Page 21 of Harbor Me

He moves away to the other side and the air goes cold where he was.

My arms have started shaking. It isn’t the window.

I look at the wall. There’s a nail hole in it and a smear of grease somebody left there years ago, and I look at very hard, because if I turn my head now, I’m going to do something I can’t take back. In front of Diesel.

The screwdriver stops.

“You can let go.”

I don’t hear it the first time.

“Daniels. Let go.”

My fingers come off the wood. He takes the whole weight one-handed like he’s been waiting for me to get out of the way, works the sash down, throws the new latch, then puts his shoulder into the window to try to force it. Nothing moves.

He looks at my arms.

“You should’ve said it was too heavy for you.”

“It wasn’t.”

“You were shaking.”

“I was fine.”

“Next time say something before you drop a window on my hands.” He crouches to pack the toolbox. “I’ve got four jobs Monday and none of them get done one-handed.”

“I was fine.”

I sit down on the arm of the broken chair because standing suddenly feels like an overly optimistic plan. Diesel gets up, stretches long enough for his back end to shake, then settles himself eighteen inches to the left. That’s more forward progress than I’ve managed since I got here.

Aiden’s closing the front latches on the toolbox. In a minute he’ll be gone, and it’ll be a whole day before I see him again. I’ll spend the rest of the day in my crooked apartment with nothing but a fan and my hands and the memory of him standing that close.

I’ve been carrying the question since the day I drove through that gate. It isn’t getting any lighter.

“Can I ask you something?”

“What.”

Not a question. He doesn’t even look up from the toolbox.

“Do you ever pull people out of the water? Out of the harbor, I mean.”

“Every summer.”

“Every summer?”

Not what I wanted to hear at all.

“Tourists.” He drops the screwdriver into the tray. “They stand on the wrong side of a rail to photograph a boat they don’t own, and then they go over. So I get them out. Put something dry on them and send them on their way.”

Oh. Wow. That actually hurts.

“Does anybody ever thank you?”

“For what?”

There’s no modesty in it. He isn’t fishing and he isn’t performing. He’s a man who’s been asked a question that doesn’t make sense to him, and he’s waiting for me to explain what I meant.