The Day the Movers Came

THE TWO burly moving men stared at my big, ebony Steinway grand, shaking their heads. I stared at them in mute panic. I was certain that I had explained to them, on the phone a week before, that I had this piano and that it was on the second floor, to he moved to a ground-floor apartment in another neighborhood. Or had I? Certainly, at least I'd called them, or they wouldn't be here. Their jackets were stamped with the name of the firm I'd engaged specifically because their ad in the Yellow pages emphasized piano moving.