scabbard practice

The shop smells like leather and rosin, and I'm standing in the doorway holding a theremin case like an idiot.

"Are you Boyd?" the woman calls from the back. "Taggart, from the credit union?"

"That's me."

"Then you're late."

"I'm not late. I'm exactly on time."

"Rehearsal started four minutes ago." She comes around the corner wiping her hands on a rag, and she's got a reed held up to the light between two fingers. "I'm Leanne. Leanne Petrova. You can put that case down anywhere it doesn't look like a bomb."

I set it down. I'm fifty-four years old and my hands are not steady, and she notices, because she notices everything apparently.

"Your hands are shaking," she says.

"It's the drive up. Superior road is a nightmare and I white-knuckled it the whole way."

"That's not what shaking hands looks like from driving." She holds the reed up again, tilts it. "Hold this light for me a second."

So I hold the lamp. She's maybe thirty-one, thirty-two, dark hair pulled back with what looks like a zip tie, which I find charming for reasons I don't examine. The reed is warped. You can see it even from where I'm standing, the curve in it like a potato chip.

"English horn reed," she says. "Warped on the scrape. The quartet plays in forty minutes and Mai is going to lose her mind."

"Quartet of what?"

"Two theremins, cello, english horn. It's a long story involving a grant I probably shouldn't have applied for." She snips something off the reed with tiny scissors. "You're the theremin case guy."

"I'm the loan officer who is also, today, the theremin case guy. Custom case, ordered by a Dr. Okonkwo in Mesa, he couldn't pick it up, I was passing through anyway."

"Passing through Superior on a Saturday. Sure." She looks at me. "You don't have to lie about why you're here. Nobody drives here on purpose."

"I came on purpose."

"Well." She sets the reed down in a shallow dish of water. "Now I'm interested."

* * *

The quartet shows up in pieces. Two theremin players, a cellist named Ruth who's sixty-something and funny, and Mai with the reed, who did indeed lose her mind briefly and then got over it. Leanne runs sound from a folding table covered in cables and a coffee can full of screws. I sit on a stool by the door like furniture and listen.

I'm not a music guy. I do loans. But a theremin makes a sound like somebody singing from the next room through a wall, and two of them together, working around each other, does something to the back of my neck.

Between runs, Leanne comes over and sits on the stool next to mine, which is technically one stool.

"What do you think?"

"I think I don't have the vocabulary for it."

"Try anyway."

"It sounds like waiting," I say. "Like two people waiting for the same thing and not saying so."

She looks at me for a second too long, then laughs. "That's the worst review I've ever heard and it's also correct. That's literally the piece. It's called Hold Steady."

"Hold Steady."

"Mai's husband wrote it before he died. It's about two people being patient with each other." She picks at a spot of dried glue on her jeans. "I built the stands. And the cases. That's my actual contribution, hands, not ears."

"Your hands are good hands."

"Careful, loan officer."

"I'm just saying what I see."

The second run starts and she stays on the stool next to me anyway. Our shoulders touch. Neither of us moves away. I'm aware of the rosin smell and her forearm against mine and I'm fifty-four and acting like it's the first day of anything, which I suppose it sort of is.

After the rehearsal, everyone packs up, and Mai squeezes my arm on the way out and says, "She never sits with anyone," like a verdict, and leaves.

Then it's just us and the shop and the smell of leather.

"I have to tell you something before you go," Leanne says.

"Okay."

"I'm going to be blunt because you look like someone who appreciates blunt."

"I do."

"I want you to stay. Not for small talk. I want to teach you something and I want you to teach me something and I want both of those things to involve us not wearing many clothes. If that's a no, say no, and I'll still help you load the case into your truck."

I should mention my history here, for context. I dated a woman named Corinne, met her on a reservoir survey job seven years ago, and at forty-seven I was dumb enough to let her move to Phoenix without following. Since then, nothing. Not because of her. Because of me, mostly, and a thing I never let anyone do, which I'll get to.

"Yes," I say. "The answer is yes!"

"Good. Come here and lock the door."

* * *

She takes her time, which is the whole point, she tells me. There's a cot in the back room that is clearly not for sleeping, a bottle of oil, a towel folded like it was folded with intent.

"Here's the setup," she says, sitting on the edge of the cot. "I go slow. You go slow. Nobody does anything to anybody without asking first. I ask, you ask. Deal?"

"Deal."

"Take your shirt off."

I do. She watches my hands again.

"Still shaking?"

"A little."

"That's fine. It means you're paying attention." She strips her shirt off too, then her jeans, and she's got a body that's strong in the arms from hauling lumber and she doesn't apologize for any of it, which I like. "Now. Before anything, I need to tell you the thing I've never let anyone do, so you know what you're getting."

"Go ahead."

"I like to be prepared. Fingers, oil, all of it, slow, before anything enters me. And I've never had a partner who wanted to do it for me without rushing. So tonight I do you first, and you do me second, and we see if we're the same kind of patient."

"And if we're not?"

"Then we had a good evening anyway." She smiles. "Now lie down!"

I lie down. She kneels beside me and warms oil between her palms, and I watch her do it, the way she rubs her fingers together like she's testing pitch.

"You ever had anyone touch your ass, Boyd?"

"One girlfriend, briefly. Not like this."

"Like this is better. Tell me if anything hurts, and I mean the second it hurts."

"Understood."

She works one slick finger around me, patient, circling, and I grip the towel under my head. "Breathe out," she says, and I breathe out, and her finger slides in slow, just to the first knuckle.

"Okay?"

"Okay. God, okay."

"There it is. See, all that worry for nothing." She eases in and out, takes her time, adds oil. "This is the part men skip and then wonder why it hurt. This is the cadence. Scabbard work has a cadence too. Cut, wet, wrap, rest. You never rush the rest."

"You're talking about leather right now."

"I'm talking about everything right now!" She adds a second finger, and I make a noise I won't describe to anyone. "There you go. Open for me."

"I'm trying."

"You're doing it. Look at you." She curls her fingers, careful, and my hips come off the cot. "Feel that?"

"I feel it in my teeth."

"That's the spot. We're not going for that yet. Tonight is just the getting ready. That's the part nobody ever gave you." She slows down even more, if possible. "Your turn after this. You watch my hands, you oil up, you go slower than you think you need to, and you ask me before anything."

"I will."

"I know. Now breathe out again."

I breathe out.

She takes the second finger out and the first one with it, and I sag against the cot like a cut puppet.

"We're not done," she says. "That was just your fingers."

"There's more?"

"There's a plug. I make them. You're lying on forty dollars of walnut and leather right now, if you want to know."

"Is that a question or a sales pitch?"

"It's an ask. Do you want it?"

"Yes." My voice cracks on the second syllable and she laughs, kind about it.

She gets up and comes back with a wooden thing shaped like a fat teardrop with a flat base, and she oils it like she oiled her fingers, slow strokes, turning it in her hand. Then she sits back on her heels between my legs.

"Feet flat. Knees up. There you go." She presses the tip against me, and it's bigger than two fingers, and I make another noise. "Breathe out."

"I'm out of breath."

"You've got plenty. Use it." She hums something low, two notes, back and forth, and the pressure builds and stops and builds and stops, and every time it stops I get a fraction wider around it. "Feel how I'm doing that? Pressure, rest. Pressure, rest. You don't force leather either. You seat it and you let it decide."

"It's deciding. It's deciding loudly."

"Good. There." The widest part slips through and my whole body clenches and then, weirdly, lets go, and the thing settles inside me like it's always lived there. I'm shaking from my shoulders to my knees.

"Oh," I say. "Oh, that's..."

"That's what patience buys you." She reaches over to the theremin stand she keeps by the cot, the small practice one, and puts one hand near the loop and one near the rod, and a chord comes up out of it, warm and wavering, and she holds it while the plug hums along inside me like it's part of the band.

"You're playing the theremin right now."