1.

We already had nightstands, but you wanted new ones. The drawers stuck. Kind of had to rock them open. The whole nightstand, rocking back and forth, slamming against the wall. You’d had enough of that bullshit, started searching for new ones. Showed me the set you wanted. Shorter nightstands, which you knew I preferred. But not too short. I liked the surface of my nightstand below the edge of the bed. Only slightly, though. You’d already measured. They were the perfect height, with built-in electrical outlets. For convenience’s sake.

          I learned of those features after. After I saw the price. They were your descriptions, your proof that yes, these nightstands were full upgrades. You explained it like we’d be fools not to buy them. Plus, obviously, the drawers. These drawers had rails made of metal. Slide so smooth.

          “You could use one finger,” you said.

          “Your pinkie, even,” you said.

          You held up your pinkie. Like, See?

          It was such a cute little pinkie.

          But this was all after I saw the price. Which was five hundred and fifty-eight dollars. For nightstands. Way beyond our nightstand budget. I mean, we’d never really made a budget. For anything. We just had credit cards.

          “What do you think?” you said.

          I said they were expensive. I said we should stick it out a little longer.

          I said, “It’s not exactly a need.”

          You were quiet for a minute.

          And I said something like, “If you don’t want my advice . . .”

          And you said something like, “I want it so bad . . .”

          So, I told you to keep up the search, but to be casual about it.

          I said, “The right ones will come, eventually. The perfect nightstands.”

          And you said, “Fuck, I love you so much.”

          That felt good. I’d made sense, and you recognized that I’d made sense, and you loved me for making sense. But I didn’t say all that. Just said I loved you too.

          I said, “I have to wake up at 5:30.”

          “Is that your way of telling me to stop talking about nightstands?”

          It was.

          We understood that we understood. And when someone understands that they are understood, anything can be said, anything can be understood.

2.

You bought nightstands that week. Not the five-hundred-and-fifty-eight-dollar ones. Used ones. Refurbished. The paint still fresh. Good job, too, the paint. In both color and application. And the structure was solid. Heavy.

          “Real wood,” you said.

          The price, reasonable. Spirits, overall, were high. But a leg broke off before we even got the nightstands inside. They had tiny little legs, not meant to hold such heavy wood. Not original to the nightstands, no way. Shitty work. Nothing like the paint job. The paint looked like a scam now. Schlepped on to distract from inadequacies. It was ugly, under all its beauty. Your spirits, overall, sank. Honestly, I didn’t really give a fuck.

3.

We took the used nightstands back to where you bought them. Some house over in the village. Cute house. Very well-manicured lawn. Perfectly trimmed bushes. Flowers growing in gardens and hanging in baskets from the porch. An old man came outside. He looked really sorry.

          “I’m really sorry,” he said. He held the broken, flimsy leg between thumb and forefinger. He shook his head. “My wife,” he said. “My wife has her hobbies.”

          “Hobbies are important,” I said.

          “They are,” you agreed.

          “She likes to paint them,” he said, running his free hand over the nightstand.

          “The paint is great,” you said.

          “Really nice,” I agreed.

          I joined him in running my hand over the nightstand to show how much I appreciated the paint job. But the old man flinched, pulled his hand back. His eyes darted to mine for like a fraction of a second. He looked scared. Which made me kind of scared. Like, mimicking his fear in a subconscious attempt to quell it.

          Another leg broke off as we unloaded them.

4.

You bought the five-hundred-and-fifty-eight-dollar nightstands. You didn’t tell me or anything. They just showed up on the porch.

          The drawers?

          Yeah, they’re smooth.

          And from the outside, our nightstands are the same. But perform even the most cursory investigation, and there is a world of difference. The strength of your drawers lies in order. Mine thrive on chaos.

          You’ve cleaned my nightstand. Even built a divider to keep everything nice and neat. You only built one, even though there are two drawers. You only built one because you know. You know what I am.

          “Keep this one clean,” you said, filling the spaces of the divider with the more important items. “Do whatever you want with the other one.”

          And I kept that drawer pretty decent, for a long time. Determined to be trusted with one organized drawer. But the chaos drawer filled up. Bits from it began to spill over into the neatly spaced drawer. Like it was pressing its essence onto the other drawer. Because the other drawer was susceptible. Because the other drawer believed in order.

          At first, the organized drawer was welcoming. It had the extra space. See? it said. See all my compartments? It made room for pens and lighters. For loose change. Balled-up scraps of paper. Its compartments filled and filled. Siege was laid. And eventually, it succumbed. The drawer of order accepted that it was not a drawer of order. That it would never, truly, be a drawer of order. Because in a world born from chaos, to chaos it will return.

          Besides, said the drawer of chaos to what was once the drawer of order, if we get too bad, the lady will clean us.

5.

I carried the old nightstands to the curb. The ones with the drawers that stuck. I carried them out one at a time. In between trips, someone had already pulled over to pick them out of the trash. An old woman. She was excited. I warned her about the stuck drawers. Went to show her the extent. How hard they had to be rocked open. I wiggled a drawer back and forth. Saw there was some shit in there. Wrappers. Ashes. A dime and some pennies. All glued to the bottom of the drawer by an unknown agent. I pulled the drawer all the way out, emptied it into the trash can. Smacked it against the rim a few times. It didn’t make a difference. The grime remained.

          The old woman didn’t care about any of that. She was still excited. She told me of her plans to refurbish the nightstands as I hoisted them into the back of her car. She said she’d fix the drawers. She said she’d fix the drawers “somehow.” She said a new coat of paint would spruce the nightstands right up.

          “It’s a little hobby of mine,” she said, smiling.

          I smiled back at her. “Hobbies are important.”