the Saturday Breakfast Serial part 2

Welcome to the Saturday Breakfast Serial, where every week I post another installment of a serialized original story.

Read Part One of The Desk here

Part Two of 

The Desk

It had been way too long since I had done laundry and it had been building up.  I was standing in the laundry room surrounded by my sorted piles of sheets, towels, and clothes cleaning out pockets and pre-treating stains.  I reached into the pocket of a pair of jeans, that I use for gardening.  “What is this?”  I found myself asking when my fingers closed around a metal object.
I pulled out the key that had been found in the garden and I suddenly remembered the desk.  Would the key work?  Would I finally be able to open the desk and start using it?  And what would I find inside?  Why had it been locked?  My imagination became very active as I put the key on the shelf over the washing machine for safe keeping.  “You stay right there until I get a load started and then you and I are going to see if you fit that desk.”  I found myself speaking to the key.  I was pretty sure that if I spoke the words out loud, this time I wouldn’t forget to try it.
I finished sorting the clothes and got some towels loaded into the washer.  Switching on the machine, I reached for the key, and as my fingers closed tightly around it, a call came through.    “Sorry.  Not home,”  I said in response to the insistent ringing as I sashayed down the hall to the desk.
There it stood gleaming before me in the autumn sunlight streaming in through the window and shining like a spotlight upon the desk.  “Ta da!” it seemed to say.  “Here I am, ready to reveal all my secrets.”
Carefully I placed the iron key in the lock.  But it was immediately obvious that the key was too small for the desk lock.  I tried anyway and gave up disappointed.  Such a build up, for nothing.
I examined the key in my hand.  Well, it’s pretty anyway, I thought to myself and went to hunt up a thin ribbon to string it with for a necklace.

Over the next few days I obsessed over the desk.  I couldn’t get over my disappointment and what made it all the more frustrating, was that it had never bothered me before.  I suddenly seemed to be dissatisfied with everything, and impatient.  I simply couldn’t get it off my mind.  I learned first hand, what it means to have a one track mind, as my thoughts spiraled around and around that one subject.  I was definitely in a rut.
One day I’d had enough.  I had tried every second hand store and antique dealer in town to find old keys.  I tried picking the lock.  I even went so far as to jiggle the desk in hopes that the lock would work loose.
Finally, I decided to just get rid of the desk.  It had consumed my thoughts for weeks, and I was ready to be free.  I had been trying to ignore it, and as I contemplated loading it into the car I realized it had gotten quite dusty.  I decided the very least I could do was to give it one last good polishing.
I made a thorough job of it, getting the caked on dust out of the intricate carving.  Making the golden highlights of the grain stand out.  I was polishing the tall curving legs when I noticed a lot of cobwebs underneath.  I cautiously peeked under the desk for spiders before removing the webs.
“No!” I shrieked.



Come back next Saturday for another installment of the Saturday Breakfast Serial.