Metaphysical Furniture

  Brian Chan Chapter 1 – The Missing Hour There are three kinds of missing people. The first kind wants to disappear. They pack a bag, leave a note, and convince themselves that someplace, anyplace is better than where they are. The second kind never intended to vanish at all. One bad turn, one unfortunate coincidence, and the universe quietly misfiles them into a drawer that only opens when someone knows what they’re looking for. The third kind is the reason people occasionally knock on my office door. They disappear from places that shouldn't have anywhere else to go. The knock came just after lunch on the kind of hot July Wednesday that announces Summer has arrived and doesn’t plan on leaving anytime soon. The thick, sultry air leaves even the sidewalks looking exhausted. My office air conditioner had long since given up on cooling the room and settled for pushing warm air from one corner to another with an indifference usually reserved for bad first dates. Across the str...

  Chapter 31 – Tomorrow Is Another Day   No matter what kind of case I wrapped up, I knew there was no time to linger. A metaphysical detective can’t waste time focused on yesterday. Sure, I wondered about Avery Bloom. I always would. I’m only human, after all. Or, so I’ve been told. And Marcy, too. Avery’s beleaguered assistant was let go after Avery decided she “needed to take some time to calibrate a new cycle.” I’m told it was an amicable split. I’m sure Marcy is anxious to do cycle calibration of her own. I can’t linger, though. Tomorrow is another day and a new case is already waiting for me. I think my husband has been sucked into a novel. I heard it was the kind of thing you can help with. That’s what the woman’s text had said. I’d seen it before but never had a case about it. Seems there was a professor back in the 1970s who found a way to be transported into the novel Madame Bovary for the purposes of having an illicit affair with the titular character. Some ...

  Chapter 30 – Aftermath   The city felt different the next morning. Nobody woke up to a choir of angels harmonizing over the traffic report. The coffee was still overpriced. The trains still ran like they were carrying old grudges. Somebody somewhere still sent a six-paragraph email that could’ve been a shrug. But the air had changed. It’s hard to explain that without sounding like I’d been hit in the head with a yoga studio, but there it was. A little more give in things. A little less psychic laminate over the day. The streets didn’t feel optimized anymore. They felt lived in. I noticed it first outside The Perpetual Egg Diner. A man in a charcoal suit stood on the sidewalk staring at his phone like it had challenged himi to da duel. For a second I thought I was looking at the usual species of urban pilgrim: the man whose whole self-concept could be interrupted by a delayed calendar invite. But then he did something unusual. He laughed. Not because things were funny. Becaus...

  Chapter 29 – Out of Work   The Archivist lived above his office in a room that looked less like a home than a waiting area for a very private collapse. I know that because I went there after midnight and didn’t knock. I’m a detective. Knocking is what you do when you want to be invited into a lie. The city had finally stopped twitching. For weeks it had been full of people postponing themselves. Canceling proposals, redrafting speeches, backing out of restaurant reservations because the imagined evening had scored poorly in advance. It had the atmosphere of a town trying not to scuff its shoes on the dance floor. But tonight there was a stillness like exhaustion after a fever breaks. His door was unlocked. That told me more than any confession could have. Inside, the office had changed. The walls were bare where the probability boards had hung. The whiteboard had been wiped clean so aggressively it still wore the ghost of its former equations. Filing boxes stood sealed with ...