The supplier receipts said one thousand seven hundred and forty dollars. That was every tile, every bag of thinset, every tube of grout Duane had ever bought for my bathroom. His invoice said six thousand for materials. On top of the thirty one thousand I had already paid him.
Duane stopped grinning. He said the tile company must have made a mistake.
I told him I had asked for the receipts in person, from a woman named Gloria at the counter. Gloria had printed them for me herself. And she had asked me a question while she did it. She asked if I was the fourth homeowner that year to come in asking about a contractor named Duane.
My neighbor, Earl, gave up pretending to check the mailbox and walked across the lawn.
Seven months of being the client who changes her mind every week, and the tile company knew exactly who had been changing the numbers.
Duane left. He took the invoice with him. The tile stayed in the boxes on my garage floor.
I did not go to court. I did not have to. My bank has a dispute process for work paid by card, and most of what I paid Duane went on my card. I sent them his invoice, the supplier receipts, seven months of texts full of excuses, and a photo of my bathroom with no floor.
The bank reversed eleven thousand dollars. Then I filed a complaint with the consumer protection office at the state attorney general, with the same stack. So did the three other homeowners Gloria had told me about. In the spring, the state reached a settlement with Duane. He had to pay back every one of us, and he was banned from taking deposits over a thousand dollars for five years.
But I still did not have a bathroom.
That was where Earl came in. Earl is a retired plumber. Seventy three. He walked through my gutted bathroom, looked at the boxes of tile, and said, you know, you could do this yourself. I laughed. He did not.
So we did it together. Every Saturday for six weeks. Earl did the plumbing and taught me the rest. How to snap a chalk line. How to mix thinset to the consistency of peanut butter. How to set a tile, press it, and give it a little twist so it grabs. The first row was crooked. I pulled it up and did it again.
By the fourth Saturday, I was faster than him. He said so himself.
The first time I took a shower in my own bathroom, I stood there for twenty minutes until the hot water ran out. Then I called my sister and told her she could have her guest room back.
My sister came over to see it. She asked who did the tile work. I said I did. She did not believe me until Earl showed her the photos.
Gloria from the tile store came to see it too. She said it was nicer than half the professional jobs she sees. She put a photo of it up on the board behind her counter.
Earl and I are doing his kitchen backsplash next month. He is paying me in pie.