Before the End of the Chairs

I fear that the chairs in the kitchen are dying and that someone is going to get hurt. We bought them last summer from a flea market in one of those carparks which seem like such a waste of space in Manhattan. We bought them with a matching square table for fifty dollars.

The seller of the set was very keen on the foldableness of the table and chairs but to be honest we weren't that interested. It was an option (and, just to be candid, we did store one of the chairs for a while in the shallow cupboard by the front door) but these were to be permanent additions to the kitchen, to sit under the window in the corner and provide us a place to eat and talk.

But the foldableness of the chairs, less so the table, whose folding mechanism is very mysterious, is part of their character. They are small and flimsy. They are for the pert American eating a croissant or playing some cards, rather than a wider American who might be having a steak and be in the mood to thump a great wet fist down on the collapsible table. The chairs are good for a little sit but they creak if you sway -- they creak like something with fragile bones. The little straps of light metal and their catches on the delicate legs which make up the folding mechanism all strain and rasp in turn when you shift in the chairs. I worry that they are on the verge of springing off onto the white kitchen tiles, exhausted and shattered , glancing over as I fall too, slower and with more to lose, on to the patch of floor near the sofa.

One of the chairs is really teetering. Yesterday I tucked it into the furthest corner of the kitchen, up against the blind-looking large clockface which is beautiful but without any hands. It's impossible to sit in that corner -- the table is bunched in too close, but it's where we keep the third chair for guests to take when there's a gathering. The metal slats which keep that chair taut and standing rather than collapsed and legless are buckling. They alternately sag and straighten at the slightest invitation and I couldn't take the suspense any more.

What can we do? Retire the chairs? Or push through until, one by one, we end up surrounded by their fractured limbs and plastic green seats on the floor. I don't think we can really stack them up in the corner of the flat (of course we could because they are, as we know and fear, very foldable) but it would seem like a waste. I feel like we are providing the final home for the chairs. So we have to keep using them. We should see them through to death. And that's what I'm doing. I sit at the fourth chair in my room when I type at my railroad baron's desk. I have to put a pillow on its narrow behind to counteract the slope of the floor, which sets me some way below the top of my desk. Part of me thinks the pillow softens the wrenches and contortions which will ultimately kill the chair, but another part of me sees the pillow as too large because it flops over on either side. It looks like too much weight -- like the protruding, flourishing backside of the steak eater / table thumper.

But I do worry that it won't be me that clips their chin on the way to the bottom of the kitchen or the dusty floorboards of my room. It won't be me that suddenly gets a view of the side of the bin and the bottom of the kitchen table and, quite possibly, the secret of its more intricate foldability. I worry that it will be a guest.

The other day, when I popped out to the launderette and returned to find Ben and Dee in the kitchen, talking to a surprised and sleepy Matt in the kitchen, I rushed a quick look to check that no one had sprained their ankle or damaged their eye while I was gone. Everyone was safe but there's going to come a day when someone goes down.

Perhaps it will be one of the models who comes to have their picture taken by Mark and Radic during the day. Like the furniture, they are tall and fragile. One of them was very willowy indeed the other day. She was called Ironia or something and was from Brazil. Mark put her in a yellow dress and some high heels and she was like a carnival character, or an exotic marionette, a gangly bright flower careering around the apartment.

Or perhaps it will be one of Matt's friends. We've been seeing a lot of Christian recently who is some kind of colleague or prospective business partner. Christian is full of enthusiasm and often brings round whisky. His movements seem to pose a grave threat to at least one of the chairs, but he's more of walker and a gesturer than a sitter. He brought a girl called Doriana round last night who is Spanish. We were watching The Donald reality show but we turned down the sound in the ad breaks long enough to learn that she was singer. Matt asked her if she would sing and she agreed. Matt immediately asked her to sing the Star Spangled Banner. The reality show started again but she took a grip on it in the next break and she gave a masterly performance, with Matt and Christian miming the shooting off of fireworks from their hips. Exactly the sort of performance that would break a chair.

And then when one of the chairs goes, do we have to retire the rest? Do we have to do a recall, like a car factory? I don't think so. Some of the chairs are stronger than the others -- but, as we have already seen with the one I packed off over by the clock, we don't just push through on each chair, we move around, we mingle, we're breaking them each, piece by piece, swivel by scrunch. In the best of worlds, they will deteriorate pretty much as a group and then collapse like cards or dominos on one sunny Saturday in the middle of a desultory conversation. Once again Matt, Mark and I will have nowhere to sit. And then we'll go to the market.