Sticks and Pics - The Coconut Chronicles: Two Guys, One Caribbean Dream House - page 253

Although Michael seemed notably underwhelmed by the selection, I positively drooled.
Getting even remotely decent furniture to the island had been a massive task, and here was
an Aladdin's cave full of furnishings less than a mile from our house.
I wanted one (if not two or three) of everything. And yet I knew I'd have a hard time
convincing Michael. For one thing, he was sure to balk at any large expenditure after our
slow rental season. Second, he'd undoubtedly make the boring argument that we didn't ac-
tually need anything. And finally, as I knew from previous experience, he would be stand-
ing at the door within ten minutes anyway, panting to leave.
I comforted myself with the thought that the armoires would be far too expensive for
our budget. But they weren't. In fact, they were disconcertingly affordable.
Heart racing, I moved up and down the aisles, making a mental list of everything I'd
like to buy, estimating the bottom line. It didn't come to much. But out of the corner of my
eye I could see Michael lurking near the open door of the warehouse, already giving me the
evil eye.
Time to strategize.
As I drifted in his general direction I considered my options. I could, of course, try my
famous “bottom line” offensive, whereby I argued that by spending money we'd make even
more.
“If the house were more attractively furnished,” I'd say, “we could charge a higher
rent.”
Or I could trot out the “don't worry, I've got it” nuclear option, a truly desperate meas-
ure that involved my paying for a coveted item out of my own pocket rather than charging
it to our joint credit card.
But it was no use. Michael's expression told me that nothing was going to work that
day. We went home empty-handed. And yet I wasn't about to give up.
Late afternoon found me gazing longingly at the skimpily-furnished back wall of our
great room. Any fool could see that it was crying out for an armoire, right?
As dusk fell, the idea of armoire-ownership began to assume almost mystical powers in
my mind. If I were the proud possessor of an armoire, I told myself, my hair would grow
thicker, my temperament would improve, I'd stop wasting my time watching TV cooking
shows. In short, I would become an upgraded version of myself.
The hard part, of course, was conveying this sense of urgency to Michael without sim-
ultaneously convincing him that I was in need of emergency psychiatric intervention. I
waited until the cocktail hour to broach the subject. As a subtle preamble I began pacing up
and down the room, back and forth, to and fro.
Surely Michael would ask what I was doing, which would force me to confess (reluct-
antly of course) that I couldn't get the armoire out of my mind, and that I was trying to
figure out where we could possibly fit it in. But he didn't say a word.