I nodded. Things were already different. We came up against the bewildering absence of Nana every day. Breakfast was cold now, and late. My braid had unraveled to a ponytail, and the week before the batteries for my favorite doll had died, leaving her with an open, frozen mouth where she used to chew from a little plastic spoon. Now the doll’s mouth seemed to be screaming mutely, endlessly. I had put the doll under my bed, then in my toy box, before finally wrapping her in a rag and burying her in the garbage can on the curb outside.
“Nana was good at this,” my mother was saying. “For me it’s harder. We’re—I’m going to have to figure out what to do about money. Maybe get a second job. I don’t know.”
“I can get a job,” I piped, aware this was childish. But Nana would have expected me to find a way to help.
My mom took her hand from her pocket and laid it on top of my head. “You’re a little young for that, squirt.”
She took my hand. Hers was cold and thin as a bird’s wing. She smiled down at me, her face dewed with raindrops, melted somehow, as if all the bones under her skin had dissolved. It was the expression of the smallest on the playground, the soft, malleable face of directionless fear.
Jack and I get out of the truck and stand together, blinking at the moon’s smug roundness, listening to the clicks of the cooling engine.
“Makes you feel small, doesn’t it?” he says.
“And alone.”
“You’re not alone, you’re with me.”
I look up at him. His face is all planes and lines, and skin like a tarp stretched over the bones. He lights a cigarette, holds it between two fingers while he plucks a strand of hair from my cheek with his thumb and ring finger.
“First star,” I say. “Let’s make a wish.”
He smiles from inside the cage of his glasses.
“Careful what you wish for, little box thief. You might get it.”
“What do you imagine I’m wishing for?”
“Comfort. Same as the rest of us.” He peers at me through the smoke. “Or maybe not. Maybe it’s something else for you.”
He produces a stack of blankets from the backseat, lets down the tailgate and makes a nest in the truck bed, between the wheels of his pickup. I wait, smoking his cigarette, tracking a satellite across the sky. Nana used to worry that satellites and meteors could come down and crash on our heads. You’d never see it coming, she would say with a shudder and a sidelong glance at the sky.
Nana was pretty superstitious all around. Not only didn’t she step on the lines and cracks in the sidewalk herself, she kept me from doing so. No black cats, no number thirteen. As if she always knew the end would come at her fast.
When he’s finished, Jack helps me up and we settle together against the wall of the cab, our legs tangled on the blankets, my head resting in the hollow of his shoulder. The moon rises and retreats as though pulled by an invisible string into the starry sky.
“I like your house,” he says unexpectedly.
“Yeah? You’re the first person to see it inside.”
“It looks like you.”
“A hot mess.”
“Emphasis on hot.”
“I’m surprised you’d like it. Being an architect and all. It’s not exactly an original.”
“Not outside, no.”
“Have you ever lived in a house you designed?”
“No. I’ll build one for myself one day. I’m making payments on a plot of land south of Portland, near the coast. Waiting for zoning to approve the plans.”
“I’d like to see them.”
“Yeah? They’re in the truck.”
“Well, break them out.”
Prompted by my interest, he lays out the blueprints and describes the design—a modern Craftsman, with a wall of windows overlooking the sea, which will extend all the way through the bedroom, to open that side of the house to the ocean breeze and the patio. Lots of golden wood, he says, lots of glass. But for all the house’s delights, it’s the kitchen that enchants me most. A long soapstone counter faces the open window without obstruction, inset with a deep, wide sink and built-in cutting board.
I run my fingers over the delicate lines of the blueprint.
“You did all this?”
“You sound surprised.”
“Shocked. I can’t imagine where you’d even begin.”
“With an idea. Like writing a book, I’d imagine.”
“That’s not at all the same thing.”
“No? Why’s that?”
I shake my head, spread my fingers wide. “Well, because a book is only ever an idea, and then a refinement of the idea. What you do requires mathematics, physics, logistics. Books are just an arrangement of words, anyone can do that.”
“Bullshit. I couldn’t.”
He rolls up the blueprints.
“I’ve been reading Zebra Crossing. It’s more than an arrangement of words.”
I’m surprised, and touched. I’ve never known a guy who’s read my work after meeting me. It’s usually the opposite: the minute a man hears I’m a writer, he’ll bolt in the other direction to avoid having to read a book in which he has no interest.
“I think that’s the first time I’ve seen you smile,” he says, watching me.
I resume my poker face and clear my throat.
“This house looks expensive.”
“Yeah, it will be. But a lot of the materials will be repurposed and I can do most of the work myself. It will take a while, obviously.”
I want to know where a carpenter will find the money to build a house like this. It feels intrusive to ask, but Jack reads my mind.
“My family has some money,” he says. “My dad owns a chain of liquor stores back East. He settled me fairly well.”
“He’s still living?”
“Yeah.”
I frown, trying to get the lay of the land.
“We had a falling-out,” Jack says. “He basically shoved some money at me and told me to get the fuck out.”
“But if you have money, why do you work as a carpenter?”
“Well, it’s not Hilton money. And a man should always work, whether he needs to or not.”
“Only, not as an architect.”
He takes off his glasses, folds them and sets them aside. Then he slips one arm under my legs, the other around my shoulders, and shifts me in one fluid motion so I’m flat on my back.
“Carpentry is good for upper body strength,” he says.
He stretches out next to me. Twines our fingers together and turns them this way and that to see the effect, a herringbone pattern in brown and white. His hands are rough with calluses, wide and flat and strong. Mine seem like a child’s in comparison.
He tips my face to his and kisses me. His mouth is firm against mine, but supple, seeking. He catches my lower lip between his teeth, nuzzles into the ticklish skin under my jaw. Goose bumps blossom on my neck, and I tuck up my shoulder to make him stop. Smiling, he smooths them away with the palm of his hand and begins to unlace the neckline of my peasant blouse.