Your Side of the Sofa Is Missing

How it begins

I sold our sofa at ten fifteen. Leo came home at six carrying the soup he always ate on its left cushion.

He stood in the doorway for so long that I offered him a chair.

He looked at the chair.

Then at the pale rectangle on the floor.

“Where?”

“New home.”

“Whose?”

“A woman with a van and excellent taste.”

I restored furniture for a living. The sitting room often contained pieces waiting for collection. That morning I had attached the wrong label to a green sofa, opened the door to the right customer and watched two efficient people remove the center of our evenings.

Leo set the soup on the windowsill.

“I thought you hated it.”

“The sofa?”

“You said the springs were tired.”

“They were.”

“So you sold it.”

“I meant to repair it.”

We had shared the flat for fourteen months. He knew how I took tea. I knew which cupboard he opened when a day had been difficult. Neither of us had signed anything concerning the long quiet half hour after dinner when we sat at opposite ends of a sagging piece of furniture and felt less alone.

Now the half hour had nowhere to go.

I took out a tape measure.

“I can make another.”

Leo knelt beside the rectangle.

“What would you make?”

“Something better.”

“For whom?”

The question stopped me.

I had spent weeks designing a perfect piece for a showroom in another country. Clean lines, excellent proportions, no sign that anybody would need to fall asleep on it after a disappointing Tuesday.

Leo unfolded a paper napkin. He drew a rectangle, then a small hollow on one side.

“For your feet,” he said.

I drew a wider arm on the other.

“For the soup.”

Outside, a bus passed beneath the window. Neither of us moved to turn on the television.

We had finally found something worth looking at on the floor.