The Chair Named Me A Thief Before The Coffee Cooled

Cecily Fane waited until I had poured my coffee before she called me a thief.

She wanted my hands full. I knew that much about her.

"Perhaps Dimitri can tell us where our fog bell went," she said.

Thirty people turned toward the back of the meeting room. Rain ran down the windows. Beyond the glass, the hills of Astoria had vanished into low cloud.

I set down the cup.

"Which question are you asking?"

"Don't play games. The brass bell from the old signal shed. You had the keys. Now it's gone."

At forty-one, I was a broad Greek American man with dark curls going gray at the ears, a bent nose, and deep brown hands marked by small white scars.

I worked as a waterfront maintenance handyman. I cleared drains, changed dock bolts, and kept salt from eating things people thought would last forever.

Before I trusted a metal fitting, I tapped it with my little inspection hammer. A clean note usually meant sound metal. A short, dead sound meant I needed a closer look.

My grandfather had taught me that trick. He had also taught me to keep receipts.

One of those lessons was about to cost Cecily her chair.

She stood beside a table covered with flyers for summer neighborhood events. Cecily was a white woman of sixty-three, with a smooth silver bob, pale pink glasses, and a cream coat that never seemed to catch the rain.

Her voice felt like velvet rubbed the wrong way.

"You people who work down there see loose metal and think scrap," she said.

"The shed was taken out of service. The city sold the bell."

"To whom?"

"Me."

A few people laughed. Cecily let them finish.

"And I suppose you bought the river too."

I reached for the blue folder under my chair. It held a paid receipt, a transfer certificate, and a loan form with a return date that had passed yesterday.

She kept talking while I opened it.

"Until this is settled, I have asked our maintenance coordinator to pause your work for the association. We cannot have questions hanging over our funds."

That work paid for groceries during slow weeks. She also held an unpaid bill for $1,850, covering gutter repairs and three broken stair rails at the association office.

"You borrowed my bell," I said. "You asked for seven days."

"I asked you to help display a piece of neighborhood history."

"At your hall."

"Our gathering place."

The Sunset Assembly Rooms belonged to neither the city nor our neighborhood association. Cecily ran the hall as a private business in a rented building above the waterfront.

She charged the association for room use. She also liked to say that every folding chair there was a gift from her heart.

"You signed for it on May tenth," I said.

"I sign for deliveries constantly."

"This one weighed a hundred and eighty-six pounds."

Someone near the coffee urn stopped stirring.

I held out the first sheet. Cecily glanced at the heading, then pushed my hand down with two fingers.

"We will not turn a neighborhood meeting into one of your repair invoices."

That was the moment I understood. She hadn't simply forgotten who owned it. She needed everyone else to believe I couldn't own it.

When she had asked for the loan, I had said, "It's mine now. Be careful with it."

She had smiled and answered, "Town history belongs to all of us."

I had thought she was being grand. Now I heard the gap between our words.

"Read the paper," I said.

"Return the bell, Dimitri. Then we can discuss your standing here."

She turned to the secretary.

"Please record that request."

"Record mine too," I said. "I'm asking Cecily Fane to return the bell she borrowed from me."

The secretary's pen hovered.

"Both requests," I said.

After the meeting, a man whose porch steps I had fixed would not meet my eyes. A woman moved her purse when I reached past her for my coat.

I went outside with my folder under my jacket.

The air smelled of wet fir and river mud. A ship horn rolled over the roofs. I rested my hand on a parking rail and tapped it once with the small hammer in my pocket.

The note was flat. Rust had eaten the bottom of the post.

I put a strip of warning tape around it before I left. Habit did not stop because people had decided what I was.

In my truck, I called Juniper Hale at municipal collections. I left a message asking for a certified copy of my purchase file.

Her call came before I had turned the key.

"Dimitri," she said, "I have your file. But before you go to that hall, there's a landlord's notice you need to see."