Niko
Chapter fourteen
Idelivered the Ravenswood shelves in person, three coats deep in oil and rubbed out. Installation was part of the job. The client, a retired pharmacist named Mrs. Okafor, met me at her door with a level in her hand.
“I bought this yesterday,” she said. “The man at the store showed me how to use it. I’m going to check your work.”
“Good,” I said, and carried the first shelf in.
She checked every one as I hung them. She set the level on each board, crouched with her hands on her knees, and watched the bubble. It came up centered five times out of five.
“My son-in-law hung a shelf for me in the old house,” she said. “Everything slid to the left for nine years. I kept my late husband’s picture on it and he leaned. He never leaned in life.”
“He’s level now,” I said.
“He would appreciate that. He was a pharmacist and checked everything twice his whole life. It used to drive me crazy, and now it’s the thing I miss most.” She handed me a check. “Go on. I have shelves to fill.”
Back at the shop, I had the entire afternoon and a milled stack of white oak for a client’s blanket chest. I got the first joints cut, and the work went fine.
The block plane sat at the end of the bench, squared to the edge.
It had been there for four days. Rafe put it there the night of the St. Louis game, and I left it there.
Nothing had come from him since the kiss. He didn’t send any texts about wood. I didn’t hold up my end either. What would I say?
Max called two days later while I was cutting the last of the blanket chest joints. I braced the phone between my shoulder and my ear.
”—and before you react, I want you to remember that I love you and that everything I do, I do for this family.”
“What did you do?”
“The gala,” Max said. “Saturday. The Hendricks Foundation at the Palmer House. It’s my Super Bowl, the biggest night of the entire arrangement. Every dinner and sidewalk photo has been building toward this. I paid for a family table.”
“A what?”
“The foundation seats sponsor guests with their families. It’s warmer and photographs better. Don’t make me sound cynical. It’s not that. Rafe’s family is in Saskatchewan and mine is here. He can be part of ours for the evening.”
“You asked Ma?”
“I informed Ma of the existence of the possibility,” Max said.
“You told Ma there was a table at the Palmer House.”
“I mentioned the Palmer House in a neutral tone, yes.”
Ma could not receive the name Palmer House with neutrality. Telling Ma that she would sit at a table at the Palmer House was telling her to start choosing earrings.
“I’m sure she’s already called Aunt Voula,” I said.
Max sighed. “Look. Dad’s coming. Yiayia says galas are for people who need strangers to watch them eat, so she’s staying home to watch her program.
Even though they walk in together, Dad will find the other man there who owns a lathe and disappear.
Ma needs somebody at the table who isn’t working the room. My job is working the room.”
“So the one who isn’t working the room is me.”
“Yes, for one night. All you have to do is sit next to Ma, eat the food, and act normal.”
I waited for reasons to say no, and they didn’t show up.
“What time?” I asked.
“I’ll text the details. Rafe’s car picks him up at six, scoops me at six fifteen, and we’re on the carpet by seven.
You and the parents arrive whenever Dad finishes circling the block for street parking, so honestly, leave at four.
” A voice behind him said something, and he answered it. “Ma wants to know if you have a suit.”
“I own a suit.”
There was a pause on the line while this was relayed, and then a sound from the middle distance of Ma’s kitchen.
“Ma says you own a funeral outfit.”
“It’s a good suit.”
“She says she’s seen it at three funerals, and it makes her sad on sight now. You’re Pavlov’s pallbearer. She’s calling Stavros.”
“I don’t need Stavros.”
“Nobody needs him,” Max said. “Tomorrow at ten, bring the funeral suit so he can insult it, and then he’ll come up with something better.
” Another voice behind him. “Okay, I’m being summoned.
Disagreement between Ma and Aunt Voula on shoes.
Niko, thank you genuinely. It matters that my big brother will be there. ”
He was gone.
I thought about six hundred people, arrival photos, and my brother with Rafe’s arm around his waist. There was nothing I could directly object to. It was a good cause, and Ma’s happiness was important.
The next morning Stavros circled me with pins in his mouth and insulted the suit I had brought with me. I came home with a garment bag and no memory of agreeing to half of what was in it.
***
Dad circled the block twice on principle, found nothing, and surrendered to the Palmer House garage. He took the ticket from the machine and read it front and back.
“Fifty-eight dollars for up to five hours,” he said and pounded the steering wheel.
“I’ll cover it, Dad,” I said.
“Nobody’s covering it, but it’s robbery. In Milwaukee, Theo parks for free at the cathedral and walks.”
“We’re not in Milwaukee,” Ma said, checking her earrings in the visor mirror for the fourth time. “Niko, how do I look?”
She looked like my mother in a good dress, and I said so. She took my arm because the sidewalk had slick spots, and she wanted to walk in on somebody’s arm.
The Palmer House has that ceiling. Ma stopped under the lobby dome and tipped her head back, holding my arm tighter, and I let her look as long as she wanted.
The rest of the arriving crowd split and flowed past us on both sides.
My mother raised two boys on a machinist’s wages and a seamstress’s side work. She earned every ceiling gaze.
“Your grandmother should see this,” she said.
“Yiayia’s seen it. She says the ceiling’s for people who need somewhere to look while they eat alone at a table of eight.”
“She does not say that.”
“She said it at Sunday dinner.”
“She saves these things for you boys,” Ma said, and tugged at my elbow.
The ballroom was gold from the crown molding down. The ceiling was high enough to hold the noise up over everyone’s heads, while round tables were dressed to the floor in cloth that had been pressed that morning and would be in a hamper by midnight.
A young woman named Dana walked us to a table close enough to the front that Ma gasped. Dana said she’d be taking care of us all night.
A man crossed the floor toward us before we sat down.
“Mrs. Gregory? Mark Corley, I’m with the Ironhawks.
” He shook her hand and then Dad’s. “Thank you for coming out to this. Your table’s situated here for a strong sight line to the arrivals.
You’ll see your son enter before anybody else in the room does. ”
He turned to me. “Mr. Gregory, the craftsman. Rafe has mentioned you.”
As the room filled, there was hockey everywhere once I looked. Half the auction wall was team business, and among the press by the carpet I recognized Deckert, the reporter whose questions Rafe stepped around like avoiding potholes.
“Voula says they do this every year,” Ma reported, reading the program. “Last year they raised two million dollars, Niko. Two million.”
“It’s a good cause, Ma.”
The unmistakable sound of cameras snapping filled the room. The arrivals had begun. Max and Rafe entered with a crowd of reporters rushing toward them.
They stopped on the carpet with rehearsed movements. Max angled half a turn toward the cameras, offering his good side. He laughed at something Rafe said, and Rafe slipped his arm around Max’s waist.
Ma was delighted. She stood with her hand pressed flat, holding the program against her chest.
“Oh, they’re lovely,” she said. “Aren’t they lovely?”
“They photograph well.” Ma patted my hand in agreement.
Dinner was chicken, the choice protein for every high-profile banquet since the invention of ballrooms. It was better than it had any right to be.
Ma read the menu card aloud to the table, including the French. A woman at our table asked what a paillard was, and Ma said it was chicken that had been flattened. The woman said her mother did that with a saucepan, and Ma said, “Ours used the iron.” The two of them were instantly friends.
After dinner, much of the crowd left their seats to mingle. We were close enough to the silent auction table to hear snippets of conversation.
Heath Donnelly stopped in front of a framed MIKKELSEN jersey and its bidding list. “Somebody put four hundred on it already,” he said.
“Bid on it,” his partner Kieran said. I recognized them both from TV appearances. “Hang it in the garage and show him every time he visits. He’ll never recover.”
“That’s just mean,” Heath laughed. He turned and spotted me. They walked up to our table.
“You must be Max’s brother and family. The resemblance—“
“Niko,” I said, and reached out to shake hands.
“Heath. Kieran.”
Ma offered her hand and was too starstruck to speak.
“We heard about candle wax from Rafe,” Heath said. “On the plane, he told us about waxing runners.”
I nodded.
“Rafe told Varga the wax was a candle from Target, and Varga didn’t believe him. It became a thing. Varga looked it up.”
“Varga should learn about arguing with a woodworker about wax,” Kieran said.
Then Max arrived, already talking.
“Okay, this is the corner. I’ve been working this room for half an hour, and this is the corner.” He shook Heath’s hand and then Kieran’s. “Max. Hi. You’re the one who did the thing at the blue line in Denver. Niko made me watch it four times, and he doesn’t even like hockey.”
“That was Cross,” Heath said.
“Then Cross did the thing, and you were standing near it, which at this point in my night is close enough.” He drank from a rocks glass in his hand. “Ask me about the step and repeat.”
“What’s a step and repeat?” Heath asked.
“It’s the logo wall you stand in front of. Rafe and I stood there for forty photographs.” He gave us a pose.
Heath laughed, and I nearly did.
Kieran smiled and said nothing.
The quiet lasted maybe four seconds. A man stood at the front of the room and tapped a microphone. The program was about to begin.
He introduced himself as the foundation’s chair. He introduced a nine-year-old named Sofia, who had come through two operations and benefited from donations to last year’s event. Ma went through one tissue and took my pocket square as insurance.
After the program, a band started up with 70s covers. Tables emptied toward the floor and the bars.
I was bringing Ma a coffee when Rafe appeared.
It wasn’t either of our doing. A knot of donors shifted, somebody’s chair backed out, and then there was nobody left between us. “Niko,” he said, approaching with his hand out.
I kept my grip on the coffee in my right hand and offered my left to shake. It was brief and firm.
“Rafe.”
“It’s an outstanding event,” he said. “They do so much good. Did you see the video? The one with Sofia?”
“I saw it.”
He nodded toward the silent auction table. “Somebody bid four hundred dollars on my jersey. I told Mark they could’ve asked for more; I have a bunch of them.”
The comment was warm, funny, and perfectly Rafe. It was nothing like the man who showed up late at my shop.
That was a Rafe who talked so fast that the sentences collided with each other. He stepped forward and kissed me before either of us could stop it. And we hadn’t spoken since.
“I finally got the Ravenswood shelves out,” I said. “The client checked them with a level.”
“Did they pass?” he asked.
“Five for five.”
“Good,” he said, “that’s—that’s good.”
Behind him, Mark steered a donor couple toward us, with Max following behind.
“Enjoy the night,” Rafe said, and placed his hand briefly on my shoulder.
I carried the coffee to Ma. She drank it while pointing out which board member was wearing real emeralds.
My phone buzzed in my jacket pocket. I pulled it out and then held it below the edge of the table.
It was a photo of a musical instrument. Strings crossed over each other above a body of honey-colored wood the size of a kitchen table. There was part of a folding chair in the corner of the frame.
Rafe: saw this at Varga’s church thing last weekend. it’s called a cimbalom. what’s the wood?
I looked up. Forty feet away, Rafe stood in a knot of donors with Max, his phone nowhere in sight, laughing at the right volume at the right moment. Somehow, he had sent the message from inside all that.
I typed back:
Niko: The soundboard is probably spruce. The frame’s probably beech. Why was there a cimbalom at a church?
Rafe: hungarian fundraiser. there was dancing. a woman named Marta taught me the steps
Rafe: the whole thing was strung like the inside of a piano. I stood there ten minutes
I watched Rafe and saw him glance down once.
Niko: Ten minutes is right for a cimbalom.
Rafe: how long for a dovetail?
I did my best to suppress the goofy smile trying to fill my face. Ma would ask about it.
Niko: Longer.
I danced once with Ma. She didn’t have to teach me the steps. She’d already done that twenty years ago in the kitchen with me standing on her feet.
Between the time with Ma and the exchange with Rafe, it was one of the best nights I’d known in recent history. It was a great evening for those in attendance, too. The wing got its funding, and the world saw Max and Rafe at a major event.
On the way back to their house, Ma recapped the entire night to Dad. She’d taken her shoes off in the backseat and smiled all the way.
“The chicken was better than at Eleni’s wedding,” she said to me. “Don’t tell Eleni’s mother I said that.”
“When would I tell her that, Ma?”
“Don’t tell anyone. You’d be surprised how things travel.” She handed back my pocket square. “Two million dollars for the little hearts. People can be wonderful, you know. Sometimes they forget how they can be.”
“It was a good night,” Dad said.
“And the boys,” Ma added. “When they came into the room together, everyone stopped what they were doing, Niko. My mother cleaned offices two blocks from the Palmer House, and now Max walked in the front door with cameras flashing. You were at the table with me when it happened. Both of my boys. I’ll remember this night. ”
The shop was dark when I got back. I didn’t turn the lights on. I stood in the streetlight coming through the storefront glass, and at the end of the bench, square to the edge, the block plane remained where Rafe put it.
I read the cimbalom thread once more on the stairs.
Three days passed, and I made progress on the blanket chest. Max and Rafe were all over social media and even a mention in the Chicago Tribune.
I was sawing the last of the white oak when my phone buzzed. Then it buzzed three more times in quick succession. I assumed they were all from Max. When I looked, they weren’t, but they were about Max—and Rafe.