89 - Stitches and Sticks

*I can send you my stash of floss and some cloth. I know you aren’t going to sew them; you want me to sew the aprons together? - Claire*

With the issues that Celt brought up discussed, and a plan put in place to resolve said issues, Camille and Darkness headed back to the clubhouse. Sitting on the bed in his room, with the computer between them, they scrolled through the websites of all three of Sticks’ furniture companies. They picked a few different sets of living room tables before narrowing it down to a set that they both liked.

Camille wrote down the name and sketched out the living room on her notepad. “If we set it up like this, would you want to get an extra table to go over here by the chair? Or just the ones at the end of the couches?”

“We could,” he took her pencil from her and sketched his own layout on the bottom half of the page, “since we are making them ourselves, shrink the end tables by about three inches and then make side tables for the chairs that are about half the size. Still gives you a place to put a drink, and a book.”

“That’s a cool idea,” she smiled and took her pencil back. “I can even ask Kilo to adjust the blueprints.”

“I thought that Sticks owned the furniture company,” he said with confusion lacing his voice.

She gave a small laugh. “He does, and he designs all the furniture, everything is his brain baby. But as Kilo says, someone has to raise that baby. Kilo is one of Sticks’ partners, three bi men and one very happy woman, and Kilo is an engineer.”

He chuckled. “So, Kilo raises Sticks’ brain babies.”

“Exactly,” she agreed with a smile as she leaned into his side.

He kissed the top of her head as she pulled up the section for tables. “I saw one the other day…”

“The other day?”

“Okay, it’s been a hot minute, or three.”

“Or three,” she murmured as she handed him her mouse.

He scrolled down to the farmhouse table with the L-shaped high back bench and the trestle bench. He clicked through the pictures and saw where the seats on the corner benches flipped open for hidden storage.

“Oh, my gosh…” she took a breath and swallowed before swiping at her eyes. “This is going to sound stupid, so don’t judge me.”

“Never,” he assured her.

“My Oma Uittenbroek came over after the war and she always said that she came over with what she was carrying. She was carrying her Oma’s kitchen apron in her bag and her unborn son in her belly. Oma Uittenbroek only had her son, she never married, never said who his father was, never dated. Her brother never married, never had any kids. Some time I’ll tell you all about their craziness from the war.”

“Whenever you want,” he said as she sketched out the dining room on a new sheet.

“Mom learned the traditional cross stitch that you see all over the Netherlands from her Oma. She taught us and my nieces. When mom was pregnant with each of us, she made us all a traditional Danish apron. We each made samplers, and I made these placemats and table runners. All of it, the whole table setting, multiple versions. My insomnia was bad, I had a broken leg and was stuck in bed.”

“How many did you make?” he asked, handing the mouse back.

“I can set a table of eight twelve different ways,” she said quietly as she started scrolling through the desks.

“What you’re saying is that I need to make the storage a little bit deeper and buy you some cross stitch materials?”

She chuckled. “No, I can always call Claire or Charlotte. They both keep a lot on hand and usually if there’s anything that needs to actually be sewn, they do it. The hand stuff, I can do that all day long. Put me in front of a sewing machine, and you’re going to see a bigger mess than one of your hurricanes can make.”

“That’s a big mess,” he said as she looked at a simple writing desk with two small drawers. “You need more space than that. You’ve got two or three computers plus you need a place to take notes.”

“Yeah, I kind of thought about two together and make an L with them,” she held her hands in a way that created a 90-degree corner.

“Then let’s just look at the L-shaped desks.”

Nodding, she sorted the desks, and the selection dropped from twenty to four. The first two were elaborate and made her think of something that would be in Celt’s family law office. The third one looked like two large floating shelves with separate cabinets with drawers that could be moved around.

“I like that one, but I don’t think that it’s something that should be in a rental property.”

“No,” he chuckled, “permanent fixtures in rental properties are not the best of ideas.”

“Yeah, that’s kind of what I thought,” she pulled up the final one. The L-shaped desk had one side that was slightly longer than the other and both sides had two long drawers. There was a stack of drawers at the end under the longer side and hutch style shelves above the shorter side.

“I like that,” Darkness said. “We can make the shelves shallow, just deep enough for some encyclopedias. You know, we should have looked at a sofa or something to go in there.”

“Oh…. What about a daybed?” She changed websites and moved over to the Knots page. With a quick search she found the bed that she had always liked.

The bed had two shelves along the back side, two drawers for storage under the bed and wide arms at either end that could be used as narrow tables or wide arm rests.

“That’s nice,” he agreed. “Is that reclaimed wood?”

“Yeah,” she smiled. “Most of the things that are made at Knots are either reclaimed or discarded, much like the employees.”

Clicking on the MEET THE KNOTS link at the top of the page, the screen opened to a page with a staff photo at the top. Scrolling down, she clicked on the smaller group picture of just three people. The new page had the same woodgrain background that all the Knots pages had and on a black banner with wooden block letters it read OFFICE AND ADMIN STAFF.

The first person that appeared was a blonde woman with bright purple, thick rimmed, plastic glasses and down syndrome smiled in the picture. A black box with white print declared that her name was Tiffany – not Tiff or Tiffy. Tiff. Ah. Knee.

“She doesn’t like being called Tiffy?” Darkness asked.

“No,” the word was drawn out to about ten seconds as Camille shook her head. “If you call her Tiffy, make sure that you have your life insurance policy paid up. Except Charles or Sticks. She has such a crush on those two that they could get away with anything. I’m telling you, if she quits, he is so screwed.”

“It says that she handles all orders, billing and ‘anything number or excel related’ for all three companies.” Darkness pointed at the short biography in the black box. “What’s that about?”

She gave a small laugh and smiled as she thought of the other woman. “She has downs, and a lot of people did not want to give her a job because of that. When Sticks opened Knots, he went to the ‘special’ school,” she made air quotes, “looking for employees. The teacher asked if he needed someone to handle anything with numbers.”

“There’s a program through the state that pays small companies to employee people with special needs. Sticks was like why the hell not? At first, he gave her these bullshit spreadsheets where she basically just moved numbers around. The lady that sent her work was out and one of the other ladies over at Expressions sent her a spreadsheet. Sent a real spreadsheet.”

Camille smiled, “Tiffany corrected some mistakes, rewrote formulas, and by the time Cara came back from maternity leave, had completely revamped the entire office. She can do math in her head faster than you can put the numbers into a calculator. And she received recognition from Microsoft for her skills in excel.”

Grabbing her phone, she called Sticks on the speaker phone who picked up his phone on the third ring.

“Hey, little bit.”

“What are you going to do about the Knots people?”

He chuckled, “Just got off the phone with Charles about that. My felons are going to come in and create some small kits that the at-risk can do at home. You remember all that furniture that we made for the doll houses for Christmas a few years back? Need to add dollhouses to the website.”