Firewatch and the Piano Run

Tomorrow I turn forty-four. I know, I know, forty-four is not a big round number, but it sits different on me. Forty-three felt like a landing. Forty-four feels like a stair I keep missing with my foot.

I am a firefighter, been one for eighteen years, and I love it, mostly. But lately my shifts have chewed up every weekend. Three twenty-four hour rotations in a row, then a swap with a guy on my crew, then a medical call that ran long. Moe and I have been dating two years now, and the last time we spent a whole day together was... I actually had to think about it. October. It was October and we watched a movie and I fell asleep on the couch during the second act.

So when he called Wednesday night and asked if I wanted to help him deliver a piano, I said yes before he finished the sentence. A piano. On a ferry. With my boyfriend. Yes!

"Are you sure?" he asked. "It's a whole thing. We're driving the Olympic Peninsula in a box truck."

"Moe," I said, "I'd deliver a piano to the moon right now."

He laughed and told me to be ready at eight the next morning. I was ready at seven forty. Don't judge me.

* * *

The truck he rented was one of those boxy twenty-six footers, and it looked enormous parked in front of my apartment building. Moe stood by the passenger door in his oldest flannel, and I have to tell you, forty-six looks good on that man. He works with his hands, runs his own carpentry business now after years building sets on cruise ships, and it shows in his forearms.

"There she is!" he called out, waving like I was getting off a plane.

"Hi yourself." I climbed up in and looked back through the little window into the box. There it was, a big dark upright piano, all strapped down with ratchet straps and moving blankets like it was going into witness protection. "Holy smokes, is that the whole thing?"

"That's the whole thing. Nineteen twelve vintage, going to a winery outside Port Townsend. They're doing some harvest dinner Saturday and the owner bought it off an estate." He pulled out of my street easy, the truck groaning through the turns. "So today is piano day. Tomorrow is your birthday, but today is ours."

"Ugh, don't remind me."

"Forty-four," he said, like it was trivial.

"Forty-four," I said, like it was everything. I didn't say the rest of it, the part where I've been feeling like my life is on a shelf. But he probably heard it anyway. He's good like that.

The ferry line at Keystone was short and we got on with room to spare. We walked out on the deck with coffees and watched the islands go by. I love that run, the water all silver and the air smelling like salt and diesel. Somewhere out in Admiralty Inlet I asked him how he even learned to move pianos.

"Cruise ships taught me everything is heavy and everything is on wheels," he said. "You just have to respect the wheels."

* * *

That's when he decided I needed a lesson right there on the truck deck, which, okay, was very Moe. He'd brought a piano dolly in the cab, this flat wood platform with four big swivel casters, and he set it down on the steel deck of the truck where we could see it.

"Okay, teacher mode," he said, and I snorted. "The whole secret is the H bar strap and knowing when the dolly is locked. You roll with your knees, not your back, and you never, ever let your fingers wrap the top edge. Fingers on the sides. See?"

"See what, this?" I put my hands where he pointed and he adjusted my grip, his palms rough and warm over mine.

"Right. Now watch me!" He rolled it a few feet, spun it, popped the caster locks with his toe. "Your turn."

I gave it a push and it went way easier than I thought, so easy I overdid it, and it rolled off square and clipped the wheel chock. I grabbed to catch it and my hand slipped right around the edge like a dummy.

"Ow! Okay, that one's on me," I was laughing so hard I had to sit down on the dolly. "I move hundred pound hose packs for a living and this thing humbled me in four seconds."

"You grabbed it," he said, grinning. "You grabbed it like a rookie."

"I did grab it like a rookie," I wiped my eyes. "All right, all right, teach me again, professor."

Second try I did it clean, roll, square up, lock. And honestly? I felt proud of myself in a way I hadn't felt in months. Small win. I'll take it.

* * *

The drive over was gorgeous, all these backroads with the trees closing in, and we found the winery tucked on a hillside with a view of some valley. The owner, a guy named Ted, maybe fifty, met us in the gravel lot waving both arms.

"You found us. Wonderful. Come, come, the hall is this way."

The event hall was a pretty room, long windows, wood beams, and a low platform at one end where the piano was supposed to live. Unstrapping that thing and walking it down the ramp on the dolly was real work, and my shoulders were burning by the end, but Moe and I did it together and got it placed dead center on the marks Ted had taped on the floor.

"Perfect," Ted said, clapping. "That is exactly perfect. Now if only everything today were going that well."

"What's up?" Moe asked.

Ted rubbed his jaw. "Two things. The wine fridge in the back died around six this morning. Two hundred bottles, no cooling. And the server room, it's this little closet behind the tasting bar, runs all the monitors and the digital presentation for tomorrow, and something in there is making a horrible noise and the room feels like a sauna."

"Can I see the server room?" Moe said, and I looked at him, because