Returning home from visiting vineyards in Sicily, I spent hours on the plane crying. He and I luxuriated in love for 11 years, yet the ending was quick. When I first met the ex, he challenged me in a manner of flirting more appropriate of a 16-year-old than a man of 32. “It won’t smell anymore or move when you sit on it. It was the old boyfriend who first identified the occasional smell from the faulty installation - one of the few things he didn’t fix before he left. It’s odd how few people ever noticed those fumes. He cemented the porcelain bowl back into place, saying, “This was never put in right.” The dusky smell of solder filled the apartment. He replaced the sputtering, leaking copper pipe with gleaming new metal. “And you let him go? Why did you let him go?” “He rebuild your floors? Did he build those shelves the wines are on?” “He do this?” he asked, gesturing at the ornate iron welding on one window. “You have to take him back.” He toured the rooms, pointing. “Look at that,” he said, noting the curvy shape of one of the desk flanks. Taking breaks from the toilet drama, he ventured out to check up on me to see if I was still pounding the computer keyboard, look over the wines again and find other evidence of the work the “old” boyfriend had done.Īnother rueful shake of his head. Over the next three hours, the inquisitive plumber soldered, anchored, cursed, talked to himself, patched, made a complete mess, ruined my best towels and traipsed plaster over my floorboards and rugs. “See? I was right.” He was so pleased with himself. You do your own thing.” He walked over to a few watercolors on the wall, “You do these?” “I mean, you know, an artist does her own thing, and I’m looking around here and, you know, the lamps, the colors, that crazy desk you work at. “You some sort of artist girl?” he asked. He then scanned the disorder that marks my living room and study. I would feel comfortable with about 1,500. He found it even funnier when I told him that my 170 bottles weren’t nearly enough. He shook his head dismissively, but I could tell he was intrigued. “I know people drink wine,” he said, “but what’s there to write about?” His eyes bulged, and he let out a snort of laughter. About to head out to buy supplies, he saw my wall of wine and flinched. I live in a railroad apartment, a string of open rooms, so my whole life is exposed to anyone who enters. This was a guy used to having his heart broken instead of the other way around, I noted. “Someone makes you something like that, you keep him.” I saw him register the “old” on boyfriend. I gazed at the perfectly dovetailed Siberian-pine water box. Looking up, he asked: “Who built that water tank for you? It’s beautiful.”
I didn’t want to hear that he was going to get me a new one from Home Depot. Clearly, working on a museum piece of a toilet was not his idea of a good time. “Oh, man!” he exclaimed, slapping his palm against the wall. I led him to it, where he examined the fragile copper pipes that, Vesuvius-like, spouted water all about when the toilet flushed.
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