by Terri Kraus
He brushed back his hair with his hand and pressed at the bell. Above the bell was a slip of paper, taped next to the buzzer: L. Ruskin.
From upstairs, a faint buzz echoed. Jack waited. He knew how frantic mornings with a young child could become. Less than a minute passed and Jack saw a glint of the door opening on the landing above. He saw four feet coming down the steps.
“Good morning, Mr. Kenyon. Here’s the key to the vacant apartment. And this one opens the front door of the building.”
Leslie handed both keys to Jack. They were tied together with a twist-tie from a bread package. He noticed Leslie’s daughter staring up at him. He saw the young girl tug at her mother’s hand. She bent down and her child whispered in her ear.
“This is Ava,” Leslie said when she stood back up.
The child waved at him, still silent.
“She knows not to talk to strangers. Ava, this is Mr. Kenyon. He will be working on the apartment next to ours. He’s no longer a stranger, okay?”
Jack extended his hand to the child and held her hand as delicately as he could. “Nice to meet you, Ava. Are you going to school now?”
Ava nodded vigorously.
“Do you like school?”
She nodded again, even more vigorously.
“Are you going to say hello?” her mother asked.
Ava shook her head, indicating no but smiling, as if holding back a conspiratorial giggle.
Leslie shrugged, took her daughter’s hand, and slipped past Jack in the small vestibule of the Midlands Building.
“We’re walking to school this morning, Mr. Kenyon. And then I have a few errands to run. I should be back by eleven o’clock.”
She is a very, very pretty woman, Jack thought to himself as he watched them walk out of the building and down the sidewalk. At the corner, Ava turned back and waved to Jack like a sailor heading out to sea, waving with her whole arm, shoulder, and most of her body, her grin visible at the half-block distance.
I wonder … she’s divorced … but is she unattached? That beautiful and unattached? I could ask … or should I keep this first job purely business?
Jack walked up the stairs, slowly, wondering about Leslie, and then, in a rush, feeling the guilt and the pain, feelings he knew were always there, lurking at the edges all along. He tried to force it away by remembering Leslie’s encompassing smile and Ava’s wave, but it was of no use today.
Not even his own legendary charm could keep his morning from turning gray and cold.
To fight this, I need to stay busy … very busy.
By 9:30, Jack had created a list of what materials he would need to start the project. He had only asked Leslie Ruskin for a payment of 10 percent of his estimated costs up front. Many contractors insisted on a full one-third, but he thought, at this point, that amount might cause concern from any wary customers. So instead of a larger initial sum, Jack had asked her for smaller payments to be made every week—like a paycheck. “If you get worried at any point along the job, you tell me. We’ll work it out,” he’d insisted.
Two-by-fours; plasterboard; wallboard screws; three kinds of nails: rough construction, finish, and trim; several sheets of interior plywood; paper runners for the floor; a bucket of finishing plaster; wallboard tape; wallboard compound; electrical supplies: tape, wire nuts, new outlet covers; and tubes of white caulk and adhesive—it would fill up the back of his pickup. It would take him all morning to purchase everything, then haul it all upstairs. The rest would come later.
There would be no assistants on this job to do the grunt work. Jack would be the grunt, the rough carpenter, the wallboarder, the taper, the finish carpenter, the gopher, the cleanup crew. No carpenter liked doing all of that, but every small contracting firm was made up of guys who had to know how to do it all. Besides roofing, the only other aspect of construction that he’d hire out would be plumbing. He could install a disposal unit, he could swap out old faucets for new, he could install a dishwasher—but anything more than that, he would call for help from a subcontractor.
And electrical. He had caused enough sparks in his day. He would call an electrician to do any real electrical work. He could rewire an outlet, and install a light fixture. But adding a new outlet—knowing which wire to pull from where—was beyond him. He didn’t anticipate needing advanced plumbing or electrical on this job and had already resigned himself to a lonely few weeks.
By noon, he was back at the Midlands Building and began the process of hauling all the materials upstairs. He immediately began to envy the big contractors, who would have their supply yards deliver trucks filled with materials to be offloaded with cranes and lifts. No, today he muscled up six sheets of four-by-eight drywall. The single sheets, not all that heavy, were awkward and unwieldy, and required careful handling, and a special drywall sheet carrying tool, to manage them up the stairs. And Jack was not about to get off to a bad start on this job by racking dents and dings in the existing stairway and halls. By one o’clock, everything was upstairs and Jack was sweating through his shirt.
He was hungry and recalled the days working for Ethan Willis on the Carter Mansion in Franklin. At noon, precisely on the hour, all work would stop and the crew would gather somewhere in the building, or on the wraparound front porch, or on the lawn, for lunch. Sometimes, someone would volunteer to make a fast-food run. And sometimes, someone’s wife or girlfriend would make cookies. Lunchtime would be laced with talk and laughter.
Today, by himself, Jack unwrapped a single sandwich—prepackaged ham, yellow American cheese, unwrapped from a plastic sleeve, two packets of mayonnaise taken from a Subway store last week, and half a bag of potato chips, which he did not like, and which had been stored above his refrigerator for the last two weeks.
At lunch, they won’t be all that bad. I guess I’ll just need to be hungry, he’d thought when he’d packed them.
Even though he was hungry, the chips did not taste any better. The salt left him thirsty, and he wished he’d driven over to The Palm for a cheeseburger. But he was thirsty … really thirsty, so maybe it wasn’t such a good idea. He finished the bottle of water he’d bought at the drugstore, went to the sink, let the cold water run for a while, then filled it up again.
He walked to the double french doors that led to the balcony. He undid the latch and opened them, letting the fresh autumn air inside. He looked at his watch. It had taken ten minutes to eat his lunch and drink his water. Instead of immediately going back to work, he took his refilled water bottle out onto the balcony overlooking the street, all screened in, and sat in the abandoned lawn chair that had been left by the previous tenant.
It was warm for the time of year. He sat and watched the cars roll by on Cedar Street, a block off Main. There was not a lot of traffic on the side street, but enough. He wondered if he should buy a radio at the discount center north of town. He liked music while he worked. Since he would be working alone, he thought it all the more important.
But I’m not spending more than fifty dollars on it. And I don’t need a CD player or anything fancy. Maybe even less than fifty dollars …
Leslie opened the Butler Eagle newspaper to the classified section and spread it out on the kitchen table. The afternoon sun was streaming in through the tall expanses of windows, and, even with them open, it was getting warm in the apartment. There were shutters, old and hanging crookedly, on the bottom halves only.
I’ll need to get some wood blinds for those soon, she thought as she flipped on the wall switch for the ceiling fan over the table.
She filled a glass with ice and grabbed a Diet Coke from the refrigerator, then poured the soda. The air started moving and she felt a bit cooler. The apartment had three window air conditioners—one in each bedroom and a larger one in the living room—but they were noisy and expensive to run, Leslie knew. The ceiling fan would have to do.
She knew it was useless to look back, that it was just “stuff.” Most of the time she tried to focus on the positive—what she still had—not what was gone. Most of the time she was able to resist the urge to wallow in self-pity over what had happened in her marriage, her world … at least most of the time. But there were some days when fighting that urge was harder than others, when the sinewy threads of hurt and anger and failure and loss tried to wrap themselves around her heart once more. And today, as she stood all alone in the half-empty apartment—her apartment that didn’t feel like hers, didn’t feel at all like home—was one such day.
I’m living someone else’s life …
She took in a deep breath through her nose, then exhaled through her mouth slowly, a relaxation technique she’d learned at a yoga class at the health club in Greensburg. She did this until she had calmed herself a bit and her tightening stomach muscles relaxed. Then she sat down in front of the newspaper.
… but I can try and make this mine. If Gramma Mellie could do it, so can I.
Flipping to the beginning of the employment listings, she tried to focus.
She scanned the list of ads, her eyes following the path of her finger as it moved down the page.
Asphalt Worker. Assembly. Drivers. Food Service. Machinist. Nail Tech. Welder.
Wrong category, she thought as she found the Sales and Marketing area.
But unless she was interested in working in “the exciting field of Identity Theft Protection” or wanted to sell “Quality Stone Veneer,” nothing caught her eye. Under Situations Wanted, among the ads for Childcare and Live-in Home Companions, a twenty-seven-year-old country western singer was in need of a guitar player, and Lingerie Parties Ltd. was looking to expand. A smile crossed her lips, as she tried to envision what that would look like, but she didn’t see anything promising.
She closed the newspaper, and was ready to toss it in the recycling bin, then had another thought and opened it again. She found the Real Estate section and went to the Rentals area. Under the Store/Office/Garage heading were several office spaces for rent, and a few storefronts available in the downtown area, but nothing over 1,000 square feet.
Good! No competition …
She imagined someone at the Butler Eagle office would help her with the wording of a rental ad for the first-floor space, but she had no idea how much she could ask per month, and there were no prices included in the rental classifieds. She thought about calling the real-estate agent who had listed the Midlands Building, then glanced at her watch: 2:15. Time to get Ava at school.
Frank Adams glanced at his Rolex watch—the stainless steel and gold model with an additional small dial for a different time zone.
Two fifteen in the afternoon eastern time. That’s if I set this right. And that makes it 9:15 p.m. here? Is Paris on Europe Standard Time? Does Europe have a standard time? And did we change our clocks when we left Butler? I should ask Alice. I think she’s wearing two watches today.…
He pressed one button on his chunky watch, which he thought started a stopwatch, but the button didn’t do anything.
Maybe the button is for the time change. I wonder where I put the manual for this thing?
Frank sat outside a café, on the Left Bank, in Paris, along the Quai Voltaire, across the Seine River from the Tuilleries Gardens, sipping café au lait with his wife, Alice, his long legs splayed out in front of him.
I would ask her what the button is for, but I don’t think I’ll get the answer I expect. And what is a Quai, anyhow?
“If this is the City of Lights, why can’t I read my newspaper?” Alice asked.
The restaurant was hemmed in by a long row of antique shops and vintage fabric boutiques—all of which were open late for a special citywide design exhibition, but the nearest streetlamp was a quarter of a block distant.
Having shopped most of the afternoon and evening, weaving their way in and out of dozens of “funky” (Alice’s word) French boutiques and showrooms, the couple welcomed the chance to sit down and enjoy a relaxing meal of steak frite—a large, thin slice of beef, marinated and grilled, served with a mound of crisply fried, skinny-cut potatoes, and a salad.
“Meat and potatoes,” Frank declared, “but done in the French manner. French-esque, as it were.”
Alice pretended to scowl at him when he reduced things to simple equations. She said it made him sound provincial. She leaned back in the rattan chair and shook out her long, thick auburn hair, then snapped open a compact mirror and reapplied her lipstick.
“I absolutely adore the idea of another Alice and Frank’s … Frank,” she said, smacking her lips together to smooth the color. She snapped the compact closed. A cool breeze came up off the river, and she pulled her pale pink cashmere pashmina shawl closer around her shoulders. “Butler is simply dying for it. I can tell. Maybe they don’t know it yet, but they need us, Frank. They do. The poor citizens have been bereft of style for years and years. Think about it … the closest place to buy a book—a good book—is out at that horrid mall, and heaven knows one can’t find a decent croissant for miles and miles. And there’s no good coffee, either. That swarthy fellow with the ice-cream/coffee shop on Main Street—he’s like a bad version of an aging Backstreet Boy. How could anyone go in there more than once, other than to gather new material?”
Frank nodded, then looked out on the glistening water, the golden light of the lampposts flittering off the ripples. A sightseeing boat filled with passengers floated past slowly, its bright lights sweeping the facades of the old buildings along the river, briefly interrupting the soft glow.
“Oh, yes—Cunningham’s. He is awfully amusing, though. And they do have good ice cream.”
Alice did her best to appear perturbed by her husband’s defense of the man. “I also saw a gift shop going into the empty space on Main and Vogel before we left, but it looked so … unchic,” she said. “Is unchic a word? Or would it be chic-less?”
Alice continued the thought, smiling hard, in an American way—brittle, if you asked a proper Frenchman.
“I would say it would be ‘in the manner of non-chic,’” Frank answered. “Or, wait! Sans chic. That’s it. They’re both French words, aren’t they? Sans and chic. That’s what they should call the place.”
Alice sipped at her café au lait, making a rather loud, un-French-like, un-chic-like, slurping noise. Even the waiter looked up from whatever it was that was keeping him so totally bored with everything.
Alice ignored him, and her husband. “With the wonderful, wonderful things I’m finding here to sell, we’ll have the natives of Butler simply dancing in the street—they’ll be so astounded.”
Alice leaned forward and put her hand on one of Frank’s.
“I really, really liked the look of that empty building on North and Cedar—you know, the one with the arched windows and the fireplace and the quirky green screened porches on the balconies. It’s a landmark, Frank. It had a For Sale sign on it. We should have asked about it before we left home. Perfect size. Great location. I can’t get it out of my mind. You can see
it too, can’t you, Frank?—a retro-metro feel—ohhh … I like that: retro-metro. Dark woods, walls in darkish, but not overly dark colors, deep colors, or, rather, colors with depth. Some outlandish artwork—big art!—vintage posters, maybe. Large ones. Lots of glass shelves with cool halogen track lighting for sparkle. Some recessed cans for drama. Simple, understated, casual, yet elegant. A European café/bistro, right in the heart of middle America.”
Frank pressed another button on his watch, and the hour hand seemed to jump forward an hour for no good reason.
“Okay,” Frank answered, obviously not paying any attention. “We’ll have to get right on it.”
“Oh, don’t talk to me about going home, Frank,” Alice said with a bit of a whine, despite the fact that Frank hadn’t mentioned a word about going home. “I can hardly bear the thought of leaving Paris. You know how depressed I get at the end of a holiday.” She sighed deeply. “I’m homesick for Europe already, and we’ve only been here a few months. Can one be homesick for a place where no one understands a single word one says?”
Frank had his watch up to his right eye, watching the hand slowly sweep. “I don’t know, babe.”
“Give me that watch, Frank. If you can’t pay attention to me when I’m whining, I want that watch.”
It was a familiar game to both of them. Frank turned away and stuck his watched arm under his other and clamped up tight.
Alice sat and glared, smiling as she did. “And in addition, we will just simply have to find a baker that can do authentic French baked goods for Alice and Frank’s, Frank. That’s all there is to it.”
She huffed once.
“Are scones French?” she asked.
Frank turned back to her and they both began to laugh, a big, bold, rolling American laugh, until the waiter came over and interrupted their good time and chattered away at them in a language neither of them understood.
