Throwing in the Towel
Great moments in building history: May I get you a towel?
The ink on the contract was still damp from the tropical humidity when the owners changed the terms of our deal: Powerful political and financial figures in their native South America, they would be unable to return home during our yearlong rehabilitation of their residence in Miami, as had been planned. Instead, he would be moving among their various properties worldwide, and she would be in residence during the reconstruction process—on site and overseeing things every day.
The job was enormous, and the owner was unrelenting in making her wishes and opinions of the workmen, their pace, their work habits, the length of their lunch breaks and their craftsmanship—whether work was finished or unfinished—widely known on a daily basis. On her first appearance at 7 a.m. in her dressing gown, first demitasse of strong Cuban coffee in hand, she was moderate, observant, polite and calm. But from 8:30 a.m.—after the caffeine kicked in—she was a green-eyed dragon. Workmen tried to fold themselves into their toolboxes when they spied her approaching. They lived in dread of her signature interrogatories: “Is this your work?” “Do you consider it finished?” “Has the contractor seen this?” Such remarks, and the feeble responses, were followed by her execution-by-firing-squad summation: “Well, I can tell you that is not the way that it is done in my country.”
Rather than tackling the whole house one trade at a time, we were obliged—with the family in residence—to move from one wing and room to the next, completely renovating interior and exterior in each section all the way from demolition through final painting. The owners employed a full-time assistant to coordinate our movements from one place of work in the house to another, sealing off living areas as we progressed. I lost three good carpenters, two stonemasons, two painters and one supervisor during the first six months of our yearlong siege, all of them wilted under the stress.
At month six, the plumber—who used to be a good friend of mine—called me to report something was up at the house. His rough-in man was finishing up one of the guest bathrooms, and the upstairs maid was going at him in full-fury Spanish about something he couldn’t understand. Would I meet him at the job site?
I arrived and went up to the bathroom in question but discovered that no work at all had been done there. The assignment was to remove and replace an expensive shower valve with fancy trim. The owner was specific about all these shower valves. Had to be Speakman, top of the line, $400 each with maximum-water-flow shower heads. I heard the shouting in Spanish down at the other end of the long upstairs hall at the maid’s quarters, so I went that way. I discovered that the plumber had torn out a perfectly good, completely unscheduled shower valve and trim from the maid’s bath and then had expertly reinstalled one of the $400 Speakman versions.
My radar picked up the owner mounting the rear stairs and coming our way. “My God!” she burst out when she appeared, elegantly dressed as usual. “You have done the wrong bathroom!”
The plumber, a sensitive man, excused himself from the room.
“And look at this!” she continued. “It’s not even the right valve! This is not a Speakman valve!”
“Madam, we may have done the wrong bathroom, but I am sure we installed the proper valve,” I offered diplomatically. “I apologize for the error, for which there will obviously be no charge, but I know my plumber would not install a substitute for the specified product.”
“I will show you. Look!” she cried, stepping into the bathtub and fiddling with the screws on the operating valve’s cover plate. When it was removed, staring out at her in die-cast stamping was the name “Speakman.” A vein or two in my neck relaxed for a brief moment, then jumped back out as she grabbed at the single-valve handle as if to look underneath it for further evidence. A high-pressure spray of Arctic-cold water shot out of the shower head, drenching her completely. The handle came off in her hand, and as she thrust it at me, she recoiled and screamed, “Turn it off!”
I ducked underneath the shower stream, slipped the handle back on its spindle and shut off the water. She stood there in the tub, soaked from head to shoes, mouth wide open but, for once, speechless. I took a deep breath. “Madam,” I asked, “may I get you a towel?”
—J. B. Gans, Coconut Grove, Florida
Drawing by: Jackie Rogers
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