among the 50 or so that were stacked, some precariously, in the shed. There was a stain on the corner that might have been water. This goddamn place.

Hoisting it above a snarl of ancient Christmas lights, he was slightly disappointed at its lack of heft. It was not the one that contained his photo album — a relic of what was alarmingly considered a lost age, where he paid a bored teenager to create prints that he would physically sort, wincing at the smell of the chemicals that had birthed them. He had no idea where that album was. The move, like many before it, had been hurried and in no small part chaotic, with the effect of trips to the leaking, moldy shed being an exercise in occasionally wistful and generally infuriating archeology. Was this most recently extracted box a treasure trove of emotionally resonant tschotchkes? A stack of long-forgotten and never-read catalogs? A tangle of cords that would never again snake from the devices for which they were intended? Such was the element of mystery that went with his occasional forays into this inexplicably still-standing tiny building on the corner of their temporary property.

The box in front of him today had been worth the trip, and the shin he had barked on an old A/C unit. He opened the flaps, folded in the interlocked fashion that his wife hated. “For the love of God…please tape that. Please.” One of the boxes he had secured in this manner had succumbed to gravity and the indifference of the crew they had hired to move and stack it among its brethren, and the entire stack had fallen into the basement floor one night, sending all of their cats bounding onto her while she slept, and shattering an entire flatware set that they had forgotten receiving as a wedding gift. Learning lessons The Hard Way had been a habit to which he had clung with near-religious devotion since many years preceding Leigh meeting him. Thank Nobodaddy she’s patient.