The boss was at the doctor all morning. He left a note. He didn’t come back. Nothing odd about that; he kept his own hours. God knows how he drummed up business, but he did; Joe would leave an empty office at six, return the next morning at eight, and a packet of new accounts would be on his desk. It’s like working for Batman.

An empty afternoon. Wednesday. He’d done the work in the morning – a penny-ante barbershop account, nudie-cutie back, nothing on the spine, name and address on the front. The customer wanted redheads. Joe sighed, pulled down the big book of stock art licensed from B&B, paged through the cheesecake. They all looked so shiny. And what’s with the dog yanking off the underwear? Always a yorkie. They’d had a yorkie for a few years when he was growing up, and the dog never went for Mom’s drawers. If he had she wouldn’t have gotten that well-I-never expression; she would have batted the pooch with a rolled up Plain-Dealer and made him spend the night outside.

Joe remembered the day Dad brought the dog home. How he and Sal whooped and shouted and crushed the poor thing with hugs. How his mom seemed unenthused. She was the one who made up the little bed and got an alarm clock and water bottle for the pup. He had wanted the dog to sleep with them, but she’d said no. Sal snuck him in the bed anyway, and after that he slept in their room. He ran away the week Sal went off to basic. Mom didn’t seem bothered at all, and she blamed Dad for bringing it home in the first place. (Asta was always it when she was mad.) But she put the bowl of food out on the back porch for a week anyway. Squirrels ate it.

Okay, what’s next.

A One Building
Custom job need illo for front – mascot?
Blank under spine – contact info, “presented by”
Name on spine
Back copy: Everything for Building and Complete Contracts Plans and Estimate FREE
Due 01-30

Joe had an idea. Joe thought of Andy.

------

“Hello,” Joe said, pushing the door open. The handyman nodded and stepped inside. He was short, scrawny, stubbled, and smelled of Sen-Sen. The name embroidered on his coveralls said ANDREW, and Joe wondered whether the company just ordered a dozen ANDREWS and had all the guys wear them. You’d get a bulk rate.

“Andrew?” he said.

“Yeah. ‘S’bout a window.”

“Upstairs.”

Joe led the way up the narrow stairs. “It’s an old casement, keeps banging open.” He pushed open the nursery door. “That one there.”

Andrew nodded. He put down his tool kit, walked over the window, jiggled the hook.

“It’s your latch,” he said.

“I figured.”

“New clasp. Three bucks. Brass okay?”

“Brass is fine.”

Andrew gave him a look, as though he’d just learned something important about him. Something useful. Then he shrugged. “Got it in the truck. Take a minute.”

“Take two.”

Joe waited downstairs. He read the paper and smoked a cigarette and had a pop. Andrew came down after a few minutes and put the old latch on the table.

“Case you want it,” he said. “Three bucks.” Joe got out his wallet, took out three ones.

“You want to come up and check it?”

“I’m sure it’s fine. Thanks.”

Andrew nodded, shrugged. “Okay then.”

Joe saw him out and returned to his paper. He thought about dinner. Nothing in the house; maybe Big Boy’s. He’d expected to pay more for this job – spend the surplus on a shake and a triple decker.

Providing the guy had fixed the latch, that is. He went upstairs, opened the door. The room was still cold. There was a bright brass latch on the window. He gave it a test – solid. Won’t Peter Pan be surprised.

He looked out the window and saw Andrew’s truck outside his house. Andrew was sitting behind the wheel, staring straight ahead. Joe watched, waiting for him to make a few notes, light a smoke, throw the truck in gear and go. But he just sat there. Then he leaned forward and put his head in his hands, and his shoulders seemed to shake. He made a fist and hit the dashboard. Then he sat up and stared straight ahead again.

Joe moved away from the window. He went back to the kitchen and turned on the radio and listened to the music for a while. The furnace turned on; he heard the clatter of the coal rattling into the damper. He stood and went to the living room and looked out the window.

Andrew was gone.

---

Joe finished the A One match around six. It was a joke, really – the carpenter and his clouds of dust were straight out of the twenties, but people liked the traditional stuff when it came to things like carpenters and butchers. Handy Andy. Big smile.

What had he been crying about? You read the paper and the magazines and you think everyone’s got psychological problems because of the Bomb and because they’re alienated, but brother no one cries over that; maybe you get drunk and yell and have arguments and do all the stuff that makes you feel alive. You cry over a woman or sometimes a death. You cried when something ran away and there was no why or where.

Before Joe went to bed he checked the latch in the nursery. Still good. He lit a match to see just how much wind came in the gap, how much heat he was losing; the flame didn’t gutter: good. But the light glinted off the new latch, and he looked closer. The thing was attached tight, allright. Metal filings curled from the latch. Andrew had stripped every screwhead.