New Doors

    My friend Dave called me to do some work on the cabinets in his kitchen. He had some new doors that needed mounting, and so I put some tools in a box and headed over.
    After showing me everything, Dave started right in with the kibitzing; he was worried that the wood was hard, and he thought my screws might crack it if I didn't drill the right size pilot holes. "These are new doors." he reminded me.
    I told him, "Dave, I have every size drill from a human hair, up to an inch and a half, and that's not counting the hole saws. I think I'll find something that will work for the pilot holes."
    "But how will you line the holes up, to get the doors on straight?" he wanted to know. "They have to look good."
    "Oh! You're right; that is a good point," I agreed. "I guess I'll have to measure stuff."
     "No, I'm serious; I mean, how will you do it?"
     "I'll clamp the doors to the brackets, and mark the locations of the holes very carefully,"
I reassured him. "You don't have to worry about it."
     "I don't know about using clamps," he told me doubtfully. "Do you have a type of clamp that won't damage the doors?" This was starting to get on my nerves.
    "I'll pad the clamps, of course. And I'm not going to do this job unless you go into a different room while I'm working."
    So Dave went into the other room with his laptop, to watch ebay and see how his paintings were selling. Back in the kitchen, I fumbled a clamp, and it made a noise. "Are you OK?" shouted Dave from the living room. "How's it going?"
    "Don't talk to me, or I'm leaving," I shouted back.
    "OK. I'm just checking." Dave subsided back to swearing at the computer, where the ebay people were certainly underbidding his goods, the morons. "Those bastards," I heard him muttering angrily.
    I kept working as silently as I could, although the pivoting arms of the corner cabinet were puzzling me. They had a motion that I wasn't familiar with; I couldn't get the clamps to fit, and I wasn't sure how I was going to locate the screw holes. Dave's radar picked up on the silence. "Can I do anything to help?" he called a few moments later.
    Now he's finally got me rattled; I can't figure this out. "I can't do it!" I admitted. "I'm going home; you'll have to get someone else; there must be a template or something that they use."
     Dave instantly came pattering into the room, full of concern. "You can't figure it out?" he asked. Yes, he had known all along, it would be too tough. "It's OK," he told me. "We tried." Nothing ever works right; Dave knew that much. "I'll have to hire a cabinetmaker," he concluded, with a deep sigh. "It'll be expensive. I'll call Ted."
     Ted! I worked for Ted sometimes, too. He's a brilliant cabinetmaker, a mentor to me in that line. I could picture Ted coming into Dave's kitchen, and looking at my unfinished job. Ted would be shaking his head sadly, and he would be thinking, "Leonard, Leonard…  " That image was too much for me. I suddenly decided: By gum, Ted's right! I can do this!     
    I picked up my measuring tape and my square, and I went back to the problem, this time with determination. But now Dave was not so easy to convince. Disaster is always right around the corner in Dave's world. "No, Len. We tried, OK? I don't want you to screw it up. You don't have to do it."
    "I'm fine. I'm OK now. Go back in the other room and check your computer. I think they're really screwing you on ebay."
    "No, Len. You'll mess it up. These are new doors. You know how expensive these cabinets were?"
    I finally persuaded Dave to go away, though he was now extremely uneasy. "What could go wrong?" I shouted cheerfully. That didn't help. I went ahead with my measuring and marked the holes, confident at this point that I had them correct. From the other room, I heard Dave explode with a string of expletives in his Brooklyn accent; apparently, things on ebay had just taken an ugly turn. I began drilling the holes. I knew Dave could hear the sound of my drill, and I could feel him wincing.
    "What if you put the holes in the wrong place?" his voice wailed.
    "I'll patch it up, don't worry!"  I kept drilling.
    "No! Those are expensive doors!"
    "What do they say again?" I called with demonic glee, "Measure once and cut twice? Oh, damn!"
I went on, "I cut this same board three times, and it's still too short!"
    Dave came running into the room. "What board? What are you talking about?" Dave is rarely in the mood to laugh, and this certainly wasn't one of those times. "What do you mean, 'cut the board'?"
    "Never mind." I had screwed the mounting brackets onto the doors, nice and snug, and now I wrangled the doors into position in the corner cabinet, then I screwed the pivoting arms onto the brackets. Now came the moment of truth! I swung the doors closed, and they lined up perfectly.
    "Cut the board three times and it's still too short!" I cackled, way more relieved than I cared to admit to Dave. "Still too short; get it?" No he didn't get it, but it didn't matter.
    "You did it!" he said. "They're perfect! How did you figure it out?" For one moment in Dave's life, all the stress was forgotten. "How did you do it?"
    "I have no idea," I told him.


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