Adam was talking to a woman who'd come into the shop that afternoon and
greatly admired an institutional sofa from the mid-seventies whose lines
betrayed a pathetic slavish devotion to Danish Moderne aesthetics. The
woman had sat on the sofa, admired the sofa, walked around the sofa,
hand trailing on its back, had been fascinated to see the provenance
he'd turned up, an inventory sticker from the University of Toronto
maintenance department indicating that this sofa had originally been
installed at the Robarts Library, itself of great and glorious aesthetic
obsolescence.
Here was Adam on the phone with this woman, closing a deal to turn a
$3,000 profit on an item he'd acquired at the Goodwill As-Is Center for
five bucks, and here were his brothers, in the store, angry about
something, shouting at each other about something. They ran around like
three fat lunatics, reeking of the BO that they exuded like the ass end
of a cow: Loud, boorish, and indescribably weird. Weird beyond the
quaint weirdness of his little curiosity show. Weird beyond the
interesting weirdness of the punks and the goths and the mods who were
wearing their subcultures like political affiliations as they strolled
by the shops. Those were redeemable weirds, weirds within the bounds of
normal human endeavor. His brothers, on the other hand, were utterly,
utterly irredeemable.
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