Author's note: My aim with this story is more the build and the social aspects of crossing class lines than the sex. There is sex, but not before the stage is set. I hope you enjoy.
For two days now, she'd been watching the carpenter build the new deck. Although both she and her husband wanted it, the deck was her project.
"I don't have time. You make it happen," he'd said.
A photographer, she spent most days at home, only going on shoots a couple of days a week. Yeah, good, she thought, 'cause I work at home, I've got time you don't. She knew though, that she did have more time than he, didn't spend three hours a day riding the Metro North train to Manhattan through the Bronx and Harlem. Still, his presumption pissed her off. But if she wanted a deck, this was how it would happen. And if she was getting a new deck, she wanted a new door to replace the old aluminum slider that only worked half the time.
That spring, she'd begun a round of calls to her friends looking for a carpenter, but all she got were horror stories of half-finished kitchens, un-returned phone calls, trampled azaleas.
"Honey," her pal Rebecca had said, "they'll take your money, trash your house, and screw your baby sitter." Half a breath later Rebecca recanted, "Okay, you don't have a baby sitter. Watch yourself then."
The horror stories proved out, at least the ones about missed appointments and sleazy contractors. The one guy who'd bothered to show up for his appointment was caricature from a Tennessee Williams play – he rang the doorbell wearing a wife-beater, chewing a half-smoked cigar. He didn't even get it out of his mouth for introductions before she slammed the door.
She checked the ads in the Penny Shopper and Craigslist, on the corkboards at the package store and the deli. She called Westchester numbers, she called Connecticut numbers. Either she got voice mail, which judging by the lack of returned calls, seemed to be just a way to tell her to go away without the embarrassment of personal contact, or they were booked until the fall.
The fall! Who the hell wants a deck in the fall? She wondered.
On the Sunday before the Fourth, her husband had gotten snotty about the deck. "How hard is it to get some schmo who can knock some 2x4s together?" he'd asked. "Do you want me to make some calls? Maybe a man's voice on their voice mail will get a response."
She picked up the Metro section of the Times and pretended to read. Shit, she thought, I'm a college graduate, I make good money, I can't get a fucking guy who hammers nails for a living to return a god damn phone call, and my asshole lawyer husband thinks he can help. Fuck you, she telepathed over her coffee. Fuck you. And that's the best fuck you're getting for a while.
That Wednesday she saw the carpenter's 8 ½ by 11 sign hanging on the deli's pin-up board amongst the ads for lawn services, unwanted motorcycles, and dog groomers. Half its phone number tabs had been torn off already. She tore off the rest, kept one, and dropped the rest in the garbage.
She was so surprised when she didn't get voice mail that her tongue tied up like a kid calling for a date. "Uhm, uh, do you build decks?"
"Yes."
He spoke clearly, answered her questions about schedule – "Yes, I can do it before the fall." "No, no crew. Just me." "Yes, I can come by on Friday. What time?" He came to look at the job at the appointed time, dressed in Carhart shorts and a clean, button down shirt. Neat hair, friendly, professional, answering her questions as if they were all intelligent. After ten minutes, she knew.
"When can you start?"
"What? We haven't talked money yet."
"Okay, talk money."
"First, we need to talk about what you want."
"I want a god damn deck."
Half an hour later, her head was swimming with words like "ipe'" and "Trex" and the carpenter had said, "Good. I've got it. Give me two days to put together a price."
Which, to her utter amazement, he did. It was at the high end of what she and her husband had talked about, but she'd have paid this guy whatever he wanted.
"Okay, now when can you start?"
"Second week in August."
And here it was, the second week in August. She was watching the carpenter, his back bent as he fastened heavy, 2 x 10 joists in place, his working man's shoulders rounded as he carried the green colored lumber from where the lumberyard's flatbed truck had dumped the stack in the driveway around the garage to the backyard.
They hadn't talked much the first day, just for a few minutes at eight in the morning after his pickup truck had rolled into the driveway.
He'd rung the front doorbell, and stood back on the stoop a polite distance.
"Good morning," he'd grinned. "Ready for me to start?"
"Absolutely."
Over the next days, she was surprised at her interest in his work. Several times through the day, she stopped at the kitchen sink to look out the window, or watched him through the big sliding door in the eat-in. The carpenter did everything in an easy, practiced way, never seeming in a hurry, always seeming to know the next step.
The deck building continued through a rare stretch of blue sky high summer. The carpenter wore short sleeve button shirts, and shorts. The third morning, feeling oddly awkward about her jobsite voyeurism of the days before, she'd opened the slider to ask if he'd like a cup of coffee.
He looked up, sunglasses shading his eyes, "Thanks, yes."
"How do you take it?"
"Black."
She'd gone back in, taken down two mugs from their hooks, and filled them, filling her nose with the earthy coffee smell. The mugs advertised Nantuckett, famous apparently, for its clichéd swoop-wing seagulls. To hers she'd added milk, then walked out through the garage and its ground level back door, avoiding the yet open framing of the deck.
He stood on the deck framing, leather boots overhanging the joists, sawdust already lighting on his socks, the turpentine smell of the pine now competing with that of the coffee. She was unsure whether to hand the cup up to him, but he saved her figuring it out by jumping to the ground. His knees bent gymnastically as his feet touched down, then he was standing at her side.
"I hope you like strong coffee," she said.
"Hot, too," he said, wincing a little as the first sip burned his throat.
Without thinking, she reached out and touched the carpenter's shoulder, concerned, "Are you alright?"
She drew back her hand fast as she'd put it out, and he said, "Oh, fine. Just need to learn to go a little slower."
The carpenter leaned back, moving aside his tool bags to hitch a leg up onto the joist, coffee cradled in his hands. Out of the sun now, he pushed his sunglasses up on his head, looked right into her eyes, broke his gaze to sip the coffee.
Liking his blue, clear eyes she raised up her mug, smelled the coffee like wine, sipped.
"So, how do you learn this," she asked, "Do you go to school to be a carpenter?"
"I guess you can. I didn't. I've always just sort of known how. There are books, and I've worked for other carpenters."
"My husband is hopeless at anything like this."
"Well, I'm not sure what he does, but I'm pretty sure I couldn't do it. And whatever that is pays well enough to hire me." He spoke with no regional accent – not Boston, not New York, not southern. Just clean middle-American English that offered no clues to his origin. He smelled slightly of sweat, of the leather tool bags, and pine.
"He's a lawyer."
"What?"
"My husband. He's a lawyer."
"Good thing I didn't know that when I bid the job," he grinned. "What do you do?"
"I'm a photographer. Mostly women's magazine stuff."
"You must get around then."
"Not that much. A lot of studio shots, a few house interiors, but they're within a day's drive. Nobody wants to pay travel expenses. I was wondering though, would you mind if I took some shots of you working? I won't bother you, but the light is so good, and the lines of the framing are really interesting."
"Sure. Why not? Maybe you can send me a nice shot of the finished deck for my marketing?"
"Deal."
The rest of the day she photographed the carpenter affixing expensive hardwood decking to make a floor where none had been, a place where her husband's partners would talk about clients and sports and drink bourbon as the sun set and the salmon grilled. Where their chicly casual wives would eye the rings on their counterpart's merlot-holding fingers while talking pedicures and causes, she photographed the carpenter on his knees, driving screws. Her photographer's eye was drawn to his elemental work, the deep textures of his laden, leather toolbelt, the play of sun and shadow on him as he worked through the blue August day.
As the sunlight flattened through the afternoon, it threw small shadows. She became acutely aware of textures, of his close cropped hair, the lumber, the flexing of his calf muscles. Every so often, he'd stop working to look at her composing a shot, and she'd lower the camera, look into his eyes and say, "Keep working."
"Yes ma'am."
Looking up from below, she shot one photo that silhouetted the carpenter, his biceps straining to raise a long plank against the blue sky, his blue eyes completely focused on his work. The composition particularly struck her. She was looking at that photo on her computer screen that night when her husband came home.
