Chapter 20 #2
His desk had a stack of deliveries on it.
Someone had put a box of screws on his chair, then a note asking whoever moved it to leave it where it could be found.
Jonah carried the box to the supply cupboard and came back to discover that his mug had been washed and put upside down on a paper towel.
He stood looking at it until someone called his name.
Ben stopped outside the doorway. He had a set of drawings under his arm and a pencil tucked behind his ear, already reaching for it as he spoke.
“I thought you were coming tomorrow,” he said. “They’ve sent the kitchen through again. The window’s moved.”
“I saw the email.” Jonah took off his coat. “I haven’t got to it.”
“No rush. I mean, there is, but I’m doing it.” Ben set the drawings on the corner of the desk. “I didn’t know you were coming in when I said I’d take it.”
Jonah put the coat on the back of his chair.
The kitchen was his job. He’d been to the house twice, once in the rain because the customer wanted him to see where water came through the unfinished roof; he could remember standing in their hallway with his wet coat under one arm while they argued about a wall they’d never agreed to remove.
Now his own notes lay beneath Ben’s hand.
“I can do it,” he said. He pulled the top sheet free. “You don’t need to start again.”
Ben stepped back. “I’ve already done most of it.”
Jonah looked at the figures in the margin. They were legible, sensible, probably right. He wanted to find something wrong with them badly enough that he turned the page before he had finished reading.
“You haven’t included the extra disposal,” he said. He tapped the lower corner. “The side access is too narrow. We talked about taking it through the house.”
“It’s on the next page.” Ben waited while he turned it over. “Under the temporary protection.”
It was there. Jonah could feel his face getting hot; he put both sheets on the desk and went to switch on the monitor, forgetting he’d unplugged it before the last long weekend. Ben watched him check the cable and said nothing.
“I only came for these,” Jonah said at last. He gathered the drawings he’d originally wanted, which were for a different job. “I’ll leave you to the kitchen.”
Ben didn’t move away immediately. Somewhere in the office a printer stopped, and Jonah heard two men arguing about a delivery address. He wanted to join them, to ask what was wrong, to have somebody hand him a normal problem before Ben asked the question he seemed to be preparing.
“I’m sorry about when I ran into you,” Ben said. He had taken the pencil from behind his ear and was turning it between his fingers. “You looked rough afterward. I shouldn’t have kept you talking.”
Jonah sat and adjusted the chair, which had sunk lower than he expected. Ben stayed near the desk, giving him room, but Jonah could still feel the touch on his shoulder beside the refrigerated shelves.
“You didn’t know,” he said. His voice sounded flat. “I wasn’t expecting anyone.”
Ben nodded and turned toward the corridor. Jonah said his name before he reached the doorway. He had rehearsed the next sentence in the car and discarded every version.
“I was assaulted,” he said. He kept his hands on the desk. “At that party. That’s why I’ve been off.”
Ben came to a stop. For a moment Jonah could see him trying to work out whether he’d heard correctly, and wanted to call him back into the room simply to end the terrible distance between them.
“Christ,” Ben said. He lowered the drawings. “I didn’t know.”
“I know you didn’t.” Jonah looked at the mug. “I don’t want everyone asking.”
“Of course.” Ben spoke too quickly, then began again. “I won’t say anything.”
Jonah could feel his heart beating against the front of his shirt. Ben offered coffee, and he said yes, glad to have something else to answer.
While Ben was gone, Jonah opened the drawing he needed.
The page showed a bathroom with a sloping ceiling and a window the customer wanted to keep.
He knew where to begin: the fixtures, the access, the old floor they wouldn’t know enough about until it came up.
He wrote three items on a pad and stopped when his hand began to shake.
His manager came in with a question about whether he intended to stay.
Jonah said he’d take the work home, then heard himself ask for two mornings the following week.
The arrangement took a few minutes. They agreed which jobs he would handle and which he would leave with Ben; his manager wrote the days down, asked him to send a message if they changed, and went back to a ringing phone.
By eleven Jonah was hungry. He hadn’t expected to be there long enough for lunch, and finding himself irritated that he hadn’t brought anything made him stay another ten minutes. Ben returned his mug full, left it near the lamp, and asked whether he remembered the width of the kitchen doorway.
“The outside one or the one they’ve now decided to move?” Jonah asked. Ben pulled a chair over and showed him the drawing.
They talked for fifteen minutes. Jonah corrected one measurement and found another he’d entered wrongly himself; Ben crossed it out without commenting.
The coffee cooled beside them. When Jonah finally stood, he had an answer to the window question and three jobs to check at home, which was more than he’d intended to take and less than he’d tried to promise.
In the car he called Summer. She answered breathlessly, with the mixer running behind her, and asked whether she could call back in five minutes.
“Yes,” he said. He rested his head against the seat. “I’m outside work. I’ll be here.”
“Did it go all right?” she asked. The machine stopped abruptly.
“Go and finish,” he told her. “I’m not going anywhere.”
She took eight minutes. He counted them, looked at the phone twice, and then saw Ben crossing the parking lot with someone from the office. They waved at him without stopping, and Jonah raised his hand before returning to the drawings on the passenger seat.
When Summer called, he told her he’d stayed longer than he’d meant to.
She asked about the bathroom, confusing it with a different job until he reminded her about the woman who wanted to keep a pink bath.
Summer remembered that at once; she had liked the bath from the photographs and had been offended on its behalf when he said it would probably have to go.
“I told Ben what happened,” Jonah said. He hadn’t meant to interrupt her account of a pink bathroom she’d seen online, but he couldn’t keep listening while the sentence waited.
She went quiet. He heard something scrape against the workbench, then the door close behind her.
“What made you tell him?” Summer asked. Her voice was quieter now; he could no longer hear the mixer.
“He kept apologizing for the supermarket,” Jonah said. Through the windshield he could see the office window, the lamp he’d left on. “I didn’t want another conversation about him touching my shoulder. So I said it.”
Summer drew a breath he could hear. “Was he all right about it?”
“He brought coffee.” Jonah smiled a little. “Then he asked me where I’d put a measurement. I wanted to kiss him for that.”
“Please don’t,” Summer said. “You’ll have to explain that too.” He laughed before he could stop himself, and she began to laugh on the other end of the phone.
He drove home with the drawings on the seat beside him. At the house he put the kettle on, then changed his mind about tea and made a sandwich. He was halfway through it when the exhaustion caught him: a heavy, sick weariness that sent him to the sofa with his shoes still on.
Summer found him there at four. He woke to her putting her keys on the table and said he’d finished nothing, although she hadn’t asked. She looked at the drawings spread across the kitchen and told him he could put the rest away before she started dinner.
“I’ve brought pasta,” she said. She opened the cupboard, found the two packets from Tuesday, and closed it again. “Apparently that’s all either of us can buy.”
He sat up, rubbing his face. “I said I’d check something for Ben.”
“Does he need it tonight?” Summer asked. “Because I’m going to want that table.”
Jonah found his phone beneath a cushion and checked the message. “Tomorrow. I told him tomorrow.”
She went to hang up the coat. Jonah took the drawings back into the kitchen and separated what he needed from the sheets he could roll away, while Summer put water on.
When she asked him to move his elbow so she could get to the salt, he obeyed without looking up.
A few minutes later she put a spoon to his mouth and asked whether it needed more salt.
He said no, and she added pepper instead.