“No problem. I think we did enough damage to it with the big guns.”
“What now?”
“Crowbar.”
He dug through his toolbox and pulled out a large iron bar.
“That looks even more fun,” she said.
“No.”
“Spoilsport.”
“This part is easier to mess up.”
“I don’t want to mess up the fireplace,” she said.
“Me, neither. I love this place.” Chris glanced around the room. “People come from everywhere to stay at this hotel. They should get a nice fireplace for their money. It’s cool to think about, you know.”
“What is?”
“Making the fireplace as nice as possible for the people who’ll stay here. I won’t even be here, but they’ll be enjoying my work.”
“A big stone fireplace is pretty romantic,” she said. “How many people do you think have had great sex in this room?”
“Not enough,” he said, and turned his back to her to work. But she could see he was smiling a little. She liked that smile, liked that she could make him smile. Given the chance, she would make him smile again. Maybe this was her chance.
While he worked she watched. With the claw end of the crowbar he pried the gray bricks off the wall. They tumbled onto the tarp leaving bare wood and plaster behind. Chris worked quickly and efficiently. He seemed to be completely untroubled by having her as an audience. If she were him, she wouldn’t mind, either. If she could do stuff like this, like rebuilding a fireplace from the floor up, she would want everyone she knew to watch. He didn’t seem arrogant about his work, only happy to have the work and determined to do it well. She liked people who could fix things, build things, create things.
Her job entailed coming up with advertising campaigns, reaching out to customers any way she could and building the brand name of Oahu Air. An important job, it helped the company stay in the black and attract new clients. But she never forgot that the entire company wouldn’t exist but for the men and women who built the airplanes and the airport workers who kept them clean, safe and airworthy. As much as she liked her job, she wished she was doing something that spoke to her heart a little more than coming up with new headers for the company newsletter or spending a solid week picking a font for a new advertising poster. She wished she could do something that made her feel like Chris did when he worked, like he was making the world a little nicer, a little more comfortable and romantic for people. Preferably a job that didn’t involve so much sweating, however. Sweat looked much better on Chris than it did on her.
He finished dismantling the entire fireplace in about half an hour. She offered to help him load the old firebricks into the wheelbarrow but he waved her aside.
“Man’s work?” she teased.
“It is,” he said. “If that man is licensed, bonded and insured.”
“Fine, fine. I’ll just go get us a table for lunch. We’re still having lunch, right?” she asked.
He glanced over her shoulder at the bedside clock.
“It’s still a little early. You hungry?”
“I didn’t come early for lunch. I came... I don’t know,” she admitted. “I sort of wanted to see you. I also sort of wanted to not ever see you again because I felt like such an asshole last night. But then I sort of wanted to see you because I was such an asshole last night. I’m very conflicted.”
“I can tell.”
“Do you mind?”
“That you’re conflicted?”
“Yeah.”
“No. But why are you so conflicted? It’s just me,” Chris said.
“It’s not just you.”
“We’ve known each other forever.”