The chair on the curb

An office chair appeared on the curb in front of the pharmacy on a Monday. Black, wheeled, the kind from a closed cubicle, with one armrest loose enough to turn outward. I saw it from the bus and again walking back from the store. Nobody was sitting in it. A paper sign was taped to the back, one word: free. The tape was the blue kind painters use. It had already let go of one corner.

Tuesday the sign was gone and the chair was still there. Someone had turned it to face the street, which made it look like a seat for watching traffic. An older woman stood next to it and didn't sit. She was waiting for a ride. The ride came, a gray car, and she left the chair. I was glad. Taking a chair into a car you didn't bring a chair for is how arguments start.

Wednesday night, after the shift, it was still there, wet on the seat from a sprinkler that overshoots the pharmacy's little strip of plants. I didn't move it. Moving it would mean I had adopted it, and my room does not have a job for a wheeled chair. The floor is uneven. It would roll into the door.

Thursday morning it was gone. No note, no broken wheel left behind. The curb had a dust rectangle where the base had been, and then a bus stopped there and the rectangle didn't matter. I asked the pharmacist if he knew who took it. He said a truck, early, two guys, he didn't see the name on the door. He sounded relieved. A free chair is a small problem until it becomes the store's problem.

I thought I would miss it as a landmark and I don't. The pharmacy is enough of a landmark. The chair was a three-day event. I wrote it down so the three days don't flatten into "there was a chair once," which is what the street does to everything that leaves.