Chapter 5: The Basement

The basement was in Slavic Village, and it held four inches of dirty water.

It was a Thursday morning, two days after our second lunch, and Bressler had decided to ride along for my first observed visit.

He sat in the passenger seat with a clipboard on his knee all the way there.

"Be yourself," he said as I parked. "Just a warmer version."

The homeowner opened the door before I could knock.

She was in her sixties, in a green cardigan, and she held a dish towel in both fists.

"Thank you for coming," she said. "I'm sorry about the mess."

"There's nothing to be sorry for," I said.

My voice came out in the flat tone I use for everything.

She led us down the stairs into the cold.

The water had come up through the floor drain two nights ago.

Along the back wall stood a workbench with a hundred small drawers, and every drawer was swollen shut.

"My husband built that," she said. "Forty years of screws and washers, all sorted by size. He died in March."

I took out my meter and measured the moisture on the wall.

I photographed the bench and the drawers and the line the water had left on the paneling.

I said, "Four inches of water for forty-eight hours. I'll note the bench as a total loss."

"A total loss," she repeated.

"Yes."

I was thinking about the drawers, and the sorted washers, and a man who had built something for his wife to keep.

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