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"This has nothing to do with Lisa," said Gary. "It's only because I pretty much fucking built the place."
I nodded. "That’s... what I understand," I said.
"Not the electrical, of course. Or the plumbing. Or the concrete pours. Though I could've done a better job than those assholes the contractor hired."
"It was very generous of you," I said. "I mean, it is, still—"
"Fuck that," said Gary. "There was nothing fucking generous about it. Okay. I'm going out."
He opened the door and walked out into the snow. I looked out at the roof, the snow, the night, the big guy in the jumpsuit.
"Are you all right?" I called after him.
"I'm fine," he called back. "Close the fucking door. You're letting the heat out. It's a fucking green building, remember?"
I closed the door and tried to keep an eye on his progress through the window. Framed by the vertical slit, the scene had become even more disorienting: snowflakes illuminated from below, the hulking figure trudging among the vents and boxes. I saw him tug at something, kick it, then lift the thing, a snowy mass, and toss it into the darkness.
A minute later he was back on the landing, stomping the snow off his jumpsuit.
"Fucking big-assed tree branch," he said. "From the oak tree. Totally blocking the intake. It must've fallen in the windstorm. That was two weeks ago, before the snow. You been having problems that long?"
"Maybe," I said. "I thought it was just winter. I... I just... turned up the thermostat."
"You shouldn't let shit that go that long. You gotta get a regular maintenance man for this place."
The snow was flying off his clothes and boots. I stood as far from him as possible on the little landing.
"I'm working on it," I said. "With the board. It takes time."
The shaking and stomping and brushing stopped. He looked at me.
"Hey," he said. "I'm not getting down on you personally. Sorry if I came on too strong."
"No problem," I said. "It was so great for you to come over and help. I really didn't know who else to call. Let me get you some coffee."
"You're pretty much a volunteer here yourself, aren't you?" he said.
"Sort of," I said. "One of the donors made a deal with the biology department. Next semester my teaching load will be reduced by one class."
"That's not much," he said. "This is a big job here."
"There's a search committee," I said. "Maybe by summer we'll have a new executive director. C'mon, let's get that coffee."
Downstairs, you could already feel the warmth returning. I fixed a cup of coffee for Gary and a hot chocolate for me. We talked about our kids for a while. I asked about Samantha. He said she was trying to find her mother a job. He asked about Jake—how was he handling the steroid scandal in baseball? I said he was trying to use it as an excuse not to take his asthma medicine. Smart kid, he said. Smart at being stupid, I said. Gary had stopped swearing—as if he no longer needed the sparks of profanity to keep him warm.
His eyes wandered around the center for a moment. Builder's eyes. The same attention to detail that a biologist brings to the field, but something else, too. More willful.
"You did all the carpentry?" I said.
"Yeah," he said. "The rough and the finish."
"You did a great job," I said. "It must be difficult for you, now that Lisa—"
"Nothing fucking to do with her," he said. "I mean, she was the fucking client, but that wasn't why I did it."
He seemed to want to tell me something, but he wanted me to ask.
"Why then?" I finally said, after a pause.
"Sam's grandpa," he said, after his own pause.
"Raymond?" I said.
"You know," he said. "At the time, I had no fucking clue. Only when I looked back, I could see how old Raymond had put it all together. Know what I mean?"
"I don't quite follow..." I said.
"Look," he said. "This was the early nineties, after the band had finally gone fucking south. There I was, living off the book, no reported income, no visible fucking means of support."
"You were in a band?" I said. "I guess I should have known... from the tatoos."
I smiled awkwardly.
"Yeah," he said. "I was in Arbeit Macht Frei."
"No way!" I said. "My older brother had all your albums. And this disgusting t-shirt.... I thought the band was from West Berlin or Amsterdam or..."
"Someplace cool?" he said. "Nope. Three jews and a polack from right fucking here. Fucking suburbs, actually."
"Wow," I said. "You guys really had a following in Columbus. You were like... grunge before there was grunge."
"Like grunge before there was money," he said. "We toured for ten years. Most of the time we were crashing on our fans' fucking floors. I was telling you a story about Raymond. You wanna hear it?"
"Uh, sure," I said.
The story started with the breakup of the band. He told me how, in its last two years, Arbeit Macht Frei had made a little money and they had all started to hate each other. How he walked away with just enough cash to buy an old crackhouse in Barrio Lange and fix it up. How he built himself a studio and started painting again. How he and Lisa had had a thing. How Lisa had been almost as much of a fringe character as he was back then, this fucking crazy environmentalist chick. How she got pregnant. How she wanted to keep the baby, which surprised the fuck out of Gary. But how he knew she was serious because she quit drinking right away.
Then he leaned forward and gave me a little sociology lesson. He told me how the fucking state comes in and fucks up everyone's lives if a dad can't pay his fucking child support. He leaned back and shook his head. Fucking Lisa had been about to go ahead and apply for fucking welfare anyway.
But that was when Raymond Deveridge, Lisa's dad, whom Gary had never even fucking met before, showed up with a package deal to solve everyone's problems.
Gary lifted his arms and looked around the room.
"You mean the center?" I said. "The Tangled Bank? This was Raymond's idea?"
"Oh, the idea was Lisa's. But you gotta understand, Lisa had lots of fucking ideas. Raymond picked the one he was going to make happen."
The deal took a year or two to play out. Lisa got a job running the center, Gary got a job building the center, nobody had to get married who didn't fucking want to (the two of them sure as hell didn't), their paychecks were nice and low, but not too low, which looked good for the fundraising, which Raymond took care of, at least in the early years, until Lisa got good at it.
And when Samantha was born, she got a trust fund, with monthly payments right from the start. So the small paychecks didn't matter, because Lisa and Gary didn't have to use those paychecks to support their kid.
Gary paused, to let me catch up. I sat in silence for a moment.
"It's... it's a lot to absorb," I said.
"The trust fund even sends me checks when I take Samantha for the weekends," he said. "Fucking sweet, hey?"
"So that's how this place started," I said. "Kind of a... family thing."
"Hey," he said. "This place is real. Fuck the family drama. That river is real, all the nature is real, you know the science is real, and I can guarantee this building is fucking real."
"I know," I said. "Thanks. For everything. Well, I gotta get home. I have to be back here at 7:30 to unlock the doors for a busload of seventh graders."
I stood and picked up the cups. Gary stood up too.
"Yeah," he said. "I should get back to the studio."
"I'm sorry I had to interrupt you," I said.
"Don't worry," he said. "I never get started before midnight."
