The Interior Decorators

by John Badura

2020 Flash Contest Honorable Mention

From the front seat of my car, I consider how much of my life I’ve spent waiting for Alex. “I’m sorry, even my period is usually late,” she says, like I haven’t heard her canned line before. Like we haven’t been friends for ten years. 

“It’s cool,” I say, and miss when our friendship was sturdy enough for me to be surface-level annoyed. In college, we felt elastic, but now, after periods of not hanging out, we were having trouble snapping back into place. I’m not sure whose fault it was. Both of ours. Or neither.

We crunch our way across the gravel parking lot toward the competing smells of different food trucks and the buzz of the flea market. The coffee line is long enough to exhaust just about everything we have to say to each other. My mom is fine. No, I’m not hanging out with teacher-guy anymore. He didn’t full-on ghost, just responded less and less. Caspered? Ah, the friendly ghost. That’s more accurate. We track small talk around the market like it’s stuck to one of our shoes. 

We walk by twenty versions of the same couple and step into a booth managed by a woman I would trust to identify wild mushrooms. She’s selling candles. They have names like Mountain Meadow and Unfurling Spring and are packaged to look expensive. “What’s that purple one?” I want to know.

Alex inspects the cursive label. “Summer Camp.” 

I take a theatrical whiff, “Of course. Takes me back to jerking off Aaron Hanes behind the boathouse. He still sends me love letters.” 

She rolls her eyes with her voice, “You never went to summer camp.”

Alex and the candlemaker strike up a conversation about tiny homes. Sometimes Alex reminds me of that person who famously traded a paper clip for something on Craigslist and kept trading up until they had a house. She could turn a smile or a witty comment into a conversation with a stranger and build until they were a friend, or lover, or offering her pool access at their luxury condo. She knows me well enough not to waste her magic on me. I sniff every variety of candle like some kind of pervert and try not to feel jealous. 

In the neighboring booth, a girl weighs a potential sweater purchase with seemingly more consideration than she’s given her stick and poke tattoos. Alex instinctively hands me her coffee so she can properly attack a rack of vintage dresses. “Let’s play the interior design game,” she suggests. It’s an old thrifting favorite, a page dog-eared from college. Our hypothetical client is always the same: Andrus Wolfstein, a serial killer we invented to explain the nightly creaks and groans of our craftsman rental sophomore year. 

A man with John Lennon sunglasses and a ponytail holds court over a hodgepodge of mid-century furniture and lamps that look like adorable fire hazards. I get the sense that the flea market is the North Star to his week, that without it he would have no idea what day it is. Toward the back of his territory, two atomic yellow kid chairs scream Wolfstein. I turn to Alex, “What if all of his furniture is kid-sized?”

Her shudder is validating. “If you ever play this game with someone else, you’re going to have to tone it down,” she says, before adding, “He only kills college students, right?”

“Yeah, he’s not a monster.”

Misinterpreting our linger, ponytail guy swoops in with the name of the chair’s designer, something so Danish it’s ungoogleable, which strikes me as deliberate. “We’ll think about these,” I lie, as if I owe him something. 

We dodge a man peddling milk crates of vinyl nobody wants, waiting patiently to ensnare some poor soul in a conversation about jazz. Beyond him, a vendor hovers over a table adorned with stoneware dog bowls, like she’s expecting aesthetically minded canine dinner guests. Wolfstein eats exclusively from these primo dog dishes, we decide.

“Do you think it’s a human flesh situation?” Alex asks.

“No.” I shake my head. “I see our client as vegan.” 

The dog bowl lady is unphased. “Let me know if I can answer any questions,” she offers.

The real Wolfstein finds are in a booth crammed with oddities that all look vaguely haunted. A yellowing courtroom wig. Ceramic salt and pepper shakers in the shape of feet. And perched above everything else like a goddamn Christmas angel: a taxidermy goose, wearing a goose-sized tweed jacket and matching hat. 

“Wolfstein makes the goose outfits from his victims’ clothes,” Alex announces proudly, like she’s solved a crime. 

Our laughter braids together in a familiar pattern. And I know today’s plan was inked in something between guilt and loyalty, and that we’re just an echo of our college selves, but for a moment, those people don’t sound so far away.  

We punctuate the afternoon with doughnuts. On our way out, armed with an assorted dozen and the world’s most professorial goose, I barely notice a sign with a chalk message: Vintage Goods: Your Future is the Past. 

Published September 20th, 2020