Darkroom Debacle

Okay, so I'm standing in the parking lot of the Fairway Pines driving range at seven on a Thursday evening, and I want you to understand that I did not want to be here. I'm twenty-seven years old, I've been single for exactly three months and one week, and my friend Karyn has decided that the cure for a broken heart is a book club full of strangers discussing a novel I did not read.

I read the back cover in the car. That counts for something, right?

The clubhouse is this low brick building that smells like burnt coffee and microwaved popcorn, and there's a sign taped to the door that says BOOK CLUB, LOUNGE, 7 PM in cheerful purple letters. I take a breath, grab my tote bag like it's armor, and go in.

"RHEA!" Karyn comes around the snack table at a jog, arms out, and she's wearing one of those long cardigans that could double as a tent. "Oh my god, you came, you actually came, I could cry."

"I said I would," I say, and she's squeezing me so hard my tote bag slides off my shoulder. "Careful, I have wine in there."

"You brought wine? See, this is why we're friends." She met me two years ago at a yoga class where we both spent most of the hour falling over, and she's been my friend ever since, mostly because she never lets a friendship lapse, she just keeps calling until you give in. "Okay, so, small problem. Tiny problem."

"How small?"

"Nobody read the book."

"Karyn, I didn't read the book."

"Yes but you're new-ish, so you don't count, but there are nine people in that lounge and I asked every single one of them and do you know how many finished it? Two. And one of those two was Harold, who I'm pretty sure just says he read everything so he can talk." She grabs two plastic cups and pours my wine into both of them, which is not how wine works, but I let it go. "Anyway, how are you? You look good. You look, ooh, is that a new sweater?"

"It's two months old, but thanks for noticing eventually." I take my cup back. "I'm fine. I'm distracting myself, which is the whole point of tonight, so don't ask about..." I wave my hand, meaning Jose, meaning the four years, meaning the box of his stuff I still haven't dropped off at his sister's place.

"Wouldn't dream of it," she says, in the tone of someone who is absolutely going to dream about it later. "Okay, wine, snacks, chairs. Except, um. One more tiny thing before you go in."

"Karyn."

"So you know how I said the sink in the back hallway was dripping a little?"

"The darkroom sink, yeah."

"It's not dripping a little anymore. It's doing this thing where it sprays, like, sideways, when you run the tap, and there's a bucket under it, and honestly it's a whole situation." She's steering me by the elbow down the back hallway as she talks, which is bold, because I said I came to sit in a chair and drink wine. "And I know you're, like, between jobs right now, but you're still the only person I know with actual plumbing opinions, so could you just go look at it? Five minutes? Tell me if it's fixable or if I need to call the range's maintenance guy?"

I am a plumber, or I was until the company I worked for laid off half its crew in the spring, which is a fun thing to be when you're also newly single. I keep my tools in the trunk of my car out of habit, which is the only reason I say yes.

"Fine, five minutes. Where's the darkroom?"

"Past the kitchen, last door on the left. There's a bucket, you can't miss it." She's already backing toward the lounge, waving her cup. "You're a lifesaver, I owe you one!"

The hallway gets dimmer and narrower the further I go, and there's a smell of old chemicals and damp carpet, and then I hear it, before I even see the door. A man's voice, low and irritated, talking to nobody.

"No. No no no, don't you dare. Don't you dare, I just set that."

I push the door open and there's a guy crouched on the floor in a headlamp, thirty-ish, big shoulders, work shirt with a logo on the pocket, holding what appears to be a snap trap in one hand and a peanut butter scoop in the other. There's a rat the size of my forearm lying very still near the baseboard, and there is also, crucially, a bucket under a dripping sink.

"Hi," I say. "Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt the... negotiation."

He looks up, and the headlamp catches me right in the eyes, which is great, very flattering. "You're not interrupting, you're just in time to watch me lose to a dead rat." He holds up the trap. "Fifth one tonight. This is the fifth one, and there's a sixth one somewhere in this wall I can hear but cannot reach, and I've been here since four."

"Rough day?"

"Rough week. The range's got mice in the kitchen and rats back here, and the rats are winning." He stands up with a grunt, and he's tall, taller than me, and his headlamp is still aimed somewhere around my chin. "You're the extra set of hands, right? Karyn sent word there'd be somebody?"

And here's where I make my mistake, because I hear "somebody" and think plumber, obviously, she sent me for the sink, and he hears "somebody" and thinks pest control backup, obviously, because he's been wrestling rodents alone for three hours, and neither of us clarifies.

"Yeah," I say, dropping my tote on a dusty counter. "She said there was a situation back here."

"A situation," he agrees, with feeling. "Okay, so, the live one in the wall, I'm thinking we pull that panel, right? Unless you want to do traps and I do the panel."

"I mean, whatever gets it done fastest," I say, because honestly that's my whole philosophy at work too. "Where do you want me?"

He points at the sink. "Start there? The drip's been driving me nuts, it's got this rhythm, like a metronome, I swear I can hear it through the headlamp."

"...The sink."

"Yeah, get it shut off at least, there's a valve under there somewhere, I think."

I stare at him. He stares at me. The rat does not stare at anyone because the rat is dead.

"You want me to fix the sink," I say slowly.

"Well, yeah, isn't that why you're here?" He frowns, and something in his face flickers. "Wait. Are you not the plumber?"

"Are you not?"

"I'm the pest control guy. Brock." He pulls off a work glove to shake my hand, which he does anyway even mid-confusion, which I'll admit is decent manners. "Brock Halvorsen, Range Guard Pest Solutions, it's on the shirt, you'd think I'd lead with that."

"Rhea. I'm the plumber. Or I was, I got laid off in April, but the pipes don't care about my employment status." I'm already crouching under the sink, because my hands go on autopilot around plumbing, and sure enough there's a corroded shut-off valve and a supply line that's been dripping for probably months. "Karyn asked me to look at this. She didn't mention anything about rats."

"And nobody told me a plumber was coming, so I've been down here narrating my failures to a dead rat for three hours." He crouches down next to me, and up close he smells like bug spray and, faintly, peanut butter. "Great. Okay. So we're both victims of Karyn's scheduling."

"Welcome to the club," I say, and I get the valve shut, and the metronome drip finally stops, and Brock actually cheers a little, which is ridiculous and also kind of charming. "That's the leak handled for tonight, but this valve is toast and the spray's coming from a cracked fitting, so somebody needs a real repair, like, this week."

"So you're not leaving."

"I didn't say that."

"You shut off the water, now the rat panel's the emergency, so you're basically my assistant until the wall comes open." He's grinning, and it's a good grin, annoyingly. "Come on, Rhea the plumber. There's a live one in there, it's a two-person job, and I promise the dead ones don't count against you."

"I have not read the book," I tell him, standing up and rolling my sleeves, "and now I'm doing rodent extraction in a darkroom. This book club is going great."

The panel comes off easier than either of us expected, which should have been my first warning, because nothing in this clubhouse has been easy all night. Brock works the pry bar while I hold the flashlight on my phone, and we get the board loose in about four minutes, and then there's just a dark gap in the wall full of insulation and dust and the distinct sound of a rat deciding whether today is a good day to die.

"There he is," Brock whispers, like we're on a nature documentary. "Big fella. Okay, I go in with the scoop, you keep the light steady, and whatever happens, do not let him bolt left, because left is under the floorboards and then he's everyone's problem forever."

"Left. Got it. What's left?"

He points. I nod like I know. He eases the scoop into the gap, and there's this horrible scrabbling sound, and then a gray blur shoots out of the wall, misses left, and goes right instead, straight across the counter, straight through a stack of trays that have apparently been sitting there for ages, and the whole thing goes over with a crash and a slosh.

"Tray!" I yell, uselessly, because the tray is already airborne.

We both lunge. I catch the tray, sort of, mostly, and the fluid that doesn't end up on me ends up on the floor and my boots and the bottom two feet of Brock's work shirt. It's developer, or it was developer in 2019, and it smells like vinegar and regret.

"Okay," Brock says, after a second. "Okay. That's fine. That's fixable."

"Is it? Because I am soaked."

"You're fine, it's mostly water, it's just stale. It's stale photo juice. Nobody's died of stale photo juice."

"You don't know that. You kill things for a living, you're not a doctor."

He laughs at that, this big easy laugh that doesn't fit the dank little room at all, and grabs a roll of shop towels off a shelf as if he keeps shop towels everywhere on principle. We mop the floor, or start to, and at some point I give up on the towels and start wringing out my sleeve over the utility sink, and he watches me do it and then says, very seriously, "Your sweater's ruined, by the way."

"This sweater is two months old."

"Oof. Sorry. That's basically brand new."

"Right? I bought it after Jose and I broke up, like a treat yourself purchase, and now it's marinating in darkroom soup."

The name comes out before I can stop it, and Brock, to his credit, doesn't make it weird, he just keeps mopping and says, "Ex?"

"Yeah. Four years. Ended about three months ago, three months and a week now, not that I'm counting."

"Three months and a week," he repeats, and there's the grin again. "Not that you're counting."

"I'm not counting. The calendar counts. I just read the calendar."

"Sure."

"I have a box of his stuff in my trunk right now, actually. Been in my trunk for two months. I'm supposed to drop it at his sister's place and I keep driving past her street on purpose." I wring the other sleeve. "Anyway. That's the mood I brought to book club tonight. Sorry you got the uncut version."

"Hey, I narrate to dead rats, we've all got things." He wrings out his own shirt hem, which does very little, and then he just sort of shrugs and peels the whole shirt off over his head, and stands there in a white undershirt with big damp shoulders and a rat bite on one forearm that I did not see happen.

"When did that happen?"

"Hmm? Oh, earlier. Number three got a