WELL DONE! Flash Fiction FOR SALE by Jeff Clemmons

FOR SALE by Jeff Clemmons

The table is mahogany. Rectangular. Distressed in places. It is an unexpected find on a sidewalk outside an antique store in Darien. Six chairs, two with broken lyre backs, and a leaf. But the $150-dollar-steal is too good to pass on. Warren snatches it off the concrete and loads it onto his lopsided, busted old Ford before the salesclerk tills the money.

Within a few months, the table is stripped bare of its former history and stained and shellacked against a new one. The lyres are restrung – courtesy of his woodworking old man – and the bronze leg end caps are buffed to shine like fool’s gold. An altar Warren is sure to write at. His new girlfriend thinks so, but she isn’t to be trusted.

Three months past six, give or take, and Warren uses the altar for the first time. Setting his baby girl in a basket on one end, he picks up a pen and sets it to paper:

“For sale: Duncan Phyfe table, leaf and six chairs. Diapers needed. $175 OBO.”