Chapter 22
Whatever could Catherine need me to see?
I’ve been stressed enough about the coffee shop project and my presentation, and now this?
My confusion heightens when she leads me through the lobby to the elevator and presses the button for the basement.
Surely she doesn’t want a designer to fancy up the laundry room.
When we reach the bottom, Catherine steps out and turns on the lights.
There’s a laundry room to our left. On the right is a door marked Boiler Room.
From within the laundry room, I can hear the thrum of a dryer.
In front of me is a corridor with metal storage cages on both sides, many of which contain boxes, furniture, and other items. Some cages are empty, their dusty concrete floors testament to the owners’ lack of clutter.
One of these is the one that came with our apartment, although for the life of me, I can’t remember the cage number.
Catherine leads me past the cages and into the gloomy recesses of the basement until we arrive at the door to a much larger cage that must take up a good chunk of the basement’s floor area.
“This is our common storage,” she says, pulling a set of keys from her pocket and removing the padlock that holds the door closed.
“Everything we don’t have room for upstairs goes in here.
Cleaning supplies. Items that are too big for the resident cages.
Old furniture from the common areas and stuff left behind by previous residents. ”
So this is where our leather couch would have ended up if we hadn’t wanted it.
I wonder why people would ever abandon good furniture.
True, we put a bunch of our stuff out on the curb when we moved out of the apartment in Jamaica Plain, but that was different.
It was cheap, and mostly secondhand, and was ruined with graffiti.
It just wasn’t worth trying to rescue. The furniture in this cage, at least what I can see from the doorway, is nothing like that. Some of it even looks antique.
“I love your idea of using eclectic pieces in the coffee shop,” Catherine says, holding the door open for me to enter. “It made me think of all the furniture we have in storage. I’m sure you can find some great items here.”
“I’m sure.” I look around at the jumble of furniture stacked in the cage. Immediately, I see a fantastic couch, as well as a table with metal legs and a distressed wood top. I wonder what other gems lie deeper back in the storage cage. I can’t wait to explore.
“Feel free to stay here awhile and take a look around,” Catherine says. She hands me the padlock. “Lock up when you’re finished.”
“You’re not staying?”
“No.” She glances at her watch. “I have a conference call in ten minutes. But there’s no reason you shouldn’t rummage through all this stuff and see if anything catches your eye.”
“I will.” The cage stretches before me like Aladdin’s cave, brimming with potential.
I step deeper inside, barely noticing when Catherine leaves.
To my left and right are shelves brimming with cleaning supplies.
Beyond that lies the good stuff. A narrow walkway leads to the back of the cage, flanked on both sides by all sorts of interesting items. My first stop is the couch that I noticed when we walked in.
On closer inspection, it won’t work for the coffee shop.
The seat fabric is torn, and there’s a large red stain that I’m sure won’t come out.
One of the legs is broken, and the couch wobbles precariously when I test it.
I’m disappointed, but then I spot a red velvet love seat with polished wood arms.
A rolled-up rug is leaning against it, which I heave out of the way to get a better look.
The love seat is old. The polish on the arms has worn away to expose the bare wood beneath, and the velvet’s been rubbed smooth by countless bodies sitting on it.
The love seat has an old-fashioned look that borders on tacky, but staged the right way, it just might work.
I take out my phone and snap a photo, then wander deeper into the basement and photograph several more interesting items.
As I get farther back, the shadows grow deeper, and I end up turning on my phone’s flashlight. I can still hear the rhythmic thrum of the dryer in the laundry room at the other end of the basement as a faint soundtrack to my search.
The flashlight beam plays across an old wooden dresser, its cherry-colored varnish flaking off.
A tabletop with no legs is propped up against one side of it.
I can just make out four dining room chairs, woefully outdated.
A floor lamp that’s missing its shade. Then my flashlight lands on a figure standing in the darkness watching me.
I whimper and jump back, my butt slamming into another piece of furniture, before I realize that it’s not a figure, but rather an old dressmaker’s mannequin. It doesn’t even have a head or arms. Instead of legs, it has an iron stand.
My racing heart slows, and I almost laugh out loud. Until I turn around to see what I bumped into.
A baby’s crib with a mattress still wrapped in plastic.
Baby-size sheets, also still wrapped, and a lone plush toy in the shape of a bumblebee sitting at one end .
. . and without warning, I’m right back in the worst moment of my life.
My hand flies to my mouth. I blink away a tear.
Why is this down here, crammed in with all this old furniture?
Did some other young mother-to-be lose her baby like I did?
Was this waiting in their nursery for a child who would never come?
Don’t go there, I tell myself. There are plenty of reasons why someone would put this down here.
A change of decor. Maybe they received one too many as a gift and couldn’t return it.
But it’s too late. My heart has raced ahead of my mind, and I’m flailing for a lifeline.
Something to pull me back from the brink.
Then I get my wish.
A squeal of unoiled hinges followed by a loud metallic clank reverberates through the basement.
I spin around, startled.
“Hello?” I call out. Has Catherine returned? If so, I don’t see her anywhere.
But I see something else.
The cage door, which I’d left open, is now firmly closed. I race back through the piles of mismatched furniture to the door and push, but it doesn’t budge. I try again, putting my shoulder against the door with all my weight at the same time, figuring it might be jammed, but it still won’t move.
That’s when I realize . . . I’m trapped in the basement.