The Salvage Owner Brought Six Flats And A Warning

Dorian Kells set his coffee on my best cloud.

It was only a skin of dried blue paint, curled inside a jar lid. I had made a whole little sky from it. He slid it aside without looking.

“Six flats,” he said. “Gray stone. Nothing fancy.”

I was a short Korean American woman of forty-nine, with a broad face, brown eyes, and black hair going silver above my paint-stained collar.

I worked as a theatrical scenic painter in Troy, New York. I could make canvas look like brick and cheap pine look like oak. Lately, men saw my gray roots before they saw my work.

Dorian was a tall white man of fifty-three, with smooth silver hair, pale eyes, and narrow hands kept clean by other people's labor.

He owned Kells Architectural Salvage. He also owned the fear of men who unloaded his trucks. I had seen that part without finding a name for it.

“You still owe me six thousand four hundred eighty dollars,” I said.

“And here I am, bringing more work.”

He smiled as if he had brought flowers.

We stood in my rented shop near the Poestenkill. Rain tapped the high windows. On the bench, my dried paint skins lay in shallow boxes. A brown curl could be a ridge. A green chip could be an island. I saved the scraps people swept away.

Dorian nodded toward them.

“Still making your little maps?”

“Landscapes.”

“That's nice. Everyone needs something.”

His driver rolled in the flats. They were tall stage frames, faced with thin wood. I had repainted them twice before. They had once stood in the Bellwether Theater's winter show, before Dorian bought the scenery at a benefit sale.

Now each frame had gained weight.

“What's inside?” I asked.

“Braces.”

A driver caught my eye, then looked down.

I tipped one frame enough to reach the bottom edge. A loose shaving fell onto my shoe. Under its gray coat, I saw gold and a red layer as thin as an onion skin.

“Don't strip them,” Dorian said.

“I need to check adhesion.”

“Check whether the check clears. That's your department.”

He laid down a work order for $2,400. The job box said STORAGE SCENERY. His delivery sheet listed six units, numbers forty-one through forty-six.

I wrote those numbers in my book.

At each month's end, I sent scans to my bookkeeper. The samples stayed in my cabinet; their dates lived in two places.

“Sign for delivery.” I turned the sheet toward him.

“Your memory getting bad?”

“My records are getting good.”

He signed.

Eight years earlier, after my husband died, I had taken nearly any job. I had learned what a handshake bought when the person offering it kept both copies of the bill.

Now my work orders had a small line above the signature: Painter retains test pieces, finish samples, and one job record.

Dorian had signed that line on every job. He never read it. He thought the little square beside it was where I marked my hours.

"The old samples are here, too," I said. "If you ever want to see what failed."

“You keep the garbage, Sunny.”

“Sunhee.”

His phone rang. He stepped toward the door.

“Thursday,” he told someone. “After the children leave.”

He listened, then glanced at me.

“The actors, then. Whatever you call them.”

My daughter was twenty-four, but people at the Bellwether still called the young cast the children. June had a part in a new play there. She had spent three months learning how to sound sure while standing in a pool of light.

“Which theater?” I asked when he hung up.

“Eat your lunch, Sunhee.”

He got my name right when he wanted something to land.

After he left, I warmed hide glue in a small pot and checked the flats. Their back rails had fresh screw marks. Gold dust lay in a seam where no stage painter would waste gold.

I took tiny samples from loose edges, as my contract allowed. Each showed the stack of coats in cross section. Gray, white, blue, red, gold. I put them in numbered envelopes, beside the dates and delivery numbers.

Then I made a mountain from a loose gray paint skin.

June called while I was washing my brushes.

“Mom, can you come Friday? They're letting us rehearse in costume.”

“I'll come.”

“You sound tired.”

“Somebody put coffee on my sky.”

She laughed. I had made that sound once, before caution got into my throat.

At five, I was locking the sample cabinet when a man knocked on the shop door. He stayed outside until I opened it.

He had dark curls with gray at the sides and a worn brown coat. He held out a state identification card where I could read it.

“Sunhee Han? Elias Navarro. I'm an investigator with the state.”

“Is this about my tax payment?”

“Only if you paid it in stolen ceiling panels.”

He let the joke fall away.

“A conservator gave me your name. She said you keep samples from every repaint.”

Behind him, rain ran down the glass like clear varnish.

“May I ask to see them?” he said.