Act of God

boy story funny?”
    “Because I wasn’t eligible to be one?”
    “Yes.”
    “Probably.” Another glance, but this one full of warmth and heart. “God, could it be that I’ve fallen for a man who actually gets it without having to be beaten over the head with it?”
    “Probably. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have fallen for me, right?”
    “I retract the last implied compliment.”
    We arrived in front of her house a few minutes later. There were empty spaces up the street, but given the weight of the bureau it seemed more sensible to double-park, which she did. Nancy went inside while I played with the bungee cords and the blanket. She came back with a long face. “What’s the matter, Nance?”
    “Drew Lynch is on the four-to-twelve.”
    “Meaning he’s not here to help us with this.”
    “He just swung on today. I should have called him, but I knew he’d been working days all week, and—”
    I put up a hand. “Not to worry, we can handle it.”
    “John, it is awfully—”
    “Hey, Nance, it doesn’t weigh more than both of us put together, and besides, why do I do Nautilus if I can’t manage some stevedoring once in a while.”
    “I don’t think this is exactly stevedoring.”
    “Whatever. We’ll work with you on the upside and me on the down. There’s a carpet runner on the stairs, so we just have to slide it, and we can rest a little on each step and a lot on the landings. Okay?”
    “Maybe we should just wait for Drew to get home.”
    “And do what in the meantime, stand guard out here over a Civic with a dresser sticking out of its trunk?”
    A smile toyed with the corner of her lips. “Hatchback.”
    I smiled back. “Hatchback.”
    “If you really think we can.”
    “I do, but why don’t you take my jacket inside and change into shorts yourself so we can maneuver this thing more comfortably.”
    “Good idea.”
    She gave me a hug, took another look at the bureau, and trotted to the front door, returning changed with a pair of gloves for each of us.
    “This pair should fit you. Drew uses them in the garden.” We slid the dresser out of the car carefully, no scratches I felt or heard. Carrying it on relatively level ground wasn’t too hard, but I didn’t look forward to heaving it heavenward a step at a time.
    We set the thing down so Nancy could prop open the front door, and again inside so she could close it. As she was doing the door, I surveyed the staircase. A lot steeper than I remembered from simply climbing it.
    Rocking the bureau, I moved it enough so that Nancy could get on its upstairs side. We lowered the back of the dresser onto the carpet runner. It took a lot of pushing from my downstairs end to move the thing up just one step. “John, this isn’t going to work.”
    “Sure it is. We just have a problem with the friction coefficient of your carpet runner.”
    She gave me the sort of withering look lawyers reserve for scientific information.
    I said, “Tell you what. Go out and move the car to a legal space, then bring back the blanket.”
    Nancy climbed over the bureau and left, returning two minutes later, blanket in hand.
    “Okay, now what I want you to do is put the blanket on the next step, and we’ll use it as kind of a flat roller under the thing.”
    We tried that. A little easier to move it up the second step. “Nance?”
    “What?”
    “Let’s try it with the blanket again, but this time with the bureau on its side.”
    “That won’t scratch it?”
    “With the blanket, I don’t think so.”
    We got the dresser on its side and made better, but still slow, progress as I had to recover the blanket every two steps and toss it back up to Nancy , the strain on my shoulder, back, and legs pretty impressive. We finally covered the rest of the steps to the first landing. Halfway home. “John?”
    “Yes?”
    “My arms and legs are pretty tired.”
    “Blame it on your desk job.”
    We rested for five minutes, then started in again. It was harder after the rest, but we’d gotten only two steps from the top, from Nancy ’s landing, when I heard her foot skid and her voice yell my name and her bottom hit the deck. The full weight of the bureau slammed into me, my left shoulder feeling as though someone had drawn a razor blade across guitar strings, my left knee buckling as I managed to stop the slide after only one step lost.
    “John, are you all right?”
    “My shoulder and knee aren’t great. You?”
    “I think I’m just going to have a bruise