Just Say Yes

“But what will you do?” My mother asked, “How will you live?” 

   We were on the way to Poughkeepsie, where I'd catch the train to the City to begin my post-youth period. I had secured a sublet, a dark and gloomy walk-up tucked into the cobbled canyons of Tribeca and, until my mother broached the subject of a livelihood, I hadn't given the whole scheme much more thought than that. Armed with a Fine Arts degree and a Gladstone bag containing more kitchen gear than clothing, I was heading for Grand Central without a plan, little practical experience and no prospects. 

   After a few days trolling for leads on lamp-posts and bulletin boards around SoHo and Tribeca, I ran into my friend Pete outside the lumber yard on Prince. Pete had been in the City for about a year and had fallen in with a guy named Larry, who called himself a designer  – an architect without the degree, he explained – and had provided Pete with pretty steady work doing odd jobs and minor renovations. “There's a woman uptown who needs a sink and dishwasher hooked up,” Pete offered, “if you can handle some simple plumbing.” I started to say that I didn't, in fact, know much about plumbing when Pete broke in, “Just say yes and figure it out. It's the only way to get work in this town.” He advised. “Just say yes and figure it out”. I bought a canvas tool bag, a couple of wrenches, a tube of Wonder Goop and a Time-Life book on basic plumbing and made an appointment to install the woman's sink. On the subway I pored over the section on hooking up sinks and dishwashers and by the time I reached the Upper West Side I was feeling pretty confident. My client stood in the tiny kitchen, chatting about how hard it was to find tradesmen who one could trust while I stuffed myself into her sink cabinet and poked about for any nut, sleeve or bushing that seemed even remotely familiar. I'd concealed the Time Life book, open to the appropriate section, in my tool bag and from time to time I'd get up and make a pretense of rummaging around for a wrench while having a surreptitious peek. After an hour or so, during which my employer kept up a constant patter, I'd managed, with the liberal application of Goop, to get everything up and running, collected ten dollars from my satisfied customer and headed downtown, feeling pretty cocky about my brand new skill set.

 

    One day I went to see a friend of my father's who owned a Gallery on West Broadway. She might need some extra help, she'd told him, and I showed up imagining that I'd hang paintings, Spackle holes, maybe even sit at the reception desk sporting a beret and world-weary expression like the girl who buzzed her boss on the intercom to announce my arrival. “Can you cook?” She asked, in lieu of small talk or pleasantries. And, in the same breath, “ I'm having a hundred and twenty-five for dinner Tuesday night. Black Tie. Can you handle that?”

    “Yes.” I said.

    “I'm thinking poached salmon and pate-en-croute,” She announced. “Can you handle that?” 

    “Yes.” I said, keeping the fact of my vegetarianism to myself. 

   I walked over to Cheap Jack's on Fourth Avenue and bought a vintage tux, stopped in at Thom Mcan on Second for a pair of black, Naugahyde pumps and headed west to Ottomanelli's, the elite butcher on Bleeker, to find out just exactly what melange of funky organ meats might comprise a pate-en-croute. At two o'clock Monday morning I was at the Fulton Fish Market purchasing a pair of massive, wild salmon and, with the help of my 1953 Joy of Cooking and several calls to my mother, had somehow managed to prepare most of this on a four-burner tenement stove by three o'clock Tuesday afternoon. I donned the tuxedo and pumps, painted my left knee beneath the most egregious moth holes with a bit of Mars Black, loaded a few cheeses and the pate into a backpack and headed for the F Train with three feet of poached salmon laid out on foil-wrapped bookshelves, one on each arm. The party was a huge success and my boss accepted compliments on the exquisite fare while offering my services to her friends at five dollars an hour. Stumbling home, exhausted, I realized I'd become a caterer.

  

   My friend John asked if I'd had any experience with Formica; would I like to help him install some new laminate for a couple of therapists on Central Park West? 

   “Yes.” I said. 

I'd mucked around with contact cement in art school; how hard could it be? An elderly couple met us at the door of their spacious apartment overlooking the park. As they led us in to the galley kitchen, they mentioned that they would be seeing patients in their offices while we worked, if we wouldn't mind trying to keep things as quiet as possible. We put some drop-cloths down, stripped off the old laminate and prepped the counters for the new stuff. By noon we were ready to start and I picked up the gallon of cement, looking for the directions. “It says here,” I read out loud, “that we're supposed to turn off all pilot lights and disconnect any power to lights or switches.”

  “Nah,” John said, “That's just bullshit. I've worked with this stuff a million times. They just say that, you don't really need to.”

   I poured out a tray full of contact cement and, leaning in between the stove top and the cabinets, began to roll on a layer of thick, unctuous goo. And then .... it was just an instant, just a glint, just a tiny shimmer in my periphery. The narrow room imploded in a solid sheet of ice-blue, hot-pink flame, turning orange and turquoise as it lapped the underside of the oak cabinets and rolled up the door faces to curl down from the ceiling like a giant, breaking wave of fire. I panicked, rubbing my arms over my head to keep my hair from igniting, dropping to my knees and shrieking a stream of invective at the top of my lungs while John flailed about like a dervish with the drop-cloth. 

   It was over as soon as it had begun. The walls and the underside of the cabinets had sustained only a singe, as had our arms and eye-brows. We were to paint the room and install stainless on the underside of the cabinets, so no damage would show there. The fire had burnt itself out so quickly that the cabinet doors would be fine after a wipe down. We sat catching our breath, waiting for the adrenaline to diminish, thanking our Gods. After a moment I got up on rubbery legs and opened the window. John found the fuse-box and threw the kitchen breaker. By mid-afternoon the laminate was on, the cabinets rubbed down with oil and I was priming the walls, covering over the faint, mahogany patina. Around three o'clock, one of the doctors poked her head in the door.

   “Oh my,” she said. “ You two have done a wonderful job! It's going to look just fantastic, don't you think?”

   “Yes.” I said, “It'll be amazing!”