To honor the start of the season of giving, here is a tale of good will between men. It starts, inauspiciously, in my bathroom.
For a couple of weeks recently, my bathtub had refused to drain properly. Instead of gulping water, the tub had taken to swallowing in tiny, intermittent increments, like an invalid too weary even to sip through a straw.
Because my domestic travails are undoubtedly tedious to anyone but me, and because this is intended to be an uplifting story with universal moral resonance, I’ll tastefully refrain from describing the scum and crud this balky drain inflicted on the tub and how thoroughly gross it made the ordinary frolic of bathing. I will simply say that a plumber arrived to halt the unpleasantness.
The plumber was young and friendly and his shirt said Mike. From my living room, I eavesdropped on the clatter of disassembled pipes and the whir of a rodding machine, and within an hour my bathtub ran as free as a spring breeze. I paid Mike, and he was on his way.
But, as we all know, brevity is the soul of bliss.
A couple of weeks later, I again found myself showering in dirty water above my ankles. Again, I phoned Strictly Sewers, and again Mike traipsed up the stairs, arms wrapped around his heavy rodding machine. He shook his head, mystified, and once more set to work.
What do you do while a stranger is fixing something in your house? If Martha Stewart hasn’t addressed this common quandary of home-repair etiquette, she should. On the one hand, hovering over the handyman is rude and generally boring. On the other, you can’t do anything that requires concentration or privacy.
My solution often is to play the piano, which is what I did on this day until Mike summoned me to witness the water once again fleeing happily down the tub drain.
Again, to avoid being too trivial or tasteless, I will not describe in detail the wad of hair–surely that slimy tangle had never inhabited my head–Mike had retrieved from the drain.
“What do I owe you?” I asked.
“Oh, I’m not going to charge you,” Mike said.
A plumber who wasn’t going to charge me? Is Donald Trump humble?
Don’t misunderstand. Contrary to cliche, I’ve had only nice encounters with plumbers. Plumbers can be fascinating, knowing as they do the inner workings of the world. A plumber once confided that he had been hired to unplug the toilet of a well-known Chicago writer (whom he named but I won’t) only to discover the source of the clog: a pen. He wasn’t sure exactly how the famous writer’s pen had traveled into the toilet, but it made for interesting conjecture.
And yet, however entertaining a plumber, he is generally expensive.
“I’m just sorry it didn’t work last time,” said Mike.
“Look,” I said. “Let me pay you something. We’ll compromise.”
Mike didn’t hesitate. “You know what I really want?”
I paused.
“What?” I finally said.
Cookies? My sister’s phone number? My television? I could have guessed forever and never come close to guessing right.
“I want you to play that song you played the last time I was here.”
When was the last time you were stunned by someone’s nice behavior? The plumber wanted me to pay him with a song? In return for conquering my crud and scum and slimy hair, all he wanted was some music? The poetry of his request almost made me weep.
But there was a little problem.
“Um,” I said, “Which song?”
“The song I told you I liked.”
My brain strained. What song? I sat down at the piano and played a few bars, giving Mike a hopeful look. He shook his head.
“You told me it was famous.”
Then it hit me. I fished the sheet music from a stack. Later Mike mentioned he’d never seen anyone play a piano in a home, and asked who sang this song. But in that moment he just stood and listened while I played, reminding me in this gift-giving season that the most affecting trades between people rarely involve money.
I just hope Mike didn’t regret later that for one nutty moment he valued Johann Strauss’s “The Blue Danube” waltz more than a hundred dollars.
