She smiled. “Sounds good.”
Brad stopped next to her and bent, brushing his lips against her cheek. “Thanks for helping.”
Her cheek tingled where his lips had touched. She smiled a nervous smile. “Sure.”
Ken slapped Brad’s shoulder. “We’ll take my truck. Got to break it in.”
“You’re just enjoying all the gadgets.”
“What gadgets?” Ken asked, mocking shocked indignation.
“‘What gadgets?’” Brad repeated, assuming a mocking tone of his own. “The cab looks like mission control at NASA.”
When they left, she checked the dresser, inspected the closet, and made logical assumptions about where clothes belonged. In no time, she’d emptied two boxes and a suitcase. Worn steel-toed work boots, sneakers, and one scarred pair of leather dress shoes in need of a good polish made her guess she’d just unpacked Ken.
In another box, she found toiletries in plastic bags and bedding. She set shaving accoutrement at the sink and carried shower accessories to the bathroom, then made the bed. Everything in that room unpacked, she carried the boxes to the front room and found Jon on the floor next to a speaker wiring something in the back. The man who had helped hang the television had left.
“Hey,” she said, “should I break these boxes down?”
He took a screwdriver out of his mouth long enough to say, “I would save me the trouble.” He gestured toward a tool bag. “Boxcutter’s in there somewhere. It’s blue. You done unpacking?”
“Not yet.”
“Do them all at once, or I can when you’re done.”
Seeing the logic in that, instead of flattening the boxes, Valerie stacked them next to the couch and went into the other bedroom and started putting clothes away there, too. Here she found garment bags of suits hanging in the closet, nice leather shoes in varying shades of brown and black lining the two-tiered shoe shelf in the bottom of the closet, and dry cleaner bags of starched dress shirts.
She unpacked the suitcases, using the same organization as she had in Ken’s room. She placed the walnut jewelry box of cuff links and tie tacks atop the dresser. As with Ken’s, she put shaving elements at the sink and the other toiletries in the bathroom. Just as she nested the suitcases together and zipped them closed, she looked up and saw Brad in the doorway.
She straightened and wiped the sweat off her forehead. “I hope you guys are installing air conditioning.”
“First thing. I have units coming for each room. I had to figure out which storage facility I’d put them in from the last job.”
She carried the empty boxes out of the room, following him. Brad grabbed the boxes out of the kitchenette and tossed them toward the other boxes in the central space where Jon had already broken down a bunch of them. Jon said, “Hey. The recycle bin isn’t here. It was nearly full, so they took it already. They’re dropping a new one tomorrow morning. We can store this cardboard next door until then to get it out from underfoot.”
Brad collected most of the torn down cardboard and carried it out like a giant sandwich. Valerie collected the remainder and followed him out. They left the office and stepped outside.
The wind had picked up and the cool breeze felt nice. Brad stopped at the unit next door to the office and pulled a key out of his pocket to unlock it. Without going in, he tossed the boxes in his hands inside then took hers and tossed them in also. Then he shut the door and locked it. “There,” he said with a smile. “All put away.”
She watched Ken and Jon carry tools into another unit. Brad gestured in that direction. “We need to get the truck unloaded before this rain hits.”
“Is everything going in that unit?”
“Yes.” He stopped at the cab and reached inside, grabbing a pair of tan leather work gloves which he held out to her. “Put these on.”
The extra-large gloves swallowed her hands but protected her from the dirt and grime on some of the tools. They carried saws, drills, tables, sawhorses, and boxes of tools from the truck to the unit. As Ken shut the tailgate, the first drops of rain fell, and they all rushed back into the office converted into an apartment.
“Thanks, guys, for helping.” Ken went to the sink in the kitchen and washed his hands. “Brad and I would still be unpacking the first load.”
“I hooked the television up to the router,” Jon said. “Your WiFi password is on a sticky note on the router.”
“Perfect.” Brad shook Jon’s hand. “You available to come to a meeting Wednesday morning?”
Jon’s eyes narrowed. “What’s up? Your voice sounds weird.”
Brad sighed. “Got to do what I got to do. We have to let Mitch Conway go.”
Jon whistled under his breath and took his baseball cap off. “That’s not going to go well.”
