Niko
Chapter two
The drawer front was a sixteenth of an inch proud on the left side, and I’d been looking at it long enough that my coffee had gone cold. I wanted the drawer to sit flush in a hundred-year-old sideboard, and looking at it harder wouldn’t get it there before Callahan, the piece’s owner, arrived.
I shaved a whisper off the runner, eased the drawer home, and watched it settle into the case. My shop smelled of walnut and linseed oil. For about ninety seconds, I lived in the pleasure of that drawer sliding in and out without a sound.
My shop occupied the ground floor of an old brick commercial building. I rented both floors: the workshop below and my apartment up the back stairs, close enough that I could come down in socks when I couldn’t sleep. It still had the original storefront glass and glazed front door.
There was a knock on the door’s glass, and my ninety seconds were over.
It was Callahan. His appointment was for 7:30, and it was only 7:02. I saw him through the door. He was a round, pink, delighted man in a parka built for an Arctic expedition, waving with his entire right arm and holding a bakery box in his left hand.
I opened the door.
“Niko. I know I’m early. I’m always early. My wife says I’m going to be early for my funeral, and I said, Deb, that’s the one appointment where being late is the whole point.” He stamped his feet on the entry mat, dislodging a bit of winter slush.
Callahan set the bakery box on the end of the bench. “Those are for you. The cherry ones. You mentioned cherry in October.”
I had mentioned cherry exactly once last October when the sideboard arrived and got placed on my schedule.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Is that it?” He gestured at the sideboard. “Oh my God. Oh, look at it. That’s the original pull, isn’t it—you found the original pull?”
“Researched the maker. It was a small shop out of Grand Rapids that went under in the fifties. A salvage dealer in Ohio had a set of their pulls off a wrecked piece. It’s the same pattern from the same years.”
“Grandma loved this piece.” He laid one hand flat on the top. “Deb thinks I’m crazy, you know. She says, Frank, it’s furniture. And I say, Deb, my grandmother rolled out dough on this for forty years. That makes it more than furniture. It’s a witness.”
I didn’t have an answer to that, so I talked about the project itself.
“The veneer on the right side was a problem,” I said. “Somebody patched it in the seventies with the wrong species. I took it back to the substrate and matched the original walnut. You’ll see the seam if you look close. I left it that way on purpose.”
“Why?”
“Because the repair is part of the piece now,” I said. “In fifty years, an expert should be able to tell what happened to it over time. If you hide the repair completely, it’s like lying about your medical history to a specialist.”
Callahan rubbed his hand across the surface. “So the whole story stays in it,” he said.
“That’s the idea.”
He stayed twenty minutes longer. He photographed the drawer sliding in and out while describing his grandmother’s pierogies. When he finally left, he shook my hand with both of his and said the piece would outlive him.
The shop went quiet again, and I pulled out a cherry pastry. I enjoyed about ten minutes of calm.
My phone buzzed once. There was a brief pause, and then several more buzzes. It could only be one person. I wiped my hands and picked it up.
Max: DO NOT start a glue-up
Max: I’m serious. I’m coming over
Max: I have news and it’s good news
Max: it’s GREAT news actually
Max: bringing your gross dark roast, see, I’m thoughtful
Max: you’re going to make the face. don’t make the face
I looked at the six messages. Somewhere in the city, my brother was walking to his car, narrating his entire morning to himself, and by the time he arrived, he’d have worked out an arc, a theme, and probably a title card.
I loved him more than anyone alive. That didn’t make him any easier to handle before nine a.m.
Niko: What face?
The reply came in four seconds.
Max: that one you’re making right now
I had time to wipe down the bench, tuck the pastries into a cabinet, and set out the glue and clamps before his car pulled up at the curb.
Max parked with enthusiasm and a cheerful disregard for the lines.
The door opened, and my brother burst inside, carrying two coffees.
He wore a cream sweater and pressed dark trousers, camera-ready at eight a.m.
For Max, that was normal dress. He looked good. He always looked good, and he worked at it the way I worked at a perfect finish.
“Okay,” he said, in place of a greeting, “before you say anything, I need you to hold all judgment until the end, and I mean the very end, because this builds to a climax, and if you come in early, you’ll wreck the impact.”
“Good morning.”
“Good morning.” He handed me a coffee, correctly black, and took a slow lap of the shop, clocking what had changed since his last visit. He stopped at the sideboard and whistled appreciatively. “This came out unbelievable. Callahan’s going to cry.”
“He already did a little. What’s the news?”
“Right.” He set his coffee down, cleared a space in the air with both hands, and delivered his pitch. “So. You know the Ironhawks, the hockey team.”
“I know of the Ironhawks.”
“There’s a rookie on the team. Rafe Mikkelsen. Came out to the team yesterday. The story’s everywhere, it’s a whole thing, and the coverage has been lovely, start to finish.”
He paused. “So my camera guy’s sister does events for one of the Ironhawks’ sponsors, and her best friend is dating a guy in their front office, and apparently my name came up in a meeting.
The next day their PR people called me. They want to put us together.
Me and him. A few dinners, a few appearances, and some very nice photos of two cheerful people leaving very nice restaurants. ”
I looked at him over the coffee.
“It’s not—okay, you’re making the face.”
“This is my face.”
“It’s judging,” Max said. “Everybody’s in on it, nobody’s lying to anybody, he’s twenty and just came out in front of the entire league.
Hanging out with me takes every ‘who’s he dating’ question from reporters off his plate for the rest of the season.
That’s what the team gets. It’s focus. I’m a public service. ”
“And for you.”
“Rafe—that name—swoon.” Max laughed and smiled wide. “Okay, for me it’s visibility with an audience that’s primed for great home-and-design videos, and before you say it”—he pointed at me—“no, that doesn’t make me cynical. It can be great for everyone. That means it’s a good deal.”
“And have they called—um—Rafe?”
“They told me he’s meeting with their PR guy today, actually.
It’s his call. If he passes, then it’s dropped, no harm done.
” Max shrugged. “He won’t pass, though. From what I hear, he’s the most agreeable human being in professional sports.
If all goes well, I might have dinner with him as early as tonight. ”
“So you’re in,” I said, “before they’ve even asked him.”
“I’m in, pending his decision,” Max said. “The specifics are important.”
I sipped my coffee.
“You’re doing the quiet thing,” Max said. “Say what you’re thinking.”
“There’s nothing to say.”
“There’s always something. You have more things per square foot than anyone I know.”
I turned toward the sideboard and ran a finger along the drawer front’s edge. “It’s your business,” I said without turning around. “Literally. It’s fine.”
“Wow,” Max said. “That’s a glowing endorsement.”
I didn’t respond and got the glue and clamps out for the sideboard’s last piece of business, a loose stretcher on the base I’d been saving for after Callahan left. Max drifted along the wall of clamps, past the wood rack.
“What this light does in here in the morning,” he said, stopping in the long stripe of sun from the east windows.
“It’s criminal that nobody sees this. The grain on that walnut slab alone.
I could put this room in front of two million people, and they would lose their minds, Niko.
Reclaimed everything, hand tools, and you in the apron. It has viral written all over it.”
“Hold this,” I said.
He came and held the stretcher where I pointed, and he held it wrong, hands too close to the joint. I moved his grip four inches down without comment, and he adjusted without breaking stride.
“One video,” he said. “Not even showing your handsome face. Just your hands. You have very trustworthy hands. The comments would be unhinged in the best way — “
“No.”
“How about a photo? One photo of the sideboard before it goes back. Callahan would love it. He would frame the post.”
“Callahan can photograph his own sideboard. It’s his.”
“That’s—okay, that’s a good instinct, giving the client the reveal, I’d steal that if you’d let me say your name anywhere, which you won’t, because you’re the only person in America running an anti-marketing strategy.”
I set the clamp and snugged it, watching the glue squeeze out in a thin, even line. “Word gets around,” I said. “People who want my work find it.”
“Word of mouth.”
“Yes.”
“Is that how you survive?” He wasn’t arguing; he was repeating the points of a past discussion. Max would love to feature my work, but I refused to be packaged for mass consumption.
“Wipe that,” I said, and he took the damp rag off my shoulder and cleaned the squeeze-out along the joint without being told how. Max was neat and thorough, even as he kept talking.
“All I’m saying is the sideboard has a story. Every piece like that does.”
“You got glue on your sleeve.”
He looked down. “Oh, no,” he gasped.
“Tragic.”
“Survivable,” he said, and the smile that charmed millions came back. “Okay. Back to the thing. There’s a part of the hockey deal I haven’t shown you. Sit.” He pulled out his phone.
I didn’t sit. I stood at the bench while Max propped the phone against my coffee and pulled up a clip.
“This is from yesterday,” he said. “After practice. First scrum since he came out, so understand, this is probably the hardest room Rafe has had to deal with. I want you to watch what he does.”
The clip opened on a wall of microphones and a hockey player in a backwards team cap who looked—there was no other way to describe him—enormous and about twelve at the same time. He was farm-sized through the shoulders and fair, pink to the hairline under the lights, with a blocky haircut.
The questions came in fast, and he took each one.
I watched Rafe Mikkelsen. He was good. His responses weren’t slick. They were pleasant in a way I’d never encountered outside of TV shows. Every answer was warm, complete, and exactly the right length.
“Rookie year, small town in Saskatchewan,” said a reporter. “This is a big-city moment for a farm kid. Fans are already—“ The reporter flipped his phone around briefly. “There’s a whole thing forming out there. The polite prairie kid. You’ve seen it?”
There was a hook buried in the question, and Rafe stepped around it, saying, “My mom sends me most of it.” It got a laugh.
“You see it?” Max asked. “He’s completely likable. It’s almost a medical condition.”
There was confidence, too. He showed no fear.
“He’s like this constantly, apparently,” Max said. “Everyone who’s dealt with him says he’s the easiest guy in the league. Never a problem. Never a demand. The PR people love him so much.”
“Mm,” I said.
“So,” Max said, pocketing the phone. “Assuming he says yes today, you’re fine with it?”
“It’s not mine to be fine with.”
It wasn’t. Max had been managing arrangements like this since before he graduated from high school, and he was better at it than anyone I knew.
Still, I’d watched the online celebrity world take pieces of his life: weekends and attention.
It was always with his full agreement, but now it had a boyfriend picked out for him—more time, more energy, more emotion.
“Is that a no?”
“It’s a ‘it’s not mine to be fine with.’”
Max picked up his coffee off the bench and checked the time, wincing. “Okay. I have a call. I have one more thing, and I’m gone.”
The last thing took eleven minutes, because with Max the last thing was always three actual things.
Thing one: the cedar chest. Max’s lease was up in the spring, and he was looking at bigger places. When that happened, he would finally take our grandmother’s chest off my hands. I told him it was fine where it was. It had been fine in the corner by the finishing bench for four years.
Thing two: Sunday dinner at Mom and Dad’s. Was I coming? Because if I were coming, he would make the case for Mexican. If not, he didn’t have the votes.
I said I was coming.
“Then it’s Taco Sunday,” he said.
Third was a favor disguised as a statement. “Oh, there’s a box of mine coming here Thursday. My neighbor had something mysteriously disappear in my building’s lobby. I’ll swing by and grab it Thursday or Friday.”
“Fine.”
“Might bring Rafe. Depending on how the rest of my day goes.”
I didn’t bite. “The box’ll be here,” I said.
At the door, Max turned one more time. “I bet we’ll like him.”
“You will,” I said.