“They’d like to know as soon as possible. They close on the property in forty-five days or so, and want to start construction immediately. I promised them we’d follow up by Friday.”
I ran my hand over my desk, savoring the applewood’s gorgeous grain. I came across the felled tree while camping in Vermont last fall. I didn’t know what I’d do with it at the time, but it gradually took shape while I worked it in my shop. This desk, the attic conference table, and most of the furniture in the Walsh Associates office came from my workshop at one point or another.
“I’ll call Magnolia and find out whether she has any flexibility in her schedule,” I said. She’d been bugging me to involve her in a project start to finish, to better understand the entire lifespan of a restoration rather than the narrow elements where she was typically involved. I respected her commitment to continuously learning and improving, and this property seemed like a good opportunity. It also meant I’d be able to think through problems with her, and she was amazing in those situations. She asked all the right questions and poked holes in my theories, and I loved that. “I need Riley freed up in the next couple of weeks, and I want the blueprints pulled from City Hall by noon tomorrow. Get your errand boy, Tom, on that one.”
Shannon clapped her hands together and said, “Yes! I knew you’d be all over this. There’s just one more thing.” I groaned and she held out her hands. “Actually, two things. One: why can’t we just call her Roof Garden Girl? I really prefer that to Magnolia. I mean, please. Who names a child Magnolia? It requires her to be a landscape architect, or own a flower shop. And two: there’s a strict non-disclosure agreement attached to this client. You can’t go tweeting about working on Eddie Turlan’s house.”
I rolled my eyes. “I don’t tweet, and you’ll need to talk to Magnolia about that. I don’t think we know her well enough to give her a nickname yet.”
The nicknames dated back to childhood when Riley couldn’t pronounce any of our names correctly, always cramming them into garbled amalgamations like Mattrick and Sherin and Sammew. Somehow it was easier for him to say Optimus Prime than Patrick, and over time, we each earned our identifiers.
Despite my attempts to adopt Iron Man as mine, my siblings thought Tony Stark was more fitting.
“But you’d like to know her a little better, right?” Shannon asked. “You’d like to get on a nickname basis.”
“You’re reading into this rather far, Shannon.”
She smiled, collected her things to leave, and paused in the doorway. Of course, she was the Black Widow, and as she stood there in the fitted plum dress I selected last April, sky-high heels, and piercing stare, she looked every bit the part.
“I really do want you to be happy, Sam. We all know the past year has been difficult for you, but we can’t help if you don’t let us.”
Sipping my water, I tried to construct a response that acknowledged her concern without revealing how deep into my private Quechee Gorge I had dropped. She’d been waiting—realistically, it was my whole damn family that had been waiting—for me to fall apart since that miserable bastard died last year, but I wasn’t giving them the satisfaction of being right.
They’d been there for me my entire life, and I appreciated that to no end. But I needed to do this on my own, and if this weekend with Tiel was any indication, it was worth finding the path out. I got there once; I could get there again.
“I know,” I said. “I’m trying.”
I SLEPT LATE on Wednesday mornings. My classes didn’t start until noon, I didn’t have any regular sessions with my little buddies, and I never reserved practice time in the studio. I always capitalized on this scheduling gift by going out Tuesday evenings. I should have used those hours for catching up on grading or research, or some form of exercise, but after a night spent trolling the underground music scene, sleep always won out.
Irritabledidn’t begin to encapsulate my reaction when my phone buzzed across my side table before eight. Cracking an eyelid enough to visualize the screen, I found Eleanorah Tsai’s face smiling back at me.
“Please tell me this is an emergency,” I growled.
“Can sweaters be an emergency? Because I need you to send me some,” she laughed. “I packed two and I had no idea that Ottawa in September was like New York in February. Oh, and maybe some socks, too.” I made a vague sound of agreement and she continued. “Yes, the weekendwasfantastic, I’m so glad you asked. We played our asses off on Saturday and Sunday, and then we did the tourist thing at Niagara Falls, and I’m shocked to admit the tourist thing was really cool but it totally was. Then we spent all day yesterday on the bus to Ottawa, and ran into a hockey team at the hotel. Never would have guessed Canadian hockey players and bearded pop-folk boys could be best friends for life after draining a keg.”
“BFFLs,” I said, shifting to sit back against the headboard. “Gotta love them.”
“And how did you spend your holiday weekend?”
“I have a crazy story for you,” I said. “It’s a story with many parts and several strange events.”
“Please do not start at the end, go back to the beginning, and then periodically return to the end,” she said. “That shit gets annoying unless it’s intentionally ironic.”
Laughing, I told her about the elevator and Sam, our kiss in the alley behind Sligo’s Pub, the festivals we visited, the movies we watched, and last night’s AC/DC cover band. He was the only person in a suit—three-piece or otherwise—and he spent a full ten minutes explaining the purpose of pocket squares to the bartender, but he enjoyed himself.
It was possible he enjoyed staring at the bartender’s boobs more than the tunes.
“He probably thinks I’m turning into a stalker or something, because I wouldn’t leave him alone all weekend and then I dragged him out last night.”
“Hmm,” Ellie murmured. “Do I sense that youlikethis prepster?”
“He’s really freaking adorable and he’s witty, and he needs to have some fun,” I said. “So yeah, Idolike him.”
“I feel like you need a sociologist to observe this,” Ellie said. “So what are you going to do?”
There was no pretending that I wasn’t smitten with Sam, and at the very least, there was a curious friendship between us. But more than that, I was determined to figure him out, to understand why I was so drawn to him, to get past the player and find out why he was working so hard to keep people at a distance.
“Gogol Bordello is playing at Brighton Music Hall next weekend,” I said. “I bet he’s never heard of Gypsy punk . . .”
