Page 47 of Home Ice

“Hold this.”

He put a thumb on the end of the tape at the corner, and I walked it out to the far side. When I came back for it, our knuckles brushed.

“You can let go now.”

“Right.” He let go. “Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize to a tape measure.”

“I was apologizing to you.”

“That’s probably worse.”

He laughed—a short, sharp sound. I placed my hand flat on the wall and ran it along the length as I walked from one corner to the other.

“The floor’s not level.”

“Is that bad?”

“Quarter inch across ten feet. Every wall in this city is out of plumb. Buildings settle.” I let the tape snap back. “The piece’ll sit tight on this end and show daylight under the other. It’s nothing. I’m telling you so when you see it, you don’t think it’s a problem with the table.”

“Okay,” he said. “You could have not told me.”

“You would eventually have seen it.”

“I wouldn’t have.”

“You would.” I looked at him. “You stared at a bar in Dallas.”

He blushed slightly and looked at the tape measure in my hand.

I positioned the console where I wanted it, slightly off-center with the tapestry. It fit better with the colors in the weaving.

“In the afternoon,” I said. “Three or four o’clock this time of year, that window’s going to lay light straight across the top of this. Walnut turns red in low sun. You’ll get forty minutes of it and then it’s gone.”

“I’m not usually here at three.”

“Then you’ll see it in the summer.”

He looked at the table under the weaving for a long moment.

“That’s better,” he said. “That’s a lot better. They look like they match each other.”

“They don’t. One came off a mountain in South America and one came off a slab I bought here in Chicago. They’ve got nothing to do with each other.”

Rafe kept looking at them.

“Sure,” he said.

Down in the lobby, Max had propped himself against the fake plant with his phone up, thumb going.

“It took twenty minutes to get to the elevator,” he said without looking up. “In a six-story building. What were you doing up there?”

“Measuring.”

He looked up from the phone. “Okay. So I’ll swing back Tuesday and get the table on my way to the—“

“Leave it.”