The Contract

by Sheila Grinell

  What an oddball. “People do appreciate sunlight.”

  “Not enough. It’s the source.” He fumbled in a pocket and removed a card. “Last one. I’ve got more sun stuff at my place.”

  She took the frayed card: a line drawing of a winking dog and the legend “Everett Dana, Lone Wolf Studio.”

  “Bye,” she said and trudged toward the museum entrance, heels catching in the soft grass.

  But the Lone Wolf’s clever little box lingered in the back of her mind. Tinkerers like him could be useful in her world. So she decided to check him out.

  She drove to his address in a poor part of the city. He led her into the garage behind his house. It was unheated and smelled like grease and metal and dust; a dim light filtered in from above. He closed the door behind them and asked her to stand quietly. He pulled a chain hanging from the ceiling, something creaked, and the room filled with color. Slashes of neon green and yellow and fuchsia and blue rippled along the walls. He invited her to explore, enjoining her to step carefully in the semi-dark. As she moved, the colors played over her body. Again, she was dazzled.

  “Should I guess this is some kind of sunlight?”

  “There’s only one kind of sunlight. I pipe it in and break it up so you can see its parts. You’ve come on a good day. Clouds spoil the show.” He pulled out a chair. “If you sit still five minutes you’ll see it change. The sun moves fast.”

  She sat, wondering if it were possible to package such a display. The colors slowly crept across the walls, moving like Day-Glo lizards. “What makes the colors so … luminous?”

  “Good choice of word. They are lumens. Pure light, reflected off the walls and mirrors. You can’t tell but the surfaces in here are polished so they reflect as much as possible.

  “Mr. Dana, I …”

  “Everett.”

  “Everett, do you ever build things on commission? Sometimes my clients want three-dimensional graphics. In color.”

  He laughed. “Can’t bottle these colors.” He gestured toward the door. “Want to see some other pieces? There’s more in the house.”

  She followed him out of the garage into a room crowded with open crates containing irregular hunks of metal. He told her that he made musical instruments from detritus. His pieces had to sound like themselves, not like tinny approximations of familiar instruments. He took what looked like a fire extinguisher out of a crate and hit it with the heel of his hand. It made a low moan that lasted seconds, a metallic OM. She touched the canister ever so lightly to sense the vibration.

  “You make inanimate things seem alive. How do you do it?”

  “It’s all just nature. Want a cup of tea?”

  An hour later, she left Lone Wolf Studio convinced of his talent but unsettled by his dodges to her perfectly reasonable questions. Everything seemed to embarrass him. She decided not to patronize him. But his craftsmanship—that impressed.

  Months passed. In a slow week, she volunteered to produce a brochure for a friend who belonged to a women’s organization planning a museum for kids. It occurred to her that the Lone Wolf could help them. Kids would love his “nature” stuff, and they’d be safe handling it. So she wrote him an email outlining the challenge and suggesting he contact her friend. A few weeks later, he showed up at her door, toolbox in hand, offering to build whatever her friend needed. She thought him naive but decided to take a chance. She worked up a master plan, and he built models they thought would appeal to kids. Jo liked his use of simple materials. Ev appreciated her straightforward graphics, a style others called too spare. They developed a synergy that pleased them. The women’s organization approved their design.

  A month later, the women abandoned the project because they couldn’t agree on how to raise money. But one of the women whose husband sat on the board of the local art museum persuaded the museum to include a room for children in their new wing. Jo and Ev jumped at the opportunity to fill the room. They worked quickly, and the synergy bore fruit.

  A few days before the opening of the museum’s new wing, Ev showed up at their rented studio with five kids of different sizes and complexions and instructed them to play with the nearly finished exhibits. He motioned Jo to stand beside him and watch.

  “What are you doing?” she said. “They’re going to make a mess.”

  Ev took her flailing hands in his. “Better now than opening night. I can fix it now. They’re having a good time. Isn’t that what we want?”

  “No, we want them to learn color theory. Or Mrs. Moody may stop payment.”

  “We want them to play around so they will learn something. Mrs. Moody will get it.”

  Jo harrumphed and folded her arms.

  They watched the five kids flow around the exhibits like liquid, easing around corners, spreading across surfaces. As the kids explored, they called to each other to come see something cool. They giggled and jostled to get closer to the displays. At the xylophone of found objects, they used the rubber hammers on the keys and not each other, as Ev had predicted. At the color wheels, they fumbled the controls; Jo realized she should change the label. In short order, the kids showed them how to make their good work even better. Jo had to admire Ev’s instinct to bring them.

  At the opening gala celebration, Ev in rented tuxedo and Jo in a secondhand prom dress stood in a corner of the children’s room. They held their breath as men in black tie and women in long gowns sauntered in and picked their way among the displays. Jo had worried that the privileged party goers would scorn the simple exhibits she and Ev had geared to ordinary children. After a few minutes, though, the guests put their drinks down and plunged their hands into the displays, turning color wheels, matching puzzle pieces, hammering away on Ev’s instruments. Couples called to each other to come see, just as the test kids had. When a chime rang to announce dinner and the room emptied, Jo felt the tension whoosh out of her. She turned to Ev, who was beaming.

  He said, “We’re all kids deep down.”

  “I think we scored.” Her breath came deeper.

  “You scored. I’m just the labor.”

  No, she thought, you’re the genie. I rub the lamp.

  When Ev leaned in to kiss her, she shushed him and said they should go to dinner in case Mrs. Moody needed them. In reality, she feared she’d kiss him back, which might interfere with business. Instead, she took his skinny arm to go join the crowd.

  As she was driving Ev home later that night, Jo made up her mind.

  “Do you really like the three D’s mark?” She meant the logo she had produced hastily for the initial Dunhill + Dana + Design plan months ago.

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “Should we make it permanent, apply for a trademark?”

  Ev sat up straighter. “Are you sober?”

  “Completely. Mrs. Moody has connections. We do great work together and I think I can sell us.” She watched his face out of the corner of her eye. Heart knocking against her ribs, she held her tongue. If she could corral his genius, she’d make something special happen. No one would ever take her for granted again, not her family, not her old boss. This was the way forward.

  “Have you and Mrs. Moody been conspiring?”

  “No. She asked me to write an article for one of her newsletters, which got me thinking.” She was tempted to add the ten reasons he should jump at the opportunity, but with Ev, she had learned, less was more.

  “I’ll need my own shop. I need to be able to run a ripsaw at three in the morning.”

  “Deal.”

  He hadn’t sounded terribly positive, but she’d risk it. She’d find the money to equip a shop. She was sure that together they could make magical environments that intrigued, and informed, and entertained in the best sense of the word. The prospect thrilled her.

  In the second year after the business incorporated, they were invited to design an interactive art gallery in New York City. It was their first nationally prominent job, and Jo could barely contain her excitement.

  Ten days
before the gallery was to open, she went north to prep the client. When she arrived, she found him pacing nervously. He told her he had just discovered that the landlord insisted on his using a union shop to install the displays, and he hadn’t budgeted for such a large expense. He was out of money, out of time, and facing a public relations disaster. Jo felt the bottom drop out from under her. Out of earshot of the miserable client, she called Ev.

  “Don’t come. Glover can’t pay for installation, so the whole thing is off.”

  “What needs to be done?”

  “The walls are painted and the floor is decent, but no power grid. I could kill him. I asked about installation a hundred times and he said ‘Fine, dear, fine.’ I could kill him.”

  “Tell him we don’t need installation. I’ll build the displays on site.”

  “That’s too dangerous. You’ll make a mess.”

  “I’ll load a truck and be there in two days. I’ve got this.”

  He arrived as promised with two student helpers, three tool boxes, reels of cable, and the displays in pieces. Under Jo’s tutelage, Glover told his landlord a story about “the artistic process on-site” that managed to appease him. Ev and crew worked around the clock to assemble the displays.

  Fifteen minutes before the scheduled opening, Jo shooed the helpers out of the gallery, gathering up extension cords and empty coffee cups from the floor. She and Ev waited outside in the corridor while the guests crowded into the space. Peeking in, they saw that the exhibits functioned as planned. They collected their tools and slipped away.

  Ev was hungry—he’d skipped meals to finish on time—so they picked up Thai takeout on the way to Jo’s hotel. She spread the containers on the bed, and Ev attacked noodles with a plastic fork, scattering chili sauce on the duvet.

  “Man,” he said when he had slowed down, “I needed this.”

  “You deserve caviar and filet mignon. You saved his sorry ass.”

  “Prefer this.” A piece of noodle was stuck on his lip.

  “He doesn’t appreciate what you did. He won’t pay an extra dime.”

  “I don’t care. I did it for you, not for him.” He took another swig of beer. “I didn’t want you to be disappointed.”

  How sweet Ev could be! “Wouldn’t you have been disappointed?”

  “Not really.” He wiped his mouth on a paper napkin. “I like being your hero.”

  “I think you are my hero.” Gratitude flooded through her, and something else.

  He reached a long arm to her shoulder, a question on his face.

  She answered with her hand on his.

  They made slow, sweet love for the first time since they’d met.

  Afterwards, Ev left to drive his helpers to a hostel, as promised. Jo lay there, feeling heavy and content. She hadn’t imagined Ev to be such a good lover. Would they love again? She’d prefer nothing change between them for the good of the business. She roused herself and went to the bathroom to clean up and discard the condom he’d left on the night table. Looking at the deflated rubber, she knew they’d crossed a threshold. She did not speculate about where it might lead.

  They resumed working as before, but now they shared the occasional out-of-town hotel room, and their hands sometimes lingered an extra beat when they touched. Ev spent nights at her place now and then. If the staff sensed anything, they didn’t speak up. Clients assumed they were a couple although neither wore a ring.

  In the fourth year of the business, the neighbor who housed their shop put his place up for sale. After some dithering, they decided to move everything—office, workshop, storage, living quarters—to one property. Jo searched online for something big and cheap. A former classmate wrote that her artist uncle had had a heart attack and the family wanted to unload his house and attached studio. In California, close to the site of the Oakland hills fire, at a fire sale price. On the phone, the bank officer said he could arrange for Jo and her husband to assume the mortgage fairly quickly.

  Her husband. Oh, what the hell, if she was going to marry, it might as well be to Ev. Four years younger and much poorer than she? Irrelevant. A known quantity, a decent guy. She told the bank officer yes. Then she told Ev. He kissed her hand.

  They made a date with a justice of the peace. Right after the wedding, they bought the Oakland property and moved in. Soon they picked up some local clients, and business resumed its normal pace.

  They worked hard. Jo sold clients on their services, accounted for money, and managed staff and contractors. Ev solved design problems in his unique way. For a client who wanted an environment based on a children’s book about giants, Ev blew up a photo forty feet by thirty feet so that even parents felt tiny. A smashing success. For a client who wanted to stand out from the crowd, Ev suspended all the displays from the ceiling. A total flop: hardly anyone dared step past the entrance. Jo refunded the latter client and extracted a glowing testimonial from the former. She took it all in stride, becoming more skilled as a businesswoman with every deal. Successes outnumbered flops, and their reputation spread.

  Their marriage flourished, too, as a union of opposites. Jo wore an antique wedding band; Ev didn’t want a ring that would trap paint and grease. Jo managed their household like she managed their company; Ev was as grateful for good meals as he was for good clients. There was one sticking point between them: Jo did not want children. The eldest of four, she said she’d already done enough mothering. Her dreams did not include changing diapers and paying for orthodontia. Ev said he might like to be a father, but he did not insist. He told her he loved her just as she was, tender underneath.

  Did she love him back?

  In her way.

  Ev seemed satisfied.

  Other things occupied her time and attention.

  4

  At ten that evening, a hotel clerk brought a message to their door: the deputy director wanted to meet privately at one o’clock the following afternoon, and an interpreter would not be necessary. Jo realized they would have to delay their departure—and pay for another day in the hotel—but she wanted to see the woman in charge. Searching online had yielded little: the deputy director was one of only a handful of women in government in the Middle East, and her project was part of a national effort described only in generalities in the Saudi English-language press. Jo wanted to know if she had political muscle and if her interest in children’s museums ran deep.

  After breakfast, Jo sat at the desk in their hotel room and reviewed their pitch, wondering what the director wished to discuss. She wanted to impress the woman, of course, but she also needed answers to the questions that worried her. Getting a client was like dating; you had to scope out incompatibility before making a commitment, or else misery lay ahead.

  Ev paced behind her. “I’m ready to go home.”

  “How about doing something for me? Think of a way to deal with renewable energy for four-year-olds.”

  “Ridiculous.”

  “Ev, they need to hear something from us.” “Okay. I wish I had my tools.” He retrieved his notebook and pencil case. “Going for coffee.” Ev liked noise in the background, preferably the whine of a table saw, but cafe clatter would do in a pinch.

  She turned back to the computer screen. After all this time with Ev, she could not anticipate his thought process or predict the result, which she found both exhilarating and frustrating. Exhilarating when he came up with fantastic designs; frustrating when he ignored deadlines or the five times she made the same request. Eventually he’d honor her request, when its significance to her finally registered. Ev didn’t see the world like most people. Raised off the grid by hippie parents in a West Virginia holler, homeschooled until high school, he had dropped out of community college and taught himself to work. You’d expect someone with his history to have peculiar ideas, but his peculiarity went beyond ideas to the inner logic of his brain. If he’d gone to a regular school, teachers might have caught on to his idiosyncrasy and taken some kind of remedial action. Instead, the child
Ev had preferred to work with his hands. The adult Ev preferred to linger in his workshop where, it seemed, machines spoke to him. Jo had long since given up trying to get into his head. And it was okay. And occasionally it was terrific.

  She focused on the PowerPoint slide in front of her; she’d rather be over-prepared than overconfident.

  An older woman in abaya and head scarf greeted them at the reception desk at the Ministry.

  “Are you the deputy director’s interpreter?”

  “Oh, no. She speaks English. Better than me. I am her assistant for many years.” The woman took Jo’s hand in both of hers. “I read your qualifications, and I am very pleased to meet you.” She pressed Jo’s hand between her soft palms.

  “Thank you.” Such a warm greeting. Would the deputy director be as positive?

  The woman smiled broadly. “Please come with me.”

  She led them to a conference room off the lobby.

  “Should we set up our equipment here?” Jo gestured to the table in the center.

  “There is no need. The director wants to talk to you. Thank you for coming.”

  First time any of the Saudis had expressed appreciation for their responsiveness. Jo’s shoulders inched down a fraction. She and Ev sat. His face showed his mind was elsewhere. Not a good sign. He’d been AWOL for a while in the morning, and she worried he wouldn’t stick to the presentation they’d planned.

  The woman sat opposite them. “I am happy to meet you. The director enjoyed your documents. So good for boys and girls.”

  “Should I address her as director or deputy director?”

  The woman leaned toward Jo. “It does not matter. The director got her job because her husband is family of the king. But she has vision.”

  The door opened, and a middle-aged woman in abaya entered. She took in the room in a glance and seated herself at the head of the table. The director adjusted her head scarf and began to preside.

  “Welcome to Riyadh. Is this your first visit?”