Substitute Plumber, The

Frontiers, 2004 by Petronio, B

So I found me this blue-moon man. Found him on a cold-snap Christmas Eve, the moon technically and literally blue as it rose over the East River and cast blue shadows on the sides of buildings like comic book art. I had known for weeks that moon was coming. And Christmas Eve-like those other Eves, Halloween and New Year's-so stamped by childhood ritual and expectation that when the alarm goes off that morning you're programmed for a wider range of emotions. Emotions, this year, I hoped to parlay into a new sculpture. I was shutting myself in for the season, a gratefully single thirty-six-year-old anxious to hole up and hide out in her studio. I'd stocked enough provisions to get me through New Year's, and at two in the afternoon on the 24th I packed some clay around an armature and settled in to work. Half an hour in, my thoughts were everywhere and nowhere and nothing burst through. Hands like prosthetics with the clay. I went to the kitchen for caffeine, an inch of Strega, only to find water seeping out over the floor like an oil slick. And me without a pipe wrench.

So I called the plumber, who naturally doesn't work Christmas Eve, though his answering service agreed to route the message to the substitute plumber. I threw down some towels, poured some coffee, some Strega, went from room to room-two doors on each side of a center hallway, on the right, bedroom and bathroom; on the left a tableless galley kitchen and a spacious studio where life was lived-but I hadn't been working well so of course the rooms were spotless. There was nothing for it but to go back to the clay, where the substitute plumber's interruption was like the water seeping, I couldn't not think of it. That, and the apartment was beginning to feel like August in the bayous. I'm on the fifth floor and the heat is controlled in the nether regions and the radiators never cool, and when I tried to open the bedroom window, it was painted shut.

That's when the substitute plumber buzzes. I buzz him in and as he's making his way up I start muttering: goddamn distractions, fuckm heat, got to get some work done, only the work matters, blah, blah, and by the time I hear the elevator chunk open it's all his fault, I slide the four deadbolts and swing open the heavy industrial door, a bear of a man not tall, I avoid eye contact, tell him, in the kitchen, first left. He ducks his hatted head (the Russian kind with the flaps) as I flatten to let him by with his tool box (a mid-size red Craftsman), he squeezes his bulk through and clumps on down the hall, dressed in layers, resigned overtime slouch, and I say to his back, "There's coffee on the stove and Strega on the counter."

He freezes as though confronting a minefield.

I explain to his back, black hair straggling from underneath his hat, "The regular plumber likes a little something."

He stands in the kitchen doorway, nose nudging upward, sniffing the air. "Shouldn't," he says in a deep voice, shaking his head no. Again sniffs the air. "Aaach," he moans. "A nip. Why not? It's Christmas Eve, right?" Shrugs eloquently. "Am I right? " But before I can answer a smile brightens his outlook like the sun breaking through a month of clouds, and he ducks into the kitchen.

On my way down the hall I glance in after him: sodden towels on the floor, air thick as a sauna, yet he hasn't taken off his hat or his coat and he's pouring coffee with one hand, Strega with the other. I slip on by and into the studio. Stand before the armatured clay and close my eyes: for days I've pondered Bill Clinton's desires, a vague notion of something figurative, satirical yet empathetic, but can't get beyond Botero and Daumier. I try some breathing exercises (I'd sacrifice a lamb if I thought it would help). Rub my fingers together like a safecracker, raise them toward the clay, only to freeze at the clunk and clench and wrenching of pipe that comes from the other side of the sheetrock wall.

I wait for it to stop, then start over. Again place my fingers on the clay, like a Ouija board, praying for some kind of jump-start, caffeine, nicotine, hell, alien intervention, when he starts to sing. Abrupt snatches at first, some foreign language. I find myself with my ear to the sheetrock . . . Spanish, no, Italian, Sinatra stuff, which, the lyrics not understood, sounds surprisingly elegant, the singing interrupted here and there with grunts from some plumbing effort. After a minute or two, it stops. I hear the clink of glass on glass; he clears his throat. And starts again, comically loud and low-pitched. Opera. It's weird at first, then the deep-chested bass seems perfect for his barrel physique. He's singing in Italian, tender, emotional, I stand there, ear pressed to the wall, mouth agape, rapt with delight and awe at the stunning quality of his voice.

The concert goes on for a good five minutes, until he Crescendos toward the finish, holds and holds and holds a note, and stops. It lingers like an echo, then gives way to a burgeoning silence. Awkward. I feel compelled to clap or cheer. Was he flirting? Singing for a tip? With a push of interest it occurs to me that he's a struggling artist plumber, one of those New York manques whose burning talent makes you wonder which flaw it is that keeps him from becoming a household name. Ear to the sheetrock, I hear him clumping across the room. I rush out into the thick, lush heat of the hallway as he comes out of the kitchen, quilted long underwear top, still stout without the layers but all chest, sloppy black hair, face a bit fleshy, and his defining feature, what you'd zero in on if you were doing a bust, a Roman nose he'd broken and not bothered to straighten. A dissolute, too-much-of-everything look that reminds me of Dylan Thomas. Refreshingly unhandsome. Our eyes meet. He grins and shrugs; I grin and shrug. Something passes between us, a frisson of illicit possibility, my libido twitches like a rabbit, but we stand there a beat too long, he gives me a dutiful look and intones, "Got to check the bathroom pipes."