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| Photo by Manel Torralba |
“That’s the wrong way to do that,” Grimmett put his hand over Jade’s, then drew it back, “Are you wearing gloves?”
The other students didn’t look up from their workbenches, but their movements seemed to slow as they eavesdropped. Glass work was too dicey to stop, one hesitation and hours of work could shatter. Jade looked at the malformed bead on her mandrel. She, on the other hand, had nothing to lose. Setting the mandrel on the graphite benchtop, she slid her hands out of the gloves, “I really don’t want to get burned.”
“If you let your fear dictate what you do as a lampworker, you will never improve,” Grimmett raised his voice so the whole class could hear over the hiss of their torches. “If you continue to work in glass, you will at some point get burned,” he pulled down on the neck of his shirt, exposing the top of a scar, a patch of skin melted and discolored by heat.
Ignoring him, Jade rapped her mandrel on the benchtop until the bead shattered. She dipped her mandrel into clay and started over. Picking up a rod of glass, she held it and her mandrel up to the torch. “Grimmett is a jerk,” she thought, “If he had taken one look at my hands . . . No, he would tell me to suck it up.” It was difficult to see the blisters in the deep studio shadows, but she knew they were there, painful, hard bumps right where she held her tools.
She was so lost in thought that when Grimmett’s hand closed over hers, she almost dropped her mandrel. “Once it’s warm, turn it more like this,” Grimmett rotated the mandrel evenly, “You try.” Jade turned the mandrel. “Your grip is wrong,” Grimmett adjusted her fingers causing Jade to gasp in pain. Grimmett released her hand, “Go outside.”
“Now?” Jade looked at the clock. There were forty more minutes of class.
“Yes, outside, now.”
Jade followed Grimmett, feeling judgment radiate from each fixed and hand-held torch. He banged through the door, stooping to retrieve two bottles of water from a faded red cooler. Handing one to her, Grimmett leaned against the brickwork, “You’re injured, aren’t you?”
Jade nodded, pressing the cold bottle against her cheek. The studio was so warm, that Grimmett’s shirt was dark with sweat under his arms and across his chest. She doubted she was faring any better.
“Let me see,” he held out a hand. Jade passed him her water bottle. “Not that, your hand.”
His palm was dry and calloused against hers, and she felt the cement of the alleyway drop like an elevator. Her pulse racing, she pulled her hand away.
”I don’t want to see you back until you’ve seen a doctor,” Grimmett popped the cap off his water and took a long drink.
”I paid for this class,” she reminded him, “I’m paying now, to stand in the alley while you scold me like a child. Do you even think that I might have already been to the doctor?”
“And?” Grimmett ducked his head, pouring a stream of water across his crown.
She waited, watching him pull up the bottom of his shirt to dry his hair. It was obvious he spent most of his time in the studio, busy sculpting glass instead of his abs. Somehow it didn’t matter. Somehow her stomach still pitched downward with a fall only half-imagined. “PLC,” she gripped her water bottle to steady herself, “It’s ugly but harmless.”
“I meant, so what if you paid for this class. You can’t even make a decent wound bead. What's the point in you being here?”
His words burned through her ears, up to her eyes. She tried to swallow them, but they stuck fast at the top of her throat. ”You’re saying I have no talent,” her voice came out high-pitched, with hints of a toddler's whine. She swallowed again, willing herself not to cry. Not in front of Grimmett the stickler, Grimmett the pompous, Grimmett who ate naif lampworkers for dinner.
”Don’t put words in my mouth,” his face seemed to melt.
Jade blinked, bringing him back into focus, ”That’s what you meant.”
”Jade, if you're hurt, you have to take time to heal. You don't think I went back to the studio the day after I burned my chest, do you?”
”Yes,” Jade sniffed. She couldn't imagine him doing anything else.
”Look, I know I’m hard-driving and a bit of a perfectionist, but -” Grimmett broke-off his sentence, his blue eyes widening as something wet hit the top of Jade’s head. He chuckled as she put her hand on her hair. It came away white and sticky.
Jade folded into herself, and like an uneven piece of glass cooling, the weaker parts broke. She wept, tucking her face into her elbow. Grimmett bear-hugged her, his chest still jittering with laughter. It was remarkably similar; laughing, crying. When he held her, she couldn't tell the difference. Perhaps later she would find a teardrop on top of her head. ”No, stupid,” she told herself, ”The only thing on top of your head is bird poop. Speaking of which . . .” She wrapped a hand around Grimmett’s waist, wiping her hand off on the broad part of his back.
“I need to get back to the class,” Grimmett’s breath tickled her ear, then he pulled away from her. As he walked into the studio, Jade could see the white streak across his back.
The whisper had felt almost sensual, and if she wasn’t miserable, her whole body would have chimed like a glass being tapped with a fork. Instead, she focused on wiping her eyes and nose on her shirt. Whether Grimmett liked it or not, Jade was going back to class. She popped the top off the water, took a long drink, then put her hand on the doorknob. Grimmett himself had said it, he said it all the time. ”Lampworkers!” he would yell, ”Keep your heads down! Nothing is more important than what’s in front of you!”
She opened the door. Grimmett was bent over another student’s bench. Honestly, she wasn't even sure of his name. It was something like Claude or Klaus. Snatches of their conversation floated over the hiss of the torches, “Three beads . . . make it like fins . . . fisheye.”
“Wow,” she mumbled to herself, “What’s-his-face has some great ideas.” She should have gone straight back to her workbench, but she couldn’t resist taking a peek at the other student’s work. He had made three orange beads, but they were only vaguely reminiscent of a fish.
“Jade,” Grimmett had noticed her, “How would you go about making fins for a fish?”
“I would use a marver, maybe the one with the grooves.”
“You could also use a press. Klaus, go take a look at some of the different tools we have and see which ones could make fins, scales, or gills. Bring them back to your station and experiment with them. You don’t have to produce a bead every class,” Grimmett raised his voice, “A good day in class is a day that you learn something. A day that you try something you’ve never tried before. Whether it was a success or a failure, you have learned something about the limits of glass, your skillset, and the tools in front of you.”
A clock hung high on the studio wall, set inside a metal cage. Jade’s stomach sank. She had fifteen minutes left of class. “How long were we outside?” she picked up her mandrel and a rod of glass. They were both cool to the touch and she put them back in the flame of her torch. How long had Grimmett held her? Time had seemed to go molten when he touched her, and she lost all sense of its passage. “I’m a fool,” she grumbled.
“Yes, you are,” Grimmett leaned over the bench next to her, “I’ve been thinking about what you said, and you may remain after class to get your money’s worth of studio time. That would be . . .” he looked at the clock, “Twenty minutes.”
“Twenty-five,” Jade rotated her mandrel, “Forty minus fifteen is twenty-five.”
“Yes, well, I have to be somewhere, so twenty.”
Even though her grip was still incorrect, the glass wound around the mandrel symmetrically, “Yes! I mean, I don’t care, you owe me twenty-five. You don’t know what I can do in five minutes.”
“No, no I don’t,” Grimmett walked away and the studio seemed to fade around Jade. She wasn’t making anything as fancy as Klaus’ fish beads, but she was making what she wanted to make. Each bead was a shade of blue that she embellished with black stringers in dots and lines. When she had enough, she would make a bracelet, interspacing them with metal accent beads.
She was so intent on her work, that she didn’t notice the other students switching off their torches and gathering their belongings. Even the thud of the steel door didn’t register. She wouldn’t have even noticed that she was alone with Grimmett, had he not stood so close behind her, that she could feel his breath brush the back of her neck. “Busy,” she grunted.
“Don’t stop what you’re doing, I want to watch,” his words tickled her ear.
Jade shivered, “You’re distracting me.”
“I’m testing you. Can you work when all is going to hell around you?” He was touching her now, his hands running up and down her back.
“I need to put this in the annealer,” Jade held up a bead, “And I don’t see how a back rub is hell.”
Grimmett took the bead from her, “Oh, so you like it.” He walked the bead over to the annealer.
“I want to finish this bracelet,” Jade started heating another rod of glass.
“If that’s all you want, then ignore me,” Grimmett returned and placed his hands on her shoulders. Jade wound another bead. “You’re still holding your mandrel wrong, but you’re making it work for you,” he touched the back of her neck with his lips.
Jade slapped at him absently, “That tickles. Can’t you wait until I’m done?”
“And then I can kiss you?”
“You can do whatever you want,” Jade put a stringer in the torch, “I mean, no, of course not. You’re my lampwork teacher. That would be wrong.”
“I tried to get you to quit. I thought you knew. Actually, I thought everyone in class knew,” Grimmett drew away from her. Even though he was behind her, Jade could sense him wringing his hands, “I spend too much time at your station. I’m always looking at you when I lecture. I can’t think straight.”
Jade striped the bead, “Can we talk about this later? I’m making a bracelet for my boyfriend.”
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Cross Posted to 12 Short Stories
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Because the question already came up, yes, both Jade and Grimmett are adults and are both interested in each other.
I just finished watching Blown Away on Netflix, and I loved the drama of glass working so much that I just had to work it into a story. I like dysfunctional romance, so that seemed the perfect overlay to heat, fire, and the shatter of glass.