My Father-In-Law Announced A Hotel While Standing Inside My Workshop

Malcolm tapped my workbench with his champagne glass.

“Could we stop playing with toys long enough to hear some good news?”

Twenty people turned. I put down my screwdriver before my hand could tighten around it.

I was a small Chinese American woman of thirty-two, with straight black hair cut at my jaw and a pale burn mark across my left wrist.

My name was Celeste Guo. I restored arcade cabinets for a living. That afternoon, I had been showing Malcolm's guests how I repaired a water-swollen base without replacing the sound wood above it.

Nobody had asked me about toys.

My father-in-law was a tall white man of sixty-five, with silver hair combed straight back and a gold watch that slipped over his shirt cuff.

He liked an audience when he corrected people. He called it management.

“This room smells like a school shop,” he said. “We should have opened the windows before inviting actual business owners.”

Outside, rain blew off the Piscataqua River. The windows had been painted shut long before I arrived.

My husband, Theo, stood beside a cabinet door he had made for me. At thirty-four, he still had his father's long face, though he used his hands more gently. He was a white American cabinetmaker who could spend an hour fitting one hinge and never call the hour wasted.

“It's fresh shellac,” he said. “It'll clear.”

Malcolm smiled at him.

“Of course you'd defend it.”

The family open house had been my idea. Ruth, Malcolm's wife, had died six weeks earlier. She had wanted people back in the old waterfront game hall, hearing something besides rain in the gutters.

I had set out her photographs. Theo had brought sandwiches. Two students from the trade school had helped hang paper signs over my apprentice benches.

Ruth had learned to solder here in her father's old repair room. She wanted students who couldn't afford tools to have a place to learn. When she hired me, she checked three customer references and asked to see my books. This had never been a family favor.

Malcolm stepped between those signs.

“I'm pleased to announce the next life of this property,” he said. “A thirty-room boutique hotel. Small restaurant. River views. Something Portsmouth can be proud of.”

One guest clapped. Then three more joined.

Theo looked at me.

I looked at the sheet Malcolm had laid over my parts tray. It showed our hall with its windows enlarged and the loading door replaced by a wine bar.

“Where's the workshop?” I asked.

“Elsewhere.”

“And the apprentice program?”

“Celeste. We can't freeze a valuable building because you enjoy rescuing old screens.”

“The cabinets belong to the program.”

“Everything here belonged to my wife. Now I handle it.”

He said it slowly, as if I had trouble with ordinary words.

Behind him, the harbor tug gave a low horn. I heard a loose washer buzz inside the cabinet I was restoring.

“You could have told us before this,” Theo said.

“I am telling you. Clearance starts Monday. Eight o'clock.”

It was Saturday.

My hands went cold, but I kept them flat on the bench.

Three months before she died, Ruth had sent me a thick envelope by certified mail. I had signed the green receipt at this same loading door.

Inside was a certified copy of her trust, the recorded deed, an equipment list, and a note.

Keep this somewhere that doesn't belong to anybody else.

I had put it in my bank box. I had also made a working copy, because Ruth had taught me that papers locked away were safe, but papers you could reach were useful.

“You should talk to Nora before Monday,” I said.

Malcolm laughed.

“My wife's lawyer doesn't run my life.”

“She has a role in the trust.”

“And I have the keys.”

He lifted them. People smiled because he was smiling.

I turned to the cabinet. Its control panel needed one final screw. I tightened it, tested the buttons, and watched a blue maze fill the screen.

One of the students let out a small cheer.

From my parts tray, I took the worn original screw I had replaced. After every successful restoration, I saved one. I wrote the cabinet number on its paper sleeve before dropping it into my glass jar.

Ruth had once called the jar a record of things that still worked.

Malcolm watched it fall.

“There's your retirement fund.”

This time nobody laughed.

After the guests left, Theo pulled the hotel drawing off my bench.

“I'll talk to him.”

“Talk to him tonight,” I said. “I'm calling Nora.”

He nodded, but his mouth was tight.

At home, I opened my working copy. My thumb found the tab Ruth had marked in blue: OCCUPANCY.

Before I reached for my phone, a message arrived from the clearance company.

Attached was Malcolm's signed order to empty the entire building.