Page 43 of Animal Tamer
I make a strangled sound.
“What? It's carpentry now. Be professional.” He drags a sawhorse over with his boot, lays the board flat, and produces a pencil from somewhere inside his jacket the way he produces knives, like his clothes are lined with pockets that open into another dimension. “Alright. Height.”
“What?”
“Height, Rowe. Where's your dick? Stand up straight.”
“I'm not?—”
“Do you want this to work or do you want to be up on your toes like a ballerina while the love of your life waits on the other side of a poorly measured plank? Stand. Straight.”
I stand straight. Cole squints at me with the exact focus he uses lining up a throw at a moving target, holds his pencil out at arm's length like a painter, and marks a spot on the board.
“Give or take an inch for whether she's kneeling on a cushion. She's getting a cushion, by the way. You're notputting that woman's knees on a trailer floor, we're not animals.”
“I know she's getting a cushion,” I mutter.
“Good man.” He marks the center point, then draws the circle freehand, one clean motion. He's done a lot of things freehand that shouldn't be possible. “Jigsaw's in the red case. Get it.”
We work.
Cole cuts the hole while I brace the board, sawdust spraying everywhere, and then he hands me the rasp and makes me round the edges myself. I file the rim of the opening smooth, then smoother, then sand it with three grades of paper because the thought of one rough fiber of wood anywhere near her face is unacceptable.
And the whole time, I'm thinking about it.
The board upright in my trailer. The lamplight low. Her voice on the other side, that quiet register, telling me she's ready. The warmth of her waiting where I can't see her, only feel?—
“Brother.”
“What.”
“Not that I'm judging, because God knows this is a judgment-free workshop.” Cole gestures at me with the rasp, and his grin has gone sly. “But you've been sanding the same spot for four minutes and you're harder than the board.”
Heat floods up my neck. I glance down. He's not wrong.
“I'm flattered,” he continues, hand to his heart again. “Truly. The craftsmanship, the intimacy of building something together, sawdust in the air. But I don't swing that way, and even if I did swing that way, you'd be a logistical nightmare?—”
“I'll swing a mallet at you.”
“There he is.” He cackles, delighted, and knocks the last of the sawdust off the board. “There's the romance.”
He tips the board vertical and steps back, and we both look at it. A retired knife board with scars across the top and one perfect, smooth-rimmed opening at exactly the right height, and it's the single most deranged object I've ever helped create, and my chest is doing something terrifying.
“It's good,” Cole says, and for once there's no jab in it. He studies the board, then me. “You know what this is, right?”
“It's a board with a hole in it,” I say dryly.
“It's a door.” He spins the pencil between his long fingers. “Twenty years, none of us could build you one. She shows up for a monkey and you're out here doing carpentry.” He shrugs, sliding the pencil back into whatever dimension it lives in. “Marek's going to be insufferable about it. He'll say the cards told him.”
“The cards probably did.”
“The cards absolutely did.” He hoists one end of the board. “Come on. Let's get it to your trailer before Logan sees it and dies of joy.”
We're maneuvering it through my door—it fits, barely—when my phone buzzes against my thigh.
On my way. 15 min. How's our patient?
Our patient.
