Niko
Chapter twenty-two
The glue in Ruth Kowalski’s chair had cured overnight, and the joints held.
I took the clamps off one at a time, set the chair on the floor, and pressed down on the seat with both hands.
Nothing moved. The wire was gone; the screws were in a coffee can, and underneath all of it the original mortise and tenon did the work it had been cut to do in a factory decades ago.
I sat on it. It took my weight without comment.
The shop phone rang at four minutes past eight.
I let the machine get it. My answering machine was old, a real one with a tape in it, because clients liked leaving messages for a person instead of a menu.
The phone rang again before the first caller finished.
Then it rang several more times, and somewhere in the middle of the morning the tape ran out, and the machine started answering with a tone.
I opened my laptop on the workbench.
My website had a photograph of the shop, my hours, and a phone number. It also had an email address, and I’d received 311 new messages in the past twenty-four hours. They came from all over.
A woman in Naperville wanted a table like the one in the video. There was no table in the video. There was a bench, a wall of clamps, and me on a stool, but she’d seen a table in it somewhere, and she wanted that one.
A man wrote two paragraphs about his renovation and closed by asking me to build whatever Rafe would like.
Two interview requests arrived, worded almost identically, both saying I was a top-flight story.
Message 240 had a subject line that said walnut sideboard, 54 inches, question about rail height.
I opened it. A man in Evanston had found the site in the fall, before any of the latest news, and had been saving toward a piece since.
He’d measured his wall twice and included both numbers.
He wanted to know whether a lower rail would look wrong under his window. That was probably better asked of Max.
The phone rang again into the dead machine.
I’d spent years building a life where noise didn’t reach me, and now it was in my shop, ringing the phone off the wall.
I put Ruth’s chair by the front window, where she’d see it first thing when she walked in, and I was writing her bill when the bell over the door rang. Max came in with coffee in each hand.
“Don’t say anything,” he said. “I’ve got it handled. All of it. Sit down, drink your nasty dark roast, and behold me.”
I sat. He handed me the coffee, correctly black, set his own on the bench, and took out his phone. He cleared his throat like a man about to read a proclamation.
“First, the good news, and it’s all good news.
The mattress people rescinded.” He thumbed the screen.
“I want to read you the rescission, because I’ve read it nine times and it gets better each time.
Given the evolving nature of the narrative, we feel the alignment is no longer optimal for the Duped brand family.
“ He looked up. “The Duped brand family, Niko. They have an entire family of brands. I was going to be their newest son.”
“You’ll get over it.”
“I already have. The morning show pulled the car service. My manager sent me one email with no words in it, just a link to an article about creators who peaked.” He set the phone on the bench between us.
“The sympathy money is dead, every dollar. I killed it all, and I have never slept better in my life.” He picked his coffee back up. “You’ve seen it, I assume.”
“Seen what?”
“Niko.”
“I’ve been working.”
He turned the phone around to face me.
It was a headline from one of the entertainment sites. It said MEET THE CRAFTSMAN BOYFRIEND.
I read it twice.
“I’m the craftsman boyfriend?” I asked.
“You are.”
“Shouldn’t craftsman be the noun? In that headline, it’s the adjective.”
“Ask Rafe.” Max chuckled.
“I was a craftsman for a decade before I was anyone’s boyfriend.”
“Grammar is the part that bothers you. I’m putting that in my diary.
” He took the phone back. “It’s everywhere, by the way.
Four outlets picked up the phrase within a day.
It has what we call stickiness, which I know you’ll hate, so let me tell you what I’m doing about it.
” He set the coffee down and squared himself to me.
“Nothing. That’s the plan. You give no interviews, make no statements, and post nothing. People won’t be able to find you, and soon they’ll give up looking.”
“The phone hasn’t stopped ringing this morning.”
“That’s the one thing.” He held up a finger.
“Take your phone number off the website today. I’ll set up a form.
People leave you a message that goes into a folder.
Once a week you look at the folder, or you don’t.
I built one for you this morning.” He turned the phone around again.
On the screen was a plain gray box with my shop’s name over it, and under the box, an automatic reply he’d written: Niko Gregory is not taking new commissions at this time.
I read it and handed the phone back.
“Change it to a waitlist.”
Max paused. “A waitlist?”
“Not taking new commissions ever is retirement. I’m not retired.”
“A waitlist,” he said, typing. “The craftsman boyfriend has an eighteen-month waitlist. Niko, I couldn’t build you better marketing with a budget.
Do you understand that everything you do to get away from this makes it worse in the best possible way?
No. Don’t answer.” He finished typing and pocketed the phone.
“The form’s live. The number comes down within the hour.
If any reporter gets through anyway, you say nothing.
Hang up and text me, and I’ll handle it without ever bringing it up again. ”
“You won’t hurt anyone, will you?”
Max laughed. He picked up his coffee and drank it. “Everything flipped at the arena already. The day after the video, the boos ended.”
“You did that.”
“I did, didn’t I?” He smiled and gathered himself up to go, patting his pockets. I retrieved his sunglasses from the finishing bench and held them out. He took them and then stopped at the door.
“Tacos this Sunday. Ma’s expecting both of you. And Niko, the form has a field where they describe what they want. You’re going to want to read some of those out loud at dinner. There are a lot of unwell people in the world.”
As soon as he left, the phone rang into the full mailbox one more time. I unplugged the machine from the wall.
Five minutes after Max left, the bell above the door rang, and Rafe walked in carrying a paper bag.
“Practice ran short,” he said. “Markel’s saving our legs for the game tomorrow. I brought sandwiches for lunch.”
He put the bag on the end of the bench, took his coat off, and sat on a stool. “Banh mi,” he said. “I hope I pronounced it right. Kieran suggested it.” He unwrapped both of our sandwiches.
He stayed for twenty more minutes after we finished eating. His phone chimed.
“That means nap time in fifteen minutes. We’re going to dinner at Heath and Kieran’s after.”
I let him go. Naps were crucial equipment for an elite hockey forward.
“Tomorrow’s game is against Minnesota,” he said. “Eight o’clock start because of the broadcast.”
He reached for my chin, gave me a quick kiss, and then was gone.
Tomorrow would be the second home game since the video.
***
Heath and Kieran’s building had a doorman who was expecting us. Rafe had texted ahead, so the wine I was carrying had already been discussed.
Varga met us at the apartment door. He didn’t say hello. He held out one hand, and I put the bottle in it. Squinting, he read the label at arm’s length.
“Zinfandel,” he announced. “The carpenter brings zinfandel.” He turned it and read the back. Then he looked at me over the bottle. “This is correct. Come in. If it had been Pinot Noir, you could still have come in, but I would have had to make a note on my phone.”
The apartment was crowded, and it smelled of garlic and browned meat.
I recognized all the players from TV broadcasts.
Trier was on the couch with a beer. Rook had claimed an old, overstuffed chair.
Heath was in the kitchen doorway wearing the walleye apron, and past him Kieran stood at the stove with steam going up around his face.
Rafe immediately turned the conversation toward me. “Niko, tell them about the CNC contract offer.”
“A company offered to send me a robot that cuts joinery,” I said, “because of a video that featured my hands.”
Trier nodded slowly. “That’s the most corporate thing I’ve ever heard, and my skates have a sponsor.
” He pointed his beer at me. “While I have you. Cat trees. I’m looking at one online that claims to be solid wood, and the reviews are split.
Peaches is fourteen and deserves better than particleboard. What am I looking for to verify?”
“Weight,” I said. “If the shipping’s cheap, it’s not genuine wood.”
“Weight.” He sat back, satisfied. “I knew it would be something easy like that.”
Dinner was short ribs by popular demand, and the table talk was mostly hockey.
Rook talked about Minnesota’s forecheck.
Rafe said their third pair would get caught flat if you made them turn twice.
Rook said after next season analyzing the clips would become Rafe’s job because Rook would be sitting in a recliner at home watching movies.
“You’ll be at half the practices and all the games,” Varga said.
“I’ll be at some games,” he said. “The good ones.”
Almost everyone migrated to the living room, but I stayed in the kitchen with Kieran, offering my services. He washed the dishes, and I dried. Neither of us spoke. There was plenty of conversation drifting toward us from the living room.
In the truck, on the way back to my shop, Rafe talked the whole way. He talked about Rook and retirement, and whether Peaches would even like the cat tree. He had at least one thing to say about everyone at the dinner.
***
The booing had stopped. Max said so, and he would never lie about that. On the morning of the game, I decided I wanted to see it for myself, in person.
I opened my laptop.
The seat map came up, ring after ring of little colored dots, and the site and I disagreed immediately about where the good seats were.
It kept steering me into the lower bowl, center ice, seats it said offered a premium experience.
They would be the seats where the camera would surely find me and broadcast my face in sports media across the country.
There was an alternative, but I’d decided against it. I could have texted Rafe, and he’d get me put on a list where I’d end up sitting next to the wives of players. Mark could do his magic, too. He’d shaken Ma’s hand at the Palmer House and given her a number to call.
Any of those would have worked, but they would have turned my presence into an event. I didn’t want the machine to see me. I only wanted to be present in the building.
In the upper bowl, there were entire rows of dots nobody wanted. I found a section high in a corner, twelve rows from the roof. From up there, I would depend on the jumbotron to read faces, and no camera in the building would have a reason to point at me. The site called the section value seating.
I picked my seat and checked out.