at an auction. Hand-carved from who-knows-what, the brilliant color of its stain was enough to wake you up in the morning. The wood, solid and strong as airplane coffee, made rearranging our furniture frequently out of the question.

That desk, it was the centerpiece of an otherwise normal-looking, suburban townhouse. We were both writers. Not writer-writers, but journalist-writers. So a desk made sense. You know, a desk for writing stuff.

Naturally, it led to other purchases. Alternating coasters and desk lamps, depending on what the best department-store sales were. We got rid of my futon that smelled like smoke and other things, replacing it with a green loveseat. The bar that I built out of old two-by-fours and leftover parquet kitchen flooring, it had to go. We painted the walls and installed a ceiling fan. Bought shelving. Appliances that had matching stainless steel exteriors. One of those expensive foam mattresses.

The desk, one morning, had acquired an unsightly stain from a lime wedge someone took out of a gin and tonic the night before. The fruit, its acidic juices did a number on the deep cappuccino finish. I was perturbed.

Rushing out the door with no time to address the blemish, I interviewed a source and met my fiancé for lunch at a coffee shop, where she ended our engagement. Movers, she said, would be by the next day. She said she was sorry.

She said I could have the desk.

I was 22 years old but thought I was twice that. Now, six years later, I’m out of that townhouse and out of that state. Now, the walls have been repainted and the carpet’s been scrubbed. The expensive appliances, the side tables, the umbrella basket, the charred andirons, they’re not there anymore. Everything in that apartment is gone—everything except that desk.

Come to think of it, I never did fix up that stain.

Nowadays, the desk sits in the basement of my parents’ house. Surrounded by old books and junk that no-one wants, its probably collecting dust and falling apart. Too heavy and big to bother moving. My folks, they don’t want it as the centerpiece of their home. There, their piano fills that void.

Maybe it was November when I ran into that former fiancé in the city we’re both from. We caught up; had coffee. I resisted the urge to embellish my recent past. If I believed in guardian angels and such abstractions, I’d say that, clearly, mine must have had other priorities that day.

First thing I did when I got to my parents’ house was head downstairs toward the desk. My dad, he asked what I was looking for. I told him.

Then, he tells me, that morning, our sick cat, she’d peed all over that fucker.