Love Seat

It was a ridiculous item.  No, the piece itself was not ridiculous.  It was the location, a small bedroom in an old folks home, steel frame bed, composite board side table, garish yellow walls adorned with faded posters of vaguely realized seaside paintings, and of course a dropped ceiling with florescent lights.  The ever-present odor of the kitchen filled the room, all the rooms in the place, with the slightly sour smell of boiled cabbage and cream-of-something soup. 

There it was, a Victorian love seat.  There wasn’t a straight line on it, all voluptuous curves, dark wood painstakingly carved with leaf, flower, and scroll work, framing button tufted dark red damask embossed upholstery.  The seat narrowed in the middle, creating a natural well where the legs of the occupants would be drawn together.  It belonged in the drawing room of manor house, not here.

It was well past its prime, beyond shabby, the fabric threadbare, exposing grey batting and horsehair in places; the finish on the woodwork crackling and frosted white with age and mistreatment, and whole chunks of the carving had been chipped off.  

The old man stood in the doorway admiring it, his mind clicked over a to do list, planning the order of his work.  It would be woodwork first, hand carving the chipped off petals and leaves, replacing a badly mauled scroll on one of the arms, stripping off the finish, no the stripping should come first, then the carving, then layering the finish and varnishing.  Then he would tear down the upholstery, some of the batting would have to be replaced.  He was already planning where he could source the damask embossed fabric that would approximate what was once there. 

“What is THAT?” The duty nurse inquired in the tone of discovering something dead, or perhaps a turd in the middle of the room.  She was middle-aged, heavy set in tightly fitting scrubs, and prone to pushing her lips out in an exaggerated kissy face while simultaneously frowning. 

“It’s a project I’m working on.”

“Hah, good luck!  It looks like you pulled it out of a dumpster.  You didn’t, did you?  That would be unsanitary.  It could have bed bugs or roaches or mice or all of them inside of it.”

“No it came from a friends place.  It’s fine.

“It better be.”  She chided over her shoulder as waddled over to the nurses station down the hall.

The work was slow, each step, taking days, but because there was not a lot happening in the place, many of the residents came to see, and to chat.  The old man had worked his whole life and it still amazed him that people could not resist gabbing at him whenever they saw him doing physical work of some kind.    

He set up plastic sheeting to enclose the dust as he sanded, a fan in the window to draw it out.  A group gathered at the door to his room to survey the scene. 

“Looks like you’re geared up for surgery in there.”  Margret, observed.  She was a retired dispatch operator known for pushing the limits on the blue in her hair.

“Or some serial killer stuff.” The duty nurse attempted, but no one found it particularly funny.  Her lips pursed, her brow knitted, and she stalked off down the hall. 

The old man’s hands ran along the long curves of the wood, feeling the shape of them under the sand paper, starting with the heavier grit, going with a lighter grit.  At each pass his touch getting lighter and lighter. 

With the plastic down, Bill the retired shoe salesman from downstairs, was the first to see the stripped woodwork.

“The wood looks real clean now, shame about the upholstery, though, don’t know what you’re going to do with that.  You going to send it out somewhere?

“Nope.”

“That color of the wood.  You should keep it that way.  It looks better.”  The duty nurse declared as she gaped at the piece.  The old man said nothing, but he had no intention of keeping the wood blonde. 

The old man laid out a tarp and began rubbing down the woodwork with diluted refinisher.  He loved the smell of wood oil and solvent.  The dampened cloth glided over the curves and slid easily into all the creases of the wood. 

“I hope you’re going to get a pretty penny for all that work you’re putting into this thing.”  Pat, the disabled vet from across the hall called from his wheelchair.

“Just doing it, for a friend, Pat. That’s all.”

“Must be some friend.”

“As you can see, real demanding.”

“Hmmmm.”

Now the home was buzzing.  Who was this friend?  Was it a lady friend?  The old man kept to himself most of the time, fueling wild speculation.  The prevailing theory was the old man owed a debt to a cathouse, past due bills for his extreme perversions, and he was paying for it with the restoration.  The piece had obviously been the seat of countless unspeakable acts of sexual acrobatics.  Why else would it be so worn?  There were fiery debates in the halls about whether or not crab lice could survive within upholstery. 

The work stalled until a package of soft linden wood arrived in the mail.  The old man used a hacksaw to cut off small pieces of the block.  He would sit on the edge of his bed and carve flower petal tips, leaf fragments, and the large scrolled knob for the one armrest, the shavings pattering into a metal wastepaper basket at his feet.    

“No idea you could do all that.  Who knew you were so talented?”  Margret commented as the old man slotted his hand carved repairs into place, setting them with glue, and clamping them in place.

“Thanks Margret.”

The old man opened the window to his room and set up the fan again for the stain work.  He started on his repairs, layering the stain, and letting it dry, over and over again until he reached a tone that matched the older wood.  Then he stained the entire piece.  The old wood drank in the dark stain, coat after coat.  It had to dry for days before the old man could start with the varnish.

“Ugh the fumes!”  The duty nurse exclaimed.  Her face scrunched up into her signature grimace. 

“Sorry, I’ll close my door, to keep it contained.”

“But we want to see what’s happening with the project!”  Margret shouted from her room.”

“Well ok, but if we get complaints about the fumes you’ll have to close your door.  I don’t know if we’re supposed to allow this kind of thing here.  I mean I don’t know why you can’t just go to crafts hour down in the cafeteria like everyone else.”

“Cause, craft hour blows!”  Pat shouted from his room.

“Language, Pat!”  The duty nurse admonished.

The old man spent days pulling apart the upholstery, removing the tufted buttons, and the tacks that fastened the fabric, gently prying first with a putty knife, and then using needle-nose pliers to extract them, dropping them with a clink into an old coffee can, one at a time.  He rented an upholstery steamer and cleaned the batting, filling the steamer’s receptacle with opaque grey water.  He went over the cushioning again and again until the water ran clear. 

“Sure hope this clears the debt you owe at the cathouse” Pat mused from his wheelchair.

“Me too.”

Pat clicked his tongue, “Knew it!” 

The old man carved away several disintegrating sections of batting with a Stanley knife and replaced them with fresh pieces.  He laid out each segment of the fabric on the floor, a collection of ghost shrouds.  Each piece was draped onto the new velvet damask, the perimeter sketched with white chalk. 

“It’s like you’re making a dress” Cheryl the former homemaker from downstairs announced. “I used to make cocktail dresses for myself and some of my friends.  It was just like that, laying out the patterns.”

“No kidding Cheryl.  Do you still sew?”

“Occasionally, I keep my machine in the closet most of the time.  Lately, I’ve only done curtains for my grandkids who are starting to set up their homes.  Why do you need help?”

“It would save me a bunch of hand stitching if you could run some seams on this with your machine”

“I’d be happy to, on one condition.”

“Name it.”

“Tell me who you’re making this for.”

“Her name is Sylvia.  You see, I’m trying to make Sylvia my girlfriend.  She’s a little out of my league, well to do and what have you.  This is how I’m wooing her. 

“You’re not paying a debt to a whorehouse.”

“No, but I’d appreciate it if you didn’t spread it around.  I like the notoriety.”

Cheryl proved deft with her machine and the fabric fit snugly in place.  The old man tacked the damask in place on one side and then used a canvas stretcher to pull it taught pushing a tack in place, and then driving each one home with a firm tap of his small ball peen hammer.  He finished the edges where the fabric met the wood on the bottom edge with ornate welting. 

When it was finished the old man carried it out into the hall.  It remained there for two days, a royal lady in her finest gown, visiting the common folk.  The entire home turned out to admire it.  Despite its now very formal appearance, all who sat on it remarked on how comfortable it was.   

For the move the old man wrapped the love seat with furniture blankets and lashed them with cords, pulled snug with hitch knots.  He paced in his room in his shirt and tie, as he waited.  The movers arrived and unceremoniously carried it off and loaded it into a van outside.  The old man followed after them, hitching a ride on a rear jump seat to the other side of town, large stately homes with manicured grounds shaded with a canopy of decades old oak and maple. 

Sylvia was waiting at the front entrance of her house underneath the massive circular front porch where the front driveway passed under.  She struck a nice figure in her long dark pencil skirt, modest heels, white silk blouse, and pearl necklace, her silver shoulder-length hair immaculately coiffed, and restrained makeup.

“Howard, It’s finished.  I can’t wait to see it!”

The old man followed the movers into the foyer.  Sylvia directed them to place the love seat against one wall.  The old man gingerly untied the knots holding the blankets in place, his hands shaking with anticipation of the reveal.  The blankets slid off the love seat. 

It was grand.  It glowed against the backdrop of the spare white walls and marble floor, fully speaking its purpose to the room and to Sylvia and to the old man. 

“Oh it’s marvelous!  I can’t believe what you did with it.  I was ready to have it taken to the dump and now look.”

“Are you happy Sylvia?”

“Am I happy?  I’m simply over the moon.  I’m dumbfounded Howard, that’s what you’ve done to me, utterly speechless, an old windbag like me utterly speechless, And now you must have your well earned reward, come sit with me.”

“It would be my pleasure.”

They sat facing each other on the loveseat.  Sylvia took the old man’s rough hands in hers.  She interlocked her knees with his.

“Come closer, I want to tell you something.”

When the old man leaned in, she deftly planted her lips on his.  They held the kiss for a moment, broke it, and kissed again, exploring one another’s lips. 

“Does your reward please you?”

“Oh, very much Sylvia.  Only there’s a problem.”

“What problem?”

“I don’t think there’s enough dilapidated furniture in this place to keep me in rewards.”

“Oh, Howard, I don’t want you to think that I’m not happy with your work.  I really am.  I’m absolutely overcome with joy about it.  But, I didn’t offer the reward to make you do the work.  I gave you the work, so that you would feel good about the reward.  I wanted the reward Howard.”

She leaned close and offered her lips to him, which he took, again and again.