2. Dust in My Hair, Water at My Feet
DUST IN MY HAIR, WATER AT MY FEET
OWEN
I pull off one of my work gloves and wipe my forehead with the back of my hand before I move to the next seat in the historical theater we’re restoring.
My guys and I have a good assembly line going.
They unbolt the chair, remove the armrests, and pull off the seat and back cushions before it comes to me.
Then I inspect it for wood rot, broken springs, rusted fasteners, and the status of the upholstery before bagging and tagging, and another of my guys hauls it off to the appropriate storage container for restoration.
We do it all to some of my favorite sounds—the whine of a power saw, the screech of a nail being removed, the groan of a bolt being turned for the first time in over a century, the whir of a power drill. They’re the sounds of exciting things happening .
I flinch when I hear a clatter and a muffled curse before twisting to see a strip of molding fall to the ground and break into pieces. “Oops,” Luis says as he climbs down his ladder.
“Careful,” I say, “this molding is older than your great-grandma.”
“She was one tough lady,” Luis says. “She probably would’ve told it not to be so brittle.”
I shake my head, chuckling. I found a manufacturer who can match the design of the molding exactly, and their work is beautiful. So we’ll get this place looking like its old, glorious self, only without all the wood rot.
A bit of movement draws my eyes up to one of the ornate balcony boxes, and I squint.
It was probably a mouse. Again. Luckily, we’ve finished all of the foundation stabilizing, roof repairs, window replacing, and fixing most of the masonry work on the outside of the building.
Except for days like today when we’ve got doors open to the outside to haul out the seats, we’ve got this building all closed up, so we shouldn’t have a problem for too much longer.
“We should name them,” I say. “The mice. Like tiny theater goers.”
“That one in box two is definitely a Harold,” Grady says as he removes an armrest.
As I finish up with a seat, I stand to give my back a stretch and give my old knee injury a break.
I look at this theater that’s been around for more than 112 years, at the high, arched ceiling with its medallions, the hand-carved posts piled against the wall, waiting to be stripped and refinished.
The ghosts of chandeliers long gone. The way the afternoon light hits the curved back wall, the delicate relief work just waiting to be uncovered after a century of aging.
It all makes me feel the familiar flicker that I love. This place is going to be beautiful again—I can see it already. Even if no one else can.
I don’t notice Luis coming up behind me until he says, “It’s starting to come alive again.”
I nod. “She’s waking up.”
“You really do love this part, don’t you?”
There’s so much potential in broken things. It’s hard not to love it. I shrug and say, “Everyone deserves a comeback. Even buildings.”
From where he’s working to free a bolt connecting one of the seats to the floor, Trent says, “Does your opinion on putting down roots deserve a comeback, too? Because I think Cipher Springs would grow on you if you gave it a chance.”
I chuckle and give him a practiced smile. Then I reach out and run my hand gently along the edge of a plaster medallion on the front of the stage, feeling the bumps of its ornate design beneath my fingertips.
Don’t get too comfortable.
That’s my rule. My very firm rule. I’ll be here, restoring The Shadowridge for maybe eight months.
Then it’s packing tape, a new zip code, and a new project for me.
That’s what the job is. That’s what my agreement with myself is.
Well, with myself and with the contract I signed to restore a historic train station in Philadelphia as soon as I’m done here.
I look up again at the faded velvet of the balcony boxes and the light filtering through the upper windows. I might not stick around to enjoy it, but this place is going to be beautiful again.
I pull into my driveway, and the moment I get out of my car, I look at the townhome connected to mine on the left, just as one of my neighbors, Reese, waves, says hi, and pushes her roommate, Charlie, out the front door.
They’re both looking at me, Reese with a pleased expression and Charlie with a shocked one.
“Hi,” I say as I start walking up our common sidewalk before it splits off to our separate stairs. “I’m not used to having a welcoming committee.”
Charlie laughs nervously, and I smile. I like Charlie. Ever since the first time I met her, I’ve found myself smiling whenever she’s around.
“We, uh, have a water leak,” she says. “I know you’re just getting home from spending all day doing things like this,”—she shoots Reese a look—“but do you mind checking it out?”
Do I mind assisting someone who needs my help?
Especially if that help is something I’m skilled at and gives me a chance to be impressive in front of a woman I’m attracted to?
No, no, I do not mind. “Lead the way. I’ve been battling legions of dust all day, so a water mystery will be a nice change. ”
We walk into their townhome, and I can immediately see that the layout is an exact mirror image of mine.
I’ve only been living in mine for a little over six weeks, and I don’t plan to stay long-term, so the walls are as plain as the day I moved in.
This place, though, is instantly warm and welcoming.
Plus, it smells good. And here I am, bringing the scent of old wood, a whole lot of dust, a hundred years of stories, and my best attempt to do them justice with me.
But it’s not like I can say, “Hang on. Let me go shower and get smelling nice first.”
We head past what I know are the laundry room and a bathroom on the right and the backside of a flight of stairs on the left on our way to the kitchen.
I’m guessing Charlie and Reese came home and discovered the leak not long before I pulled up, because it looks like they are in the middle of cleaning up the water.
A few soaking wet bath towels are spread on the floor, and a couple of smaller towels are draped over the divider between both sinks.
The doors to the cabinet beneath the sink are open, and it looks like everything normally stored there has been moved to the countertop.
“Sorry about the mess,” Charlie says as she moves the towels to the sink and grabs an unused one from the counter to dry the floor in front of the cabinet.
“It’s okay,” I say as I kneel down in front of the sink.
“This is what a water leak looks like.” There isn’t an obvious leak from the water lines or the drainage pipe, so I grab another towel from the stack and dry the water lines leading from the hot and cold shut-off valves to the faucet.
I give it a moment, and then I test the lines—they’re completely dry.
I check, and they hadn’t already turned off the valves here, so if it was from these lines, they’d still be leaking.
I pull my head out from under the sink to see that water is slowly seeping from under the cabinet onto the floor where Charlie had just dried. I look up at the two women. “Do you want the good news or the bad news first?”
“Bad,” Charlie says, biting her lip. “No, good.”
I stand. “Well, those flexible, braided stainless steel supply lines are in good shape. So are your drain pipes. The shut-off valves look good, too.”
Both Charlie and Reese nod warily, just waiting for the “but.” And it’s a big one that’s hitting me at least as hard as it’s going to be hitting them in about two seconds .
“But that means that the leak is either in the wall or coming from my side.” My kitchen sink and theirs are back-to-back, connected to the same wall that separates our townhomes.
Reese’s eyes go wide, and Charlie gasps, a hand flying to her mouth. As they both stand there, stunned, I ask, “Can I go into your laundry room to shut off the water?”
“Yes, of course,” Charlie says as she hurries back toward the front door, I’m assuming to open the door to their washroom. Instead, she races inside first. I come in just as I see she’s flinging a few items of clothing into a laundry basket that’s sitting on top of her washer.
I smile, just thinking of the first time we met.
Her washer had been broken, so she’d gone to the Laundromat and washed her laundry there, then brought the wet clothes back home in a couple of garbage bags to dry them in her dryer.
One of the bags caught on a rose bush by our sidewalk, and as I pulled into the driveway, she was leaving a trail of clothes, all Hansel-and-Gretel-breadcrumb-like behind her, including a few unmentionables.
I can tell by the blush on Charlie’s cheeks that she’s thinking of the same thing. If nothing else, the incident had given me a chance to introduce myself to my ridiculously cute neighbor.
I open the panel in the wall, shut off the valve, and then the three of us head out of their townhome, down their steps, and up the steps to mine.
And as we do, I start wishing I’d washed that pan I’d cooked eggs in this morning, along with the plate and fork I used.
Maybe wiped down the counter and scrubbed my sink.
Is it weird that I’m hoping for water on my floor to distract them from things I haven’t cleaned?
The second we get to my kitchen, which is an exact mirror image of Charlie’s and Reese’s, we spot water. This time, both Charlie and Reese gasp. The puddle is a good five feet wide.
I run my hands over my face. I take my desire for a distraction back—I’m no longer hoping for water. I open the doors to my under-the-sink cabinet. It’s clear it’s not coming from my hot and cold water supply lines, which means it is coming from the wall.
I step up to the puddle, stopping right before my boot touches the puddle so I have a marker to make it easier to tell if the size of the puddle is increasing, and I make myself stay still for a good thirty seconds as I watch. Slowly but surely, it gets bigger.
I hurry to my washroom, grateful that Charlie and Reese didn’t follow, because with the load of laundry I’ve got waiting to go in, the room also smells like hard work and buildings that refuse to quit, and I turn off the water to my townhome.
When I go back out to the kitchen, Reese is on the phone with our landlord, explaining the problem.
I paste on a smile and say to Charlie, “Well, I have more potentially good news for you. It looks like the pipe coming to my side of the wall is leaking, which means that yours likely isn’t.
So you might be able to turn your water back on tonight without it causing any problems.”
Charlie is looking at me with what I can only describe as a relieved grimace. I’m guessing the relieved part is for her situation, and the grimace is for mine. From what I’m hearing on Reese’s end of the line, it sounds like the landlord is going to get someone on it quickly.
So I paste on a smile and say, “I’m sure it’ll be fixed in no time. And don’t worry about me—I can shower off the scent of ‘restoration grit with a side of progress’ at the gym.”