The Morning Our Repair Benches Became A Place For Gold Invitations

I knew the shop was wrong before I took off my coat.

The air smelled like cut cedar. Our room usually smelled like damp paper and wheat paste. Someone had covered my repair bench with a sheet of white stone. Gold cards stood where my drying boards belonged.

I set down my bag and tapped my paste brush against its jar. Three soft taps. I had done that before every job since my first day as a book conservator.

That morning, it kept my hand still.

I was a thirty-one-year-old Black woman with deep brown skin, a round face, and short twists pinned back with a blue pencil. My sleeves had old paste marks that never washed out. I could tell wheat paste from rice paste by rubbing a bit between my fingers.

Neither kind belonged under a slab of stone.

"Lovely, isn't it?" Benedict asked.

Benedict Shaw was a thirty-six-year-old white man with pale skin, neat blond hair, and a narrow beard trimmed as neatly as a book edge. He wore a cream jacket. I still wore the boots I had used to cross the slush on Harding Street.

Outside, a delivery truck blocked half the street. Inside, two workers carried away my standing press.

"Put that down," I said.

They looked at Benedict.

"She's attached to the old tools," he said. "Give us a moment."

"That press belongs to me. It isn't old stock."

The workers lowered it onto a moving blanket.

Our client, Mrs. Pike, stood by the window with her coat still buttoned. She had come for her husband's railroad ledger. We had agreed on $780 to mend its torn pages and rebuild its weak spine.

"I thought you opened at nine," she said.

"We do," I told her.

Benedict moved between us.

"We're changing direction. Fine stationery, private events, wedding suites. Ayanna helped with the glue work, but I've always led the restoration side."

Mrs. Pike looked at my hands.

There was a thin strip of Japanese repair tissue stuck to one cuff. I had stayed until ten the night before to finish her ledger.

"The glue assistant?" she asked.

"Exactly," he said.

I took the finished ledger from its labeled box. I showed her where each repair stopped short of the old ink. Then I put the care sheet beside it.

"Keep it flat for another week," I said. "No direct heat."

She read my name under the words Conserved By.

"Thank you, Ms. Givens."

She paid the last $390 to the studio account and left without taking Benedict's new card.

When the door shut, I asked, "Where are the client shelves?"

"In back. Mostly. Don't start."

"Mostly isn't an answer."

He held out a glossy floor plan. Our small brick building, just off Worcester's Canal District, had become a long room of glass cases. Upstairs storage was marked Private Consultation Lounge.

"You ordered all this without a vote?"

"I handled the rent for three years. I dealt with the owner. The space is mine to manage."

"The company pays the rent."

"Through me."

That was true. We each owned half of East Fold Book Studio. He paid bills and met new clients. I did the bench work and kept the treatment records. We had once thought those jobs fit together.

He pointed at a gold envelope.

"Preview is Friday. Try to look pleased."

I didn't tell him that I had another envelope at home.

It held a signed purchase rider, separate from the company lease. Three years earlier, the owner had offered me a way to buy the building. Benedict had laughed at the roof report and called it a burden.

I had asked for the terms in writing.

Each month, I had put $1,000 of my own pay into bank escrow. Last Thursday had been payment thirty-six. Rent transfers and purchase credits went to different places. Benedict had never asked which was which.

I went into the back room.

Nine client boxes sat beneath plastic sheeting. The shelf list called for eleven. An empty square marked where the Voss atlas had stood. Beside it was a gap for the Alvarez family Bible.

"Where are the other two?"

"Being valued," Benedict said from the doorway.

"Those books aren't ours."

"It's temporary. You wouldn't understand the money side."

I took pictures of the gaps, the shelf list, and the boxes under the plastic. Then I put my brush away.

I did understand one thing about money. A transfer left a trail.

At noon that Tuesday, I stepped outside, past the truck and its wet tire tracks, and called the number on my escrow statement.

Leona Wu answered before the second ring.

"Ayanna," she said. "I'm glad you called. Someone came in yesterday asking to take your name off the purchase file."