by Neil Plakcy
We stood beside a broad plan table in his office and Joe began to go over the large-sized version of the drawings I’d seen in Babson’s report. “The whole property’s going to need to be rewired,” he said. “Right now it’s a firetrap, with frayed wiring, places the squirrels have chewed through, missing outlet covers. We have to bring the place up to code with sprinklers, fire alarms, emergency exits, and handicap access. And the kitchen needs to come out. The appliances there come from the year dot.”
I laughed. “My dad used to use that expression.”
He turned to a color-coded schedule hung on the wall next to the plan desk.
“Once we have the permits, we start with demolition. We’ll knock out anything that isn’t going to stay, move on to structural reinforcement, then MEP-- mechanical, electrical and plumbing. After that we slap on the drywall, spackle and sand, install the light fixtures and all the other little crap. Then we paint and carpet and bring in the furniture. We’re aiming to open right after graduation next May.”
“That’s almost a year. What am I supposed to do while all that work is going on?”
“Oh, there’ll be plenty for you,” he said. “I’m only handling the physical renovation to the building. You’re going to have to get a designer to source all the furnishings and décor.”
My brain was reeling as I walked back to Fields Hall. It was almost lunchtime, so when I got back to my office I took Rochester out for a walk downhill to where the lunch trucks clustered along Main Street. I got a double-patty bacon cheeseburger and fries, ignoring the potential for cholesterol overload, and sat down on the side of a concrete planter to eat, Rochester on his haunches next to me.
I pulled out the extra burger and fed it to him between my own bites, trying to pull my head together. My dad had never been the type to complain, but I knew there had been situations where he’d been transferred from one department to another. My mom had a cancer scare when I was a little kid—that surely must have freaked him out.
There must have been times when he worried that he wasn’t doing the right thing, or doing a good enough job. He’d never betrayed that insecurity to me, but that was what men of his generation did. They just got on with the task at hand. Could I do the same thing myself?
I liked working at Eastern, and I really liked the security of having a regular paycheck. Babson had shown faith in me, and I had learned since my return from prison that not everyone would – and that I needed to repay that faith. So I was going to take the job he offered at Friar Lake, even if I worried that I couldn’t handle it.
I finished my lunch and walked Rochester back to my office, then called Elaine in HR. “President Babson told me to let you know he’s reassigning me.”
“Hold on, I think I saw an email about that.”
She typed, and then groaned, which wasn’t a good sign. “You’re going to be the first employee of a new cost center,” she said. “We don’t even have the job posted yet. I just got the forms from the president’s office this morning. But that’s typical. You’ll have to wait until the job is posted, and then fill out an application. As soon as I have it in the system, I’ll email you. He’s indicated that the position is open until filled—so if you apply right away, then we can railroad through the paperwork and close the position. If you wait too long and we get a raft of applicants, we’ll have to go through a formal interview and hiring procedure.”
“I thought this was just an internal transfer,” I said.
“Well, it is, and it isn’t. Because the position is new we have to jump through some extra hoops, and ensure that we’re abiding by all the relevant hiring laws.”
When I hung up from Elaine, I was more confused than ever. Did I really have this job? Babson ran Eastern as his private fiefdom, moving people around at will. But I knew Elaine had to make sure all the right procedures were followed.
What if the pool was opened to all candidates, and someone more qualified applied? That wouldn’t be hard, since I had none of the skills the position was going to require. And if I had to fill out a whole new set of forms, that would involve disclosing once again that I had a felony conviction on my record. Suppose Elaine or someone else in HR raised a fuss, and Babson decided I wasn’t worth the trouble? I’d be back on the street.
8 – Design Sense
I struggled to push those doubts aside and focus on the task at hand. If there was a chance I had to fight for the job, I was going to do my best to entrench myself. I began by making a list of everything I had to do. Coordinate with Joe. Hire a designer to source all the interior finishes. Develop programming. Create a publicity campaign for the center. Write an operating budget. Hire support staff.
I also needed to tell President Babson about the body that we had found out at Friar Lake but I wanted to wait until we had more information. If the body could be connected to the monks, then it was nothing to do with Eastern. Though at that point I couldn’t figure out how the college could be connected to the dead body at all.
I began to sketch out a timeline and realized that I needed to find an interior designer. I didn’t know anyone like that. But then I remembered Mark Figueroa, an antique dealer in Stewart’s Crossing. I often ran into him at The Chocolate Ear café in the center of town, and at some point he’d told me his college degree was in visual merchandising, and that he’d worked as an interior designer in New York before opening his store. Maybe he could help me out, or at least direct me to someone who could.
I stood up. “We’re cutting out early today, Rochester,” I said. I grabbed his leash, and he hopped up from his place by the French doors. It was a sunny hot day, and summer-school students crowded the lawns and pathways, tanning and throwing Frisbees. Most of the girls wore bikini tops and short shorts, while the boys wore Eastern T-shirts and football shirts and board shorts that hung down from their waists.
I tried to remember what it had been like to be so young and carefree, to know that I had my parents to fall back on in case of emergency. Then Rochester squatted next to an ivied wall and let out a stream of diarrhea.
“Yuck. Guess feeding you that burger at lunch wasn’t a good idea.”
I had nothing with me to clean up after him, and I wouldn’t have been able to get much of the liquid gunk up anyway, so I just tugged him away and kept my head down, hoping no one had noticed. When we got back to the BMW I used a baby wipe to clean Rochester’s butt.
When he was all minty fresh, I put the windows down and we cruised slowly down the River Road, in and out of the shade of weeping willows and stately maples. Butterflies flew in lazy circles among the daisies and black-eyed Susans by the river’s edge. Just like the summers of my childhood. The big difference was that I was the dad now, responsible for myself and my furry son. And once again, I wished I had my father there to ask his advice—about Friar Lake, about Rochester, even about my relationship with Lili.
Decorating wasn’t one of my strengths. My townhouse looked pretty much the way it had when I inherited it, with bits and pieces of the furniture I’d grown up with. I remembered when my parents bought the oil painting of red and yellow sunflowers that hung over the sofa, at a charity auction at our synagogue. The two wing chairs flanking the sofa had belonged to my grandparents, and my mother had them reupholstered when she inherited them. My father had rewired the antique torchiere lamp in the corner.
The worries I had about my ability to handle the new job were jumbled together with Lili’s comments and memories of my father. He was an engineer and a home handyman, comfortable tossing around all those terms Joe had been using. I was a clumsy kid, and my dad didn’t like me hanging around his basement workshop too much; he was afraid I’d impale myself on a drill, or cut off some body part with one of his sharp saws. I never did, but I banged myself up in a dozen other ways.
After my mom died, while I was living in California with Mary, my father sold our family house and moved to River Bend. He needed to downsize, he told me then. “Too much crap in the ho
use,” I remembered him saying. He asked if I wanted anything, and I told him that my memories were enough.
Now, I wondered what had happened to all his tools. Throughout my childhood my mom, dad and I spent Sunday afternoons at the flea market in Lambertville. My mother collected Lenox china, Boehm porcelain birds, and a host of other knickknacks. I looked through boxes of books, often paperbacks with the covers ripped off that retailed for a dime or a quarter.
My father always had an eye out for tools. He’d walk up to a flea market table full of wrenches, screwdrivers, pliers and other ordinary stuff, and pick out the strange one in the bunch. He’d hold it up and ask the guy behind the table, “What does this do?”
Usually the owner would say something like, “Damned if I know.”
“How much do you want for it?” my dad would ask. If the price was right, he’d buy it and add it to his collection. Any time something broke around the house, or I needed my bike adjusted or a toy fixed, my dad had the tool and the skill to handle the repair.
I didn’t talk to him much about my criminal case, and I don’t think he ever quite understood what the state of California was punishing me for doing. While I was in prison I shut down every emotion, focused only on living day to day, and when the warden notified me that my father had died I don’t think I cried at all.
I didn’t realize how much I missed my father until I returned to Stewart’s Crossing, into the house full of memories. I kept wanting to ask his advice, to watch him fix something. I hunted through the artifacts in the garage, looking for old home movies, hoping I could hear his voice. But he was gone for good.
When we got home, I put a fresh bowl of water in Rochester’s crate and tossed in a couple of chew toys. “Come on, boy, time to go into your house,” I said, standing by the open door of the crate. “Come here.”
Rochester was a pretty well-behaved dog. But he was still only two years old and he had his wild moments, and though he slept in my bedroom at night, and had the run of the house while I was around, I was afraid that if I left him in the house on his own, I’d come home to mayhem and destruction.
He was sprawled on the floor about ten feet from me, his head resting on the tile. “Come on, Rochester, let’s go.” He ignored me. I walked over and grabbed a handful of fur and flesh between his shoulders—where I’d been told his mother would have gotten hold of him as a pup. He resisted, splaying his paws on the tile floor.
“I’m only going to be gone a little while,” I said.
He looked up at me with his big brown eyes, as if to promise he’d be good on his own. “Will you be a good boy?” He thumped his tail a couple of times, and I gave in. “All right. But if you make a mess you’re in big trouble.”
He rolled on his side and yawned, and I walked out to my car.
My hometown is still compact, with a single traffic light at the corner of Main and Ferry Streets, and a cluster of one- and two-story buildings that date back to the colonial era, when the Stewart family ran a ferry service across the Delaware. I grew up in a suburban neighborhood about a mile south of downtown, and I used to ride my bike into town after school to buy candy at the five and dime, to check books out of the gingerbread Victorian library by the lake, or sit on the banks of the lazy, slow-moving canal and daydream about places that canal could take me, if I only had a mule and a barge.
River Antiques occupied a restored barn that had once served as a way station for mules traveling on the canal, which ran from Easton down to Bristol. It had been a feed store when I was a kid and the countryside around Stewart’s Crossing was still peppered with farms. Mark had bought it a few years before, after his grandmother died and left him a houseful of antique furniture and a business opportunity.
I parked at a spot on Ferry Street a block away and walked up to the store. The bell over the door jangled as I walked in, and the door from the back opened. I was surprised that it wasn’t Mark Figueroa who appeared, but Owen Keely, my neighbor’s son. He was tanned and fit and something about his ramrod-straight posture seemed out of place when surrounded by doilies and delicate statuettes. He wore cargo shorts, sneakers, and a T-shirt that read “Don’t Bro Me if You Don’t Know Me.”
For a moment I worried that I’d interrupted him in the middle of a robbery, but then I stopped myself. “Hi, Owen. I didn’t know you worked here.”
“Just part time. It’s been hard to find something regular.”
I nodded. “Yeah, I’ve been reading about how tough it is for vets to find work after they get out. It’s a real shame.”
“Especially vets who get screwed up in the service,” he said. He leaned on the counter. “I got hooked on crystal meth in the Army, and they kicked me out for it. Went to the VA for a while trying to get rehab but they’re swamped. My parents ended up sending me to a private place to get cleaned up.” He shrugged. “But people, you know? They just look at the dishonorable discharge and the drugs and stuff, and they don’t want to take the chance. There’s plenty of vets who don’t have my troubles who still can’t find jobs.”
I didn’t know what to say. I felt bad for Owen, but I had no advice to offer, no place I could send him for a job.
“You came to see Mark?” he asked. “He’s in the back. He’ll be right out.”
We both stood there. “So, you’re interested in antiques?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Mark’s been really good about offering me an opportunity. So I’m learning.”
The back door opened again and Mark stepped out. He was overly tall and scarecrow-skinny, a few years younger than Rick and I, with a shock of black hair that stuck out from his forehead. He appeared gangly, but he was deceptively strong, and I’d seen him handle expensive antiques with exceeding care.
“Hey, Steve,” he said. “How did your girlfriend like the Regaud photo you bought her?” I’d been in his store a few months before and bought a framed photo of a couple on a rainy Paris street, by a lesser-known French photojournalist.
“She loved it. Turns out Regaud is one of her favorites. You have any others?”
He shook his head. “But they turn up now and then. If I see one I’ll keep you in mind.”
“I’m going to take off for Mrs. Christiansen’s,” Owen said. “Striker and I loaded the sofa in the van.”
“Thanks, Owen. Call me if you run into any problems.”
He nodded and walked out the front door, leaving the bell jangling.
“New employee?” I asked Mark.
“Business is good. With the housing market in the toilet, people are staying put and redecorating. I finally broke down and hired some help. And he’s got a friend who can help with the heavy lifting, too, another vet. Lives in North Jersey but comes down this way to hang out with Owen.”
“His parents live down the street from me,” I said.
“Marie Keely is a good customer,” Mark said. “She asked me if I knew anybody who could hire her son and I figured I’d do her a good deed. He’s a good guy at heart. Just been through some trouble.”
“What’s his story?”
“He’s a vet. Came home from Afghanistan with a drug problem. His parents sold their house in Crossing Estates to pay for his rehab. Had to downsize and move to River Bend.”
Mark’s store was a hodgepodge of fifties furniture, rusty farm signs and antique china. Framed posters shared wall space with watercolors of local scenes. I turned to watch Owen back the van out of the driveway, and nearly knocked over a china statue of an Irish setter, and that reminded me of Rochester, home alone and getting into who knew what kind of trouble.
Mark reached over and picked up an ornate figurine of a ballerina on pointe, and rubbed his sleeve on it to wipe away some dust. “What can I do for you?” he asked.
“I have something I want to talk to you about,” I said. “If you have a couple minutes?”
“Sure.”
I told him about the college’s acquisition of the Friar Lake property, and Babson’s plans, leaving out th
e bit about finding a dead body there. “I’m going to need some help with design stuff. You do that kind of thing?”
“I haven’t done anything like that for a while, and like I said, the shop is very busy right now.”
“Come on, Mark, you’re the only person I know who could help me out.” I had Joe Capodilupo handling the construction; I really needed someone like Mark to take point on the interior decorating, and if Mark couldn’t help me I’d be up a creek.
He pursed his lips together. “What’s your timetable?”
“Right now I need some general guidance—I’m pretty lost when it comes to decorating. If you could come out to the property in the next week or two, take a look, and point me in the right direction, I’d really appreciate it.”
“From what you’ve said, this is a big project.”
I nodded. “You bet. But most of the interior work is going to happen during the winter. And I’ll bet your business slows down when the tourists disappear, right?”
“All right, you’ve worn me down,” he said, smiling. “I’ll come out and take a look. I can’t commit to anything more than that right now.”
“Very cool.” We made a plan for him to meet me at Friar Lake on Monday, when the shop was closed. I felt like I owed him something for agreeing to meet with me, so I scanned the shop for something to buy – maybe for Lili? I spotted a collection of antique hair combs in a display case and walked over there. “How much is that one?” I asked, pointing at a fan-shaped comb sprinkled with rhinestones.
Mark grimaced. “You don’t want that. It’s hideous. If your girlfriend likes Regaud, she’d probably like this one better.” He pointed to one in the shape of an Oriental arch. “1920s Art Deco, midnight blue enamel on a sterling silver base. I can let you have it for twenty-five.”
