My Partner Changed The Locks While A Teacher Waited Outside

The new keyway shone against our old shop door. Mine had been dull brass. This one was silver, with a little green sticker still stuck beneath it.

I tried my key anyway.

It was late October. Leaves had blown into the loading ramp, and rain had made them stick there. I had planned to sweep them before our first appointment. Instead, I stood holding a key that no longer had a door.

Through the glass, I could see my job sheets on the bench. Someone had put a coffee cup on them.

At fifty-three, I had olive skin, a silver braid down my back, and heavy brows above round safety glasses.

I was Farideh Mehran, an Iranian American refractory-kiln repairer. I mended the brick and cast heat-proof parts inside kilns. My work kept a chamber square when everything inside it wanted to grow with heat.

A freight train rolled through Pocatello behind me. I waited for it to pass before knocking.

Russell Baird opened the door without taking off the chain.

Russell had a broad pink face, pale blue eyes, and thinning sandy hair combed flat over his scalp.

He was fifty-six, white, and very good at remembering what people liked in their coffee. When we started Benchline Heat Service, he had also remembered to carry things. Lately, he waited beside the van until I carried them myself.

"The locksmith came early," he said.

"I see that. Where's my key?"

"We need to sort out your place here."

"My place is beside that bench. Move your cup."

He glanced back but left it there.

We had been equal partners for four years. He sold repairs. I did them. We both signed the lease, and neither of us drew a wage before the bills were paid.

"Clients need one person in charge," he said. "I'll give you something fair for helping me get started."

Before I could answer, Hugo Benitez pulled into the lot.

He was forty-five, Guatemalan American, and taught ceramics at Juniper Basin Learning Cooperative, a private school group. His classes used rooms at three small school sites outside town. He got out holding a bent witness cone in a paper cup.

"The loan furnace stopped again," he told me. "I unplugged it."

"Good," I said. "Leave it cold until I check the high-limit control."

Russell stepped outside and shut the door.

"Farideh won't be doing service calls now. She was mainly my translator."

Hugo looked from him to me.

"Translator?"

"For the imported equipment. Manuals, invoices. That sort of thing."

"She rebuilt our burner throat. You asked me where the gas valve was."

Russell laughed as though Hugo had made a kind joke.

"Everyone has their little area."

I took out my notebook. My tiny porcelain fox came with it, wrapped in the corner of a cloth. I set the fox on the window ledge beside the blank page.

I kept that fox beside every job sheet. It had one chipped ear and a brown nose. My mother had made it before her hands grew too stiff for fine clay. It kept loose papers from wandering when a shop door opened.

"Did you tell other clients that?" I asked.

"I sent an update."

Hugo checked his phone. His face changed.

He turned the screen toward me. Russell had sent the message at six that morning. It called me a former language assistant and asked clients to direct all technical questions to him.

I asked Hugo to forward it to my home email.

"Don't make this ugly," Russell said.

"I'm writing down what happened."

He pointed through the glass at the two mobile furnaces parked along the wall.

"Those stay. So do the refractory molds. They're company property."

"Did you check Schedule B?"

"I know what we own."

He had said much the same thing when we signed it. Back then, he had added, "Put your little numbers wherever you want."

Now those numbers sat on brass plates fixed to every furnace frame and mold rack.

I wrapped the fox and put it away.

"I'll need my job sheets, too."

"We'll discuss that after you calm down."

Hugo walked me to my truck.

"I've watched you find cracks I couldn't even see," he said. "I know who fixes things."

I thanked him. Then I drove home past the low brown hills with both hands tight on the wheel.

My green equipment binder sat behind the flour tin in my kitchen cupboard. Inside were import receipts, personal bank payments, freight records, and the original equipment-bailment schedule.

That long word meant a loan. It did not mean a gift.

Russell's initials were on every page. So were mine.

I put the fox beside the binder and read the return clause aloud. Denied access. Written notice. Ten business days.

Then my phone rang.

Hugo said, "Farideh, don't close your email. He just offered your furnaces to another shop."