The couch had stayed. The last tenant had told Angie's friend Marta that he would not be moving it. Angie was fine with this. Sight unseen, she signed a six month lease. The couch had no legs and was very low to the ground. If Angie sat on it like a chair, her knees came up level with her tits. But she rarely sat on it. She laid down on it. Or stretched her legs out across it. She used its entire space.

***

The bed sat on the floor too. It was one of the few things that they'd purchased together and therefore had to negotiate over. Adam had agreed for Angie to take the box spring and mattress, but the frame he said he needed. He also said that he was going to buy a bigger bed anyway, a California king. Once you've slept in a California king, a queen just seems so small. She didn't wonder where he had slept in a California king. She did wonder why he would need a queen sized frame for a king sized bed, but not out loud. When her cousins returned from loading the mattress into the moving truck and went to grab the frame, she told them, "I don't need it". They grabbed up her boxes of books instead.

***

The kitchen table had a long and obvious scratch through the baby blue Formica. She'd noticed it, but she bought it anyway. It was the perfect size, and the location was just too convenient for Angie to pass it up. She'd first carried the table the three blocks back to the apartment. It was an awkward walk down the street. Whether jutting out in front of her or to the side, the table jostled with every move of her hips. People made way for her, but without making eye contact. At the bottom of the wide, banistered stairs, Angie wondered how long it might be before another tenant would come by who could help her carry it up to the second story. But she wasn't even sure, at that point, how many people lived in the other three apartments on her floor, so she lifted the table upside down above her head, and stepped slowly up each stair. The chairs could have been easy, taken one by one, but she carried both at once, not wanting to make a third trip. 

Once she settled the table in the corner of her small kitchen, she made a cup of tea despite sweating from her exertion. She sat at the table, looking out the narrow kitchen window, into the shadowed and unkempt courtyard below.

***

It took a near week to get the phone hooked up. Her appointment, (so-called although they expected her to wait around the full day for the installation guy to show up) was for the Monday. And then the Tuesday, because the guy was so booked up. And then that guy was off sick, so it might be Thursday, depending on if the phone company could find another worker who was in a nearby enough neighbourhood to swing by her place and do the installation. It was Friday before anyone showed up. It was 2:30 in the afternoon. The guy came in and asked where the phone jack was and Angie pointed to the inconvenient spot where it came through the wall, just above the shoes in the entryway. He went back out into the hallway and five minutes later, knocked on her door to tell her she was all hooked up. She picked up the until now dead receiver and could hear the dial tone before she even placed it to her ear. 

When she got the bill, there was a $50 installation charge, which she called the phone company to dispute. She was ready to argue about it, but they waived the fee without question.

***

The plant was one of those big green with yellow variegated leaves types that every waiting room with a window seemed to have. Except this one wasn't very big yet. She'd found it in an alley outside the back door of what she figured was the law office that her new bus stop was in front of. It seemed pale but otherwise healthy, and didn't have any obvious bugs on it. Angie carried it home and put it on the floor below the window in the corner of the living room. The pot that it was in did not have a tray attached to it, so she used her least favourite plate. It looked small and kind of ridiculous, but she left it there anyway.

***

The paint was an indulgence. The kitchen didn't really need more paint. The whole apartment already had the thick look of a place whose landlord didn't have any rules about such things. The topmost white layer looked pretty new, despite the pinkish sheen that glowed out from underneath it when the early morning sun shined in. But Angie liked the idea of a yellow kitchen. She bought a small can, just enough to do the windowsill and the piece of trim that rounded the room about halfway down the wall. She didn't bother to move the fridge.

***

The man was a coworker, the bartender at the restaurant where Marta had gotten her a job. It was the first time that Angie really regretted not having a bedside lamp. She'd gotten used to sitting under the bare ceiling bulb to read before going to sleep at night. The south-facing bedroom windows had shitty venetians over them that let in a fair glow from the streetlights out front. But he'd flicked on the overhead light and she didn't want to seem prudish, so she left it on while they fucked. He fucked her again in the morning. This time she had him get behind her so she was better able to rub herself to climax before he finished. Angie offered him a coffee, but he declined. So she laid in bed while he got dressed and stripped the sheets from the bed once he was gone. In the laundry room, her downstairs neighbour gave her a broad smile.

***

The DVD player was a birthday present from her dad. He'd been in town for one night before a flight to Vegas, and even though her birthday was two months away, the DVD player was on sale and he could never pass up a good deal. 

Tuesdays were two-for-one rentals at the indie video store down the block. Angie wasn't much for new movies, choosing instead to rewatch ones from her childhood. She borrowed Marta's first three seasons of Seinfeld and would play one while she cleaned up or made breakfast or got ready for work. One day, when Marta came over and the Nose Job episode was playing (the only one on the disc that didn't skip), she asked Angie why she didn't just put on some music. "Why would you want to have a laugh track running through the background of your life?" she asked. Angie corrected her. "It's a live audience."

***

The cookie sheets she bought new. There were never any decent ones at the second-hand stores. They all had the same black stickiness on them, something Angie couldn't stomach inheriting from a stranger. She rarely baked cookies, using them instead for freezing homemade perogies before she placed them in Ziplock bags. She would make a single batch of dough, roll it out with an empty wine bottle, and cut the rounds with a wide mouth canning jar. She would spoon in the potato and cheese filling before pinching the edges together and placing the perogies side by side, but not touching, on the cookie sheet. Sometimes she would give a dozen away to Marta as a gift. Mostly, she kept them for herself.

***

The bookshelf was a garage sale find. It was tall and narrow and impossible for her to get home on the bus. She was on her way to the art gallery for the cheap Tuesday admission and had the time, so decided to walk. She stopped to look at it on her way there and again on her way back, surprised that it hadn't been snatched up. The man who was selling it noticed her both times and, on her second stop, he approached her. Angie explained how she didn't have any way to get it home. "I know that story," he laughed. "Look, I'm about ready to be done for today. I can throw it in my truck and drive it over to your place?" 

He helped her carry the bookshelf up the stairs and stand it in the corner of the living room, opposite the low couch. "Do you want help with the brackets?" he asked, reaching into his pocket. He pulled out two L-shaped pieces and four silver screws. She took the hardware and declined his offer, saying she wasn't totally sure about the placement and might yet move the bookcase to another spot. The man looked around the small apartment. "Right," he said, glancing around the small room. "Nice place," he told her before turning to leave. She thanked him and closed the apartment door behind him. Angie placed the brackets in the clay bowl by the kitchen sink, where the bread ties and produce elastics were piling up. She unpacked her books.