The Recliner

She gave her ex-husband an old recliner. He had nothing to his name, really; so few possessions, so hoping to rid herself of the old, broken down, dilapidated chair, she offered it to him, only to find it once more in her possession when it returned with the ex-husband to reside in the upstairs of her house years later. After she evicted him, once again from her life, as if haunting her, the chair stayed firmly lodged in her upstairs hallway, and each time she passed by it she found herself kicking it and cursing at it.

So when Ex called again, asking to come after the chair, she was more than a little relieved but skeptical that it could actually vacate her premises.

He brought three men along: Two younger men and one old man, and the younger ones trudged up her staircase with Ex to wrestle the chair once more down the steps and into her dining room. She looked at it, head tilted, eyes narrowed, and silently challenged it to return to her ever, now...now that it belonged to perfect strangers whose names she never even asked for.

But imagine her surprise when the old man took out his wallet and paid Ex twenty dollars for it, right there in her dining room.

That old, recliner smiled, she swears it did, and stuck its tongue out at her as it exited the house and made its home in the back of a rusted-out pickup truck where, for all she knows, it will stay forever and ever amen.

Now she will be pulling up alongside similar-looking trucks at stoplights and passing them on the streets, forced to always peer over and see if the maroon chair is in position like a Beverly Hillbillies rocker, with an old man perched there, roasting in the sun or freezing in the cold, swigging a beer or rum straight from the bottle.

Life is a study.