I Tried to Evict My Three Tenants, So They Moved Into My Bed novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: The Net Shed

The net shed stood at the end of the old cannery pier, with the black river sucking at the pilings underneath.

Henrik unlocked the door at midnight and turned on one work lamp.

A space heater ticked in the corner.

The shop smelled of cedar shavings, varnish and coffee gone cold.

In the middle of the floor, propped on timbers, stood a boat.

It was twenty-eight feet long, and it was only ribs and a few pale planks.

The curve of her was already perfect.

"Yours?" I asked.

"Mine," Henrik said.

"Six years. Nights and Sundays."

"What's her name?" I asked.

"She hasn't got one," he said.

He said it to the floor.

Then he walked to a shelf above the bench and took down a stack of sketchbooks tied with twine.

He set them in my hands without a word.

I sat on a sawhorse and untied the string.

The first page was me, on the back steps in April, in my muddy boots, with a coffee mug in both hands.

The second was me asleep on the parlor couch with my braid across my face.

The third was my hands, with paint under every nail.

I turned the pages slowly.

There was a drawing of my mouth when I laughed.

There was one of my back, bent over a transom, from the ladder side.

There were a dozen of me at the kitchen table in the same blue sweatshirt, each one different, each one exactly right.

"How many?" I said.

"Two hundred and fourteen."

"You counted."

"I count everything," Henrik said.

His voice was low, and I had to lean toward it.

"I count the nails in a plank. I count the steps from the shop to the house. I count how many nights you leave your door unlocked."

"All of them."

"All of them," he agreed.

At the back of the last book, tucked between two pages, was a loose sheet.

It showed four young men on the front steps of the house, drawn in pencil, squinting into the sun.

I knew three of the faces.

The fourth man sat on the end.

His face had been drawn and rubbed out so many times that the paper had worn thin.

I looked up.

Henrik was watching me with his hands pushed deep in his pockets.

"Who is he?" I asked.

"Later," he said.

"Ask me later."

"Henrik."

"I will tell you," he said.

"I promise. Not here and not tonight. Tonight I want to look at you."

He crossed the floor in three steps.

He took the sketchbook from my hands and set it aside.

Then he took my face in his left hand, and his thumb found the corner of my mouth.

"I've drawn this a hundred times," he said.

"I never got the bottom lip right."

He kissed me.

It was slow and light at first, a touch of lips, and then it deepened and I felt the quiet hunger in him come up.

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