what i learned taking apart a sofa on the sidewalk at dusk

The evening the movers failed to move our sofa through the narrow hall into our apartment, the clouds gathered and threatened rain as the sky darkened around us. The movers (around our age, reeking of alcohol, with the dirtiest mouths I’ve heard in awhile) told us to resell the couch on craigslist and then sped off. We stood on the street, looking up at the darkening sky, and back at the couch, and back at the sky. On the sidewalk of our new neighborhood, people were coming home from work, walking in the busily aware way that people walk in new york. I felt very alone and very naked.

Hannah was inspecting the upholstery and I was on the phone with people in other parts of the country who didn’t have any idea about what to say to me. Soon I had hung up, and we were kneeling on the one throw pillow we owned, (protecting our knees from the concrete that smelled like dog pee) trying to use the only option available to us. For four hours we knelt, using screwdrivers to pry out staples, pairing down the soft blue sofa arm to its foam tissues, revealing its wooden skeleton, preparing for amputation.

The longer we worked, the less I worried about the scene we created on the usually quiet street. Our neighbors returned home, but didn’t say anything as they walked around us. Cars and all kinds of large vans and trucks drove past finding parking. Finally one woman, saw us and laughed good naturedly. “I don’t envy you guys one bit,” she said. We laughed too, and after that, didn’t think so much about what we were doing where.

Then it got dark, and the street lights came on, but we traded off using the flashlight Hannah bought from the hardware store down the street and prying staples with the screw driver, or sometimes, a crowbar. Then street traffic calmed down, the old man who had been leaning on his gate staring at us went inside, and the cats started to roam. At first just one or two, but then more. So many cats that they started to play, or crawl up on top the tires of parked cars. They were mostly variations of black and white, and very small. One came quite near us and scratched its ears repetitively and Hannah said it had ear mites.

The cats mewed and cried out at one another and us, and sometimes tried to jump on the sofa's arms. Long after the horrible sofa debacle had resolved (we miraculously fit it inside our house with the help of a friend and reconstructed the arm in less than 10 minutes), I stare out my window of the cats fighting in the street, or strolling around on the roofs, think of the stray animals living rampantly in the cities of Latin America where I’ve visited, and don’t worry about vermin congregating in the weird junk in front of our house.