Tribute

sooner, but Spock chained me to my desk. Recently escaped, and you weren’t home. Somebody could drink all this selfishly by herself, or ask a thirsty neighbor to join her one of these nights.
    Ford
    Amused, she considered doing just that—one of these nights. Glancing back, she felt a little poke of disappointment that he wasn’t standing out on his porch—veranda, she corrected. And the poke warned her to be careful about sharing a bottle of wine with hot guys who lived across the road.
    Considering that, considering him, made her think of his studio—the space, the light. Wouldn’t it be nice to have that sort of space, that sort of light, for an office? If she pushed through with her long-term plans of rehabbing, remodeling homes, flipping houses, she’d need an attractive and efficient home office space.
    The bedroom she’d earmarked for the purpose on the second floor would certainly do the job. But imagining Ford’s studio as she set the wine down on the old kitchen counter (slated for demo the next day), her projected office came off small, cramped and barely adequate.
    She could take out the wall between the second and third bedrooms, she supposed. But that didn’t give her the light, the look she now imagined.
    Wandering the first floor, she repositioned, projected, considered. It could be done, she thought, but she didn’t want her office space on the main level. She didn’t want to live at work, so to speak. Not for the long term. Besides, if she hadn’t seen Ford’s fabulous studio, she’d have been perfectly content with the refit bedroom.
    And later, if her business actually took off, she could add a breezeway off the south side, then . . .
    “Wait a minute.”
    She hustled up the stairs, down the hall to the attic door. It groaned in cranky protest when she opened it, but the bare bulb at the top of the steep, narrow stairs blinked on when she hit the switch.
    One look at the dusty steps had her backtracking for her notebook, and a flashlight, just in case.
    Clean attic. Install new light fixtures.
    She headed up, pulled the chain on the first of three hanging bulbs.
    “Oh yeah. Now we’re talking.”
    It was a long, wide, sloped-roof mess of dust and spiderwebs. And loaded, to her mind, with potential. Though she’d had it lower than low on her priority list for cleaning and repair, the lightbulb was on in her head as well as over it.
    The space was huge, the exposed rafter ceiling high enough for her to stand with room to spare until it pitched down at the sides. At the moment, there were two stingy windows on either end, but that could change. Would change.
    Boxes, chests, a scarred dresser, old furniture, old pole lamps with yellowed shades stood blanketed with dust. Dingy ghosts. Books, probably full of silverfish, and old record albums likely warped from decades of summer heat jammed an old open bookcase.
    She’d come up here before, taken one wincing look, then had designated the attic to Someday.
    But now.
    Go through the junk, she thought, writing quickly. Sort the wheat from the chaff. Clean it up. Bring the stairwell and the stairs up to code. Enlarge window openings. Outdoor entrance—and that meant outdoor stairs, with maybe an atrium-style door. Insulate, sand and seal the rafters and leave them exposed. Wiring, heat and AC. Plumbing, too, because there was plenty of room for a half bath. Maybe skylights.
    Oh boy, oh boy. She’d just added a ton to her budget.
    But wouldn’t it be fun?
    Sitting cross-legged on the dusty floor, she spent a happy hour drawing out various options and ideas.
    How much of the stuff up here had been her great-grandfather’s? Had he, or his daughter or son, actually used the old white bowl and pitcher for washing up? Or sat and rocked a fretful baby in the spindly rocker?
    Who read the books, listened to the music, hauled up the boxes in which she discovered a rat’s nest of Christmas lights with fat, old-fashioned colored bulbs?
    Toss, donate or keep, she mused. She’d have to start piles. More boxes revealed more Christmas decorations, scraps of material she imagined someone had kept with the idea of sewing something out of them. She found three old toasters with cords frayed and possibly gnawed on by mice, broken porcelain lamps, chipped teacups. People saved the weirdest things.
    She bumped up the mice quotient on discovering four traps, mercifully uninhabited. Curious, and since she was already filthy, she squatted down to pull