Silas Gave My Concert Jobs Away Beside The Loading Door

I checked the door before I checked the piano.

My gauge was a strip of stiff paper, folded to the width our loaded cradle needed. A red line marked the extra room for hands. If the red line touched wood, we stopped and measured again.

Silas called it my little paper toy.

That Tuesday in Knoxville, Tennessee, he stepped over it while I knelt at Bellwether Hall's loading door.

"Get up, Bowen. We need to look like a business."

At thirty-four, I was a lean Chinese American man with square glasses, close-cut black hair, and a pale scar across my left thumb.

I earned my living as a piano-moving rigger. I planned paths, checked loads, and put my hands where a bad guess could take them off. Silas Trent found the customers. We split the work through Trent and Xu Piano Service.

Silas was a broad white American man of forty-one with sandy hair brushed straight back, a red neck, and bright white teeth.

He used those teeth when he promised things.

"Saturday is set," he told the hall manager. "New crew. Better pace. Same special cradle."

I stood with the paper still in my hand.

"What new crew?"

Two young men waited beside his truck. One wore work gloves with the price tag still caught in the wrist seam.

"We're changing the labor side," Silas said. "Concert season needs energy."

"That grand has an eleven-step turn. Have they seen the landing?"

"They can carry a measuring tape."

The hall manager, Mrs. Bell, looked from him to me.

"I was told you weren't handling money anymore," she said.

Silas made a small, sad face. I knew that face. He used it when a bill was late and he wanted the other person to feel rude for asking.

"Customer deposits went missing," he said. "I'm trying to keep this quiet."

Behind him, one of the new men looked at my hands.

"Whose deposits?" I asked.

"Don't make a scene."

"Which customers?"

He leaned close enough for me to smell the sweet coffee on his breath.

"You're off the crew. Hand over the keys. We'll settle your balance later."

He owed me $4,200 for work already done. I had sent three invoices. Each had a date, a job name, and his written approval.

Mrs. Bell stepped away to answer her phone.

"You told her I stole money," I said.

"I told her there were concerns."

"I heard you."

"Then hear this. Those boys cost half what you do. You can make trouble, or you can leave with some pride."

I took the shared truck key off my ring. I kept the brass key with the blue paint on its head.

Silas noticed.

"Equipment bay too."

"That's my lease."

"We've used it for two years."

"You've had permission for two years."

He laughed, and one of the young men laughed with him.

From inside the hall came three low piano notes. Then Ada Chen appeared in the doorway.

Ada was fifty-seven, a Chinese American woman with a gray braid, wire glasses, and a flat leather tool roll under one arm. She had been the hall's concert technician longer than I had been moving pianos.

"Why are there strangers in my loading area?" she asked.

"Your new moving team," Silas said.

"Where is their route plan?"

"Bowen has the old one."

"A piano doesn't care whose feelings got hurt. Where is the plan?"

I gave her my survey sheet. The grand needed to leave the small recital room for roof work, cross the service stair, and reach the main stage before Sunday night's opening concert.

The hall had paid a $12,800 deposit. Silas had sent me the receipt to add to the job folder.

"He measures doorways," Silas told Ada. "I run the company."

She read my sheet.

"Then running it should be easy. Everything is written down."

He stopped smiling.

I folded my gauge along its old creases. "I'll send written notice about the cradle today."

"You're not holding up this job over hurt feelings."

"Read the equipment agreement."

The cradle was stored in my bay off Central Street. Its blue steel frame had taken me fourteen months to design and pay for. Silas had stood beside me when the shop fixed my company's brass plate to its side.

He had called the plate fussy.

I drove home along Broadway with no radio on. At a red light, I saw a concert poster in a shop window. Our company name sat under the date in small print.

By noon, I had emailed notice that permission to use my equipment would end in forty-eight hours. I asked for the six deposit records and payment of my invoices.

At twelve-fourteen, Silas replied to everyone on the hall's job thread.

Bowen has no right to remove company property. Any attempt will be reported as theft.