It was the state contractor licensing page. His name was at the top. And right under it, in red letters, it said the license had expired fourteen months ago.
Below that was the complaint form I had filled out three days earlier, with every receipt attached. Twenty two thousand dollars. Eight months. One kitchen with no sink.
Vince stopped chuckling. He said the license thing was a paperwork issue. He said he was handling it.
That was when my neighbor, Gene, walked through the gate. Gene spent thirty years as a county building inspector before he retired. He looked at the laptop, then at Vince, and asked him politely which permit number the job was under. Vince said he had not pulled one yet.
Gene said, son, you have been working on this kitchen since February.
Eight months of feeling like the impossible client, and all it took was one honest question from the man next door.
Vince left without his three thousand. He did not come back.
I submitted the complaint that afternoon. Gene sat with me at the kitchen table, what was left of it, and helped me write a timeline. Every deposit. Every excuse. Every day he did not show up. He said the board would want dates, not feelings.
It turned out I was not the first. The licensing board had four other complaints against Vince from that same year. Two of them were from people on my street, the same neighbors he had been telling I was impossible.
Because Vince had been bonded when his license was still active, the board pointed me to a claim against his bond. It took four months and a lot of paperwork. I got back fourteen thousand dollars. Then I filed in small claims court for the rest. Vince never showed up to that either. The judge ruled in my favor in eleven minutes.
Meanwhile, Gene made a phone call. His nephew, Luis, is a licensed contractor who does mostly commercial work. Luis came over on a Saturday, walked through the mess, and said he could finish it in five weeks.
He finished it in four. He pulled every permit. Gene did the walk through with him just for fun, clipboard and all.
The night the sink went in, I washed one plate in it and cried. I had been washing dishes in a bathtub since spring.
That Sunday I cooked dinner for the first time in almost a year. Pot roast, because it takes all day and I finally had an oven. I invited Gene and his wife, and Luis and his kids, and the two neighbors who had filed complaints about Vince too.
Ten people around a kitchen island that did not exist six weeks earlier.
Gene raised his glass and said a kitchen is not finished until somebody burns something in it. I had, in fact, burned the rolls.
We ate them anyway.