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“It’s paint. This is totally in my wheelhouse. I’ve never done a window professionally, but I can handle it.” She smiled. “Unless of course, you’d prefer to do it yourself.”
“Have at it.” He stepped back and watched her climb up into the window space. She began marking off space and mumbling to herself. “And you know you have to write backward so it looks good from theoutside, right?”
“Psh. I’m no amateur.”
He leaned against the counter and watched her work, afraid to interrupt her process, but also curious to know more about her.
“Are you going to just stand there staring at me, or are you going to actually talk?”
“I thought maybe you preferred to work in silence.”
She laughed loud and hard. “I’ve never been prone to silence. Tell me about yourself.”
“What do you want to know?”
“What’s the best part about being a glassblower?”
“There’s nothing better than the feel of molten glass becoming something more.” He paused, then asked, “What’s so important about this tree topper thing you’re making?” He’d been suspicious from the beginning given how much money she’d been paying them for studio time.
“It’s a special gift.”
“But you seem particular about how it looks.”
“I’m trying to replicate one. It wouldn’t be right if it didn’t match the old one. I’d feel like I didn’t do good enough.”
He had no way of following that up, so he let it drop, but something still nagged him about the topper. She outlined all of the letters, and from where he stood, they looked good.
“How long have you been at this location?”
“What do you mean?”
“You said your dad had a shop in the city, but you’re here in the ’burbs. Seems like an odd place to have a studio.”
“The price was right. Running a place like this in the city is expensive.”
“Your dad wouldn’t sell to you at a bargain?”
“My dad made some bad investments and lost his savings. Everything except the shop and his house. And the thing is, a lot of people were worse off than him. So when he was ready to retire, it made sense for him to sell the studio. What neither of us knew was that the rich pricks who bought it only did so to close him down. He was their competition. They sold cheap glasswork, and buying him out gave them the opportunity to grow.”
She turned around and looked at him with sadness filling her face. “That sucks. Total double whammy. Didn’t he look into who this company was?”
“Yeah, but they sold him on the idea that Fisher Glassworks was going to be a division of their company. Kind of like the high-end division. He figured they would keep me on as they built up more business.”
“Oh, man. You were gonna work for them? And then they, what? Just fired you?”
“Yep. Closed the whole place down, and when I lost my temper and said I’d open a new shop to compete against them, they reminded me that they didn’t just buy my dad’s studio, but also his name. I’d been taught by one of the best, but I couldn’t use that. It required some legal intervention to be able to use my name for my shop.”
“People are horrible.”
“Fucking rich people.” The words slipped out and then he said, “No offense.”
“Why would that offend me? It’s true.”
“Well, uh...” He rubbed the back of his neck.
“Jeez. You think I’m one of them?”
“You did offer Bronte a lot of money to make that topper.”
