The next morning, my phone rang while I was at Rhett's workshop, setting up for product shots.
Lenny's name on the screen.
I answered. "Hey."
"You're turning down a lot of work," he said without preamble.
"I know."
"Good work. The kind you used to beg for."
"I know that too."
A pause. "You want to tell me what's going on?"
I looked around the workshop—sawdust and motor oil, tools hung on pegboards. Rhett's prototype storage units sat on a table waiting to be photographed. Honest work. Local work.
"I don't want that hunger anymore," I said. "I thought I did. Thought I needed it, but I don't."
"So what do you want?"
"I want to make things that don't hurt people. I want to work locally. I want to go home at night and not feel like I'm abandoning something more important."
"That's very wholesome. Also a little boring."
"Yeah. It is."
"You're okay with that?"
I thought about mornings in the kitchen. Pickle's terrible cooking. The haunted chair that creaked at inconvenientmoments. Walking to the rink in the cold. The quiet satisfaction of work that mattered to the people right in front of me.
"I'm more than okay with it."
Lenny sighed. "Alright. I'll stop sending you opportunities."
"I appreciate it."
"For what it's worth? The Thunder Bay doc was the best thing you've ever made."
"They're the only people who needed to see it."
"Yeah. I figured." A pause. "Take care of yourself, Adrian."
"You too."
I hung up and got back to work.
The move from Chicago happened in pieces over the next few weeks. I flew back once to pack, looked at my apartment—the place I'd lived for eight years—and felt nothing. Not grief. Not nostalgia. Only distance.
The realtor asked if I was sure. I was.
I shipped everything essential. When I got back to Thunder Bay, Pickle helped me unpack. He held up the framed print from my first festival screening and examined it critically.
"This is boring."
"It's from my first—"
"Still boring. Where do you want it?"
