Frank

I buy my furniture at Diversity because their stuff comes with good ghosts, the kind of people with whom I feel some affinity.

Take the chair I bought a few weeks ago. An old office chair from the fifties, probably, not a boss’s chair but maybe something you’d have in the waiting area or perhaps around a conference table, one with enormous, multi-notched ashtrays. But it is handsome enough, with its fake burgundy leather and brass tacks. It’s not all that comfortable, but it was not meant to be, so I think it does its job.

And it came with Frank, an amiable guy with the usual worries – wife, kids, mortgage and so on. But he’s pretty upbeat – key to a salesman’s success – and he has a lot to be thankful for. The heart attack was just a blip on the screen and now he’s here with me, although sometimes he does wander off for a smoke.

Frank doesn’t notice the computer or the microwave. In fact, he couldn’t care less. He squirms sometimes; the meeting should have been over half an hour ago, but hey, it’s not like he has somewhere more important to be. It’s fine here.