Metaphysical Furniture

  Chapter 6 — Appointments, Consultations, and Sandwiches The number on the scrap of paper didn’t belong to a therapist. It didn’t belong to a lawyer either. Lawyers announce themselves like brass bands. This place tried to sound like a secret code whispered into a tin can with string. The office sat on the twelfth floor of a glass building that looked expensive in a way that made you instinctively check your credit score before walking inside. The directory in the lobby listed companies with names that sounded like verbs pretending to be nouns. Synergy Holdings. Forward Capital. FutureCraft Advisory. The name I was looking for was smaller: Harland Strategic Consulting. That word again. Strategic. People who use that word usually mean someone else will absorb the consequences. The receptionist had the posture of someone who’d taken a seminar on posture. She smiled like the smile had been leased. “Do you have an appointment?” “No,” I said. “I’m sorry but Mr. Harland is appointment o...

  Chapter 5 — The Assistant The building Avery Bloom used as her content studio used to be a dentist’s office. You could tell from the windows which were tinted just enough to make the outside world feel like an abstraction. I sat in a chair that had probably once held someone waiting for a root canal. The magazines on the table were arranged by color schematic. I’ve never liked going to the dentist. All the drilling and scraping and spitting and suctioning of blood and saliva. Not for me. Just being in a waiting room previously run by a dentist is knotting my gut. But the case beckoned. I needed to find out more about Avery Bloom’s behavior. Her comings and goings and routine. Somewhere in there should be a clue about how she knew what tomorrow brings. A young woman with a headset and a clipboard appeared in the doorway. Mid-twenties. Efficient. The kind of person whose job was keeping the chaos of someone else's life from leaking onto the carpet. “You’re the consultant?” she aske...

  Chapter 4 — Notes The office of Dr. Calico Verde smells faintly of lavender and paper that has spent a long time thinking about itself. Not old paper. Not dusty paper. The kind of paper that has been written on by careful people who enjoy margin space. Her office sits above a bookstore that sells astrology charts, dream journals, and the sort of crystals that promise enlightenment but mostly deliver buyer’s remorse. I do not believe in crystals. But I believe in Dr. Verde. Mostly. Dr. Calico Verde did not look up when I entered. She was reading a folder so thick it could knock a guy out cold if you hit him with it. “You’re late,” she said “I’m early for tomorrow.” I waited for some semblance of a smile at that wry one-liner, but she only nodded as if that makes perfect sense. With Verde, it usually did. “Avery Bloom,” she said, flipping a page. “You met with her.” “I observed her,” I said. “Observation is cheap and quick.” Dr. Verde smiles the small, satisfied smile of someon...

  Chapter 3: Boyfriends, Am I Right? Boyfriends come in two varieties: defensive and performative. This one was both. That’s why I don’t like dealing with boyfriends. But Dr. Calico Verde recommended I speak to what Avery referred to as her “growth companion” and “alignment ally” who provided a “narrative support system” and stabilized her “emotional infrastructure.” All I could think about was how I wanted Calico to stabilize my infrastructure. Duty called, though. He met me at a minimalist coffee bar that charged extra for emotional authenticity but offered a 10% discount for anyone in a thrift store cardigan. His name was Benedict, though his online presence called him “Bené,” which felt like a decision made during a personal rebrand crisis. He shook my hand like he’d practiced it. Firm. Measured. Influencer-adjacent. “I’m not sure how I can help,” he said, sitting down. “Avery’s fine.” He said fine the way people say the market corrected itself . I let the silence ...

Chapter 2: The Influencer My mild flirtation (if that’s what it could be called) had my brain reeling. Romantic entanglements Being a metaphysical detective isn’t the glamorous life of sex and violence I imagined it would be. The job came to me the way most jobs do, I suppose. I answered an ad. Unemployed after quitting the police force, money was tight. Hope even more so. When the season makes its awkward transition from winter to spring, my thoughts make their own tenuous shift toward the positive. I start thinking there could be more to life than helping some poor schlub figure out why his subconscious is having lunch without him. Dr. Calico Verde could be that something more. Someone more. When the job came my way, I assumed my evenings would be spent wrestling sentient armoires or interrogating clocks that tick in conditional tense. The truth is less cinematic. Most days I sit in an office that smells faintly of dust and anticipation, waiting for someone to tell me the universe ...