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His deep voice rumbles over me and I tuck myself closer.
“Start with when you were born and end with today.”
“That’s a long story.” There’s humor in his voice. “And you know it already. You lived it with me.”
“Pretend we just met. Remember?”
His fingers drift through the ends of my hair and kiss over the back of my neck. My hair curls there, damp with sweat from the heat. He rubs the silk of my hair between his fingers. All the while his other hand strokes slowly over my back.
I float in a haze and my eyelids flutter, pulling me into a dream sleep, where he begins in a lulling voice, “We moved back to the island when I was seven. It was because of me my family left, and it was because of me we returned.”
23
The soft,dreamlike scent of lavender oil drifts up from the round mortar. I lean closer as Luis Forscham, our enamel expert, mixes another drop of oil into the enamel powder. He carefully turns the pestle, a scraping hum sounding over the hum of the air conditioning.
We’re at Luis’s work station, on the third floor of Production, opposite the Abry Headquarters. His wide work table is lit with the natural light that spills from the tall windows and bounces off the clean white walls. He’s a careful, slow-moving man in his early seventies, with a long white mustache and stooped shoulders. He perches on his tall wooden stool and hunches over his work, taking slow, infinitesimal movements.
I’m so excited that I press my lips together to keep from urging, “Hurry, hurry, I want to see it!”
Some people think age has made Luis slow-moving, but I’ve known him since my dad introduced us twenty-five years ago, and he was slow-moving then too. Every motion he makes is deliberate and his hands are unbelievably steady. It’s key for the precise work he does, sometimes with a paint brush that is one single hair.
Luis makes another twist of the pestle, grinding the fine, sand-like powder with expert patience.
His work area is quiet except for the scrape of his movements and the ticking of the clock on the wall. Behind me Daniel shifts, waiting for my judgment.
I rushed into his office this morning, waving my notebook at him, talking so fast he couldn’t understand a word I said. After he thrust a cup of coffee my way I sat down and showed him my sketch.
When I fell asleep in McCormick’s arms, I woke up back in my own bed. I felt rested, at peace, with a warm sense of contentment I haven’t felt in years. And in my mind I saw a watch. A beautiful watch.
“Is that it?” Daniel whispers, tilting his head to see over Luis’s shoulder. Just like me, he knows that you whisper when Luis is at work.
I smile.
I’m captured by the sea-green and iridescent blue powders coalescing in the lavender oil, flowing like the sea rolling over the beach. The color pulls at me. It’s as if I’m back on the island, in McCormick’s arms, looking out over the water.
“That’s it,” I whisper, excitement pinching my chest. “That’s the exact color I envisioned.”
“Hmm,” Luis says, taking a pencil and scratching notations on his notepad.
When he sets his pencil down he slowly turns on his stool, holding the mortar for me to see. As he shifts it the colors swirl and dance in the sunlight, just like the waves of the sea.
“You can replicate this? You can create a dial with these colors and make it look like the sea falling over a white sand beach?”
Luis looks at me as if I just insulted his ancestors and all his unborn great-grandchildren. His white mustache quivers, and slowly he sets the mortar on his table. “You doubt me?”
“No,” Daniel says.
I smile. “Thank you, Luis.”
He nods and then, without saying goodbye, he turns back to his station to tinker and take more notes.
Daniel and I let ourselves out and head down the long hall toward the elevators. It’s early evening and I’m late in getting home. Everyone except Luis has already left for the day. It’s quiet and our footsteps echo as we walk down the hallway.
Daniel glances at me out of the corner of his eye. “I haven’t seen you this excited about a prototype in years.”
He’s tired today. Or maybe he’s tired every day and I haven’t noticed because I’ve been tired too. And busy. I suppose when you keep yourself busy you fail to notice the small things. Like how your brother has purple smudges under his eyes and his hair is messy, as if he’s been running his hand through it in frustration.
His shoulders are tight and there’s a firmness around his mouth that wasn’t there a few years ago. Maybe I’m only noticing it now because of how relaxed I feel. How invigorated.
