A Brooklyn woman was forced to make a difficult decision last Friday evening, one that would ultimately end in regret.
Devon Fleury, 29, was walking through Manhattan’s West Village when she happened upon a rare sight: a perfectly intact, porcelain-finished clawfoot bathtub lying among numerous bags of recycling near the curb. “I couldn’t believe it,” recalls Fleury. “It was so beautiful; there wasn’t even garbage in it or anything. I knew that a free sidewalk tub like this didn’t just walk into my life every day. This was a once-in-a-lifetime free sidewalk bathtub opportunity.”
Already running late to meet a potential match she had connected with through OKCupid, Fleury was forced to think on her feet. “I didn’t want to flake on a first date, but we’re talking about a clawfoot tub here,” says Fleury. “It was the ultimate in shabby-chic and haven’t been able to soak in a bathtub since four apartments ago.”
Photos of the antique tub, a 71-inch classic described by Fleury as “fucking awesome,” were immediately sent to her roommate and three closest friends, all of whom offered their support via text. “My roommate was really excited about it and even offered to help move it after she got out of work,” Fleury says. “She’s been in the city for a while, so she gets how effing major this is.”
Fleury then spent the next eight minutes searching for moving van rentals online between engaging in fantasies of her new life as a person not restricted to bathing in a standing stall, a series of steam-laden vignettes depicting professionally lit images that would be impossible to capture in her tiny Bay Ridge apartment bathroom, the only window of which faces out into a damp air shaft full of trash. “It had been such a hard month,” admits Fleury. “I needed this tub, and fast.”
Finally, reality set in. The luxurious 300-pound item would need to be hoisted by at least two movers into her fifth-floor walk-up, and even then, it would only be stored it in a bathroom measuring a modest 60 square feet. Fleury was forced to walk away from the find of a lifetime.
“It was just too heavy and big, there was nothing I could do,” laments a defeated Fleury. “The one person I know with a car here drives a Mazda, and it just wasn’t built for a job like this.”
Fleury assumes she will carry the regret of the decision the universe so unfairly forced her to make, for at least the next few years. “It’s fine for now I guess, but I just know if I even leave the city I’m really gonna be kicking myself.”
Although 15 minutes late, Fleury made it to her date, an evening she described as “Snoresville.”
