1.

Moving Day

Elizabeth Bennett held the front door opened while her husband, Bob, son, Chris, and the owner of the Fairlane, Jonathan Mayron, struggled down the hallway laden down with heavy cardboard boxes.

“Take them down to the kitchen,” said Beth, “Last door on the left.”

“I knew it had to be too good to last,” said Jon, struggling around the ocean of crates and cardboard boxes that lined the narrow corridor.

Almost colliding into the back of Jon, Chris marvelled at the dissimilarity of the two men ahead of him.   Bob and Jon had met through Bob’s first wife, Mandy, who was now married to Jon.   But that was where any similarity ended.   Bob Bennett was short, dumpy, and fiercely blond; Jon Mayron was nearly two metres tall, agonisingly thin, with curly red hair.   Mandy Mayron had once joked that from a distance Jon looked like a redheaded lamppost.

Inside the tiny kitchen, there was only a thin L-shaped walkway formed by the kitchen sink along the back wall, the gas stove and refrigerator conspicuously side by side at the end of the room, and the kitchen table along the front wall, one pace inside the room.

Jon placed the box he was carrying onto the table, and then pushed the box along a metre or so.   He then stepped out of the kitchen, into the bathroom, to allow Chris and Bob into the kitchen.

“You can put that onto the sink,” said Beth after a quick look into the box carried by Chris.

“What about this one?” asked Bob, only half pretending to be collapsing under the weight of the box he was carrying.

“Onto the sink,” said Beth after a quick look into the box.   “That should be about all of the pots and cutlery.   Everything else can go onto or under the kitchen table, at least until I can decide where it all belongs.”

Beth backed out of the room, to allow Chris and Bob out of the kitchen.   Then returning, Beth glanced at the cupboards under the sink, and the one small closet on the wall over the sink, and wondered aloud, “Where the hell will we put everything?”