Entry #66
August 3, 2024 — 7:15 AM
Wind started early and kept its hand on the house all evening. Loose asphalt grit ticked against the kitchen windows. The vent hood flapper kept clacking open and shut like a mouth trying to decide. Warm air down here, a cooler seam up the back stair where it necks between plaster walls. I’d asked a local electrician to quote the run for two outlets in the attic, part of making that space usable. He came right on time, heavy boots, citrus on his hands, clean tape measure scarred at the hook.
We walked the line in the kitchen first. He nodded at my pencil marks and leveled a long eye at the breaker box I’d already mapped. His free talk held steady until I opened the door to the back stair. The bulb on its chain did that indifferent sway. The landing window was shut but the curtain still breathed its own small tide.
He set one foot on the first tread and stopped. Not dramatic. Just a slow, complete halt, like he had reached the shore of something. His face went loose in a way that wasn’t confusion so much as recognition he did not want to have. He made a small noise in his throat and looked up toward the landing—past the box of old lath I still haven’t hauled, past the narrow pinch where your shoulder brushes both walls if you’re not careful. He reached for the rail with two fingers and then pulled his hand back quick, as if the grain had bit.
“You’ve got some… air movement in there,” he said finally. “Feels… wrong. Could be drafts.” He rubbed his forearm. “I didn’t bring the right anchors for that plaster, anyway.” A beat later: “I’ll need a different fish tape. Too short.”
There are anchors in his bag. I had seen them when he set it down. The fish tape was coiled neatly in its red shell like a closed eye. I said nothing about it. Wind leaned into the eaves and let go. The bulb steadied, then ticked once against its chain like it had cooled.
We stood there longer than necessary, both of us pretending to look at the trim. The newel post on that side has a shallow scratch, two initials connected by a plus. I could feel the place in my palm where it catches, though I didn’t reach for it. He saw it, I think, and looked away too quickly to have read anything.
“I can draw it up and get you numbers,” he said, already stepping back into the kitchen, voice higher by half a note. “I’m just—schedule’s tighter than I thought. Storm coming in. We’ll pick it up when it’s… better.” He didn’t say safer. He didn’t say haunted. He didn’t say anything that could be quoted to anyone else without a laugh attached. He collected himself in a quick stack—pad, light, bag—hands exact but too fast.
I offered coffee because that is what you do when someone comes into your space and then tries to leave it like it’s hot. He shook his head, coughed into his fist as if clearing a taste. “Air’s close,” he said to the floor. “Just now.” Then he was gone, his boots loud on the front steps, the screen catching, then slamming with a sound that didn’t fit his carefulness.
I told myself to be annoyed; I needed the quote. Instead, what I felt was a flush in my own neck that I recognized with a kind of embarrassment. Relief is not a good look. But it was there. A line I’ve been holding alone had a second set of fingers on it, just for a second. He didn’t want to talk about why. I didn’t force him. There’s nothing to win in that.
The wind kept on after dark. I shut the back stair door and could still hear the small clocking of the chain on the bulb, irregular, like a thing thinking. The man’s discomfort lingered after the man did not.
— Thomas Hale