Page 82 of Home Ice

Rafe: what’s the lesson

Trier: don’t buy in bulk on faith.

The next day, I started to draft a text message that had nothing to do with wood.

did I do something?

I looked at it for a long time. My thumb hovered over the send arrow, and I thought about Niko rinsing the mugs and his head down over the bench in the dark.

I hadn’t done anything. I deleted the message one letter at a time.

That night I followed my usual routine: alarm set, backup alarm set, phone on the nightstand, and shoes by the door with the toes even, and I lay in the dark, trying to sleep.

Sometime after midnight the ceiling lit up.

It was the light from my cellphone screen, hitting the ceiling in a pale rectangle. I heard multiple buzzes, one after another, and reached over.

The team chat had eleven new messages, and above it, at the top of the screen, sat the notification that started it all.

Max had posted a video.

Chapter twenty

Niko

The chisels were already sharp, but I sharpened them anyway.

I worked through the entire rack in order, coarse stone to fine, stropped each one, and checked the edges against my thumbnail. Every edge caught.

The blanket chest had gone out two days ago. The client met me at her door and ran her hand over the lid and said it was more than she’d hoped for. I drove home with the blankets she’d wrapped the payment in, because she insisted the check ride inside something soft.

A new commission sat milled and stickered on the bench, a hall table in cherry for a couple in Andersonville. I stood over it with the marking gauge in my hand and then put it down.

You don’t cut when half your mind is somewhere else. It was a rule, and my mind hadn’t been somewhere else as consistently since my grandfather passed three years ago.

I’d been right. I kept arriving at that as I stood over the cherry. I’d offered him an invitation to move us forward, and I’d spent weeks learning the difference between his real yes and the other one precisely so I couldn’t be fooled when it mattered. He gave me one of the empty answers, and I’d closed us down. I was right.

A decade of clients had taught me what being right was worth. It was worth exactly the price of the piece. It fixed nothing, and it built nothing new. A correct diagnosis of rot doesn’t save the board. I had the diagnosis, but I didn’t have Rafe.

My phone buzzed on the tool tray a little after nine.

Rafe: finished sanding the practice board. 320 felt like glass at the end

I read it standing at the bench. He’d kept the practice board and worked through the sanding grits alone in his apartment.

I typed: That’s the surface telling you it’s done. Bring it by and I’ll show you what oil does to it. Shop’s open tomorrow.

I looked at it. My reflex was to offer an invitation as always. He’d taken it every time, and every time he walked through my door I got more of him. At least that’s what I thought.

I deleted the message and finally sent my response that night.

Niko: That’s the surface telling you it’s done. Anything past 320 on oak just burnishes it and the finish won’t take.

It was factually true and nothing more. It was the answer you’d get from any seasoned woodworker.

I cleaned the stones and wiped down the bench. At the end, square to the edge, the block plane sat where Rafe left it. I picked it up and put it away.

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