“Charlie, where are you? Are you out here?” Her voice filtered through the window he left open like part of a dream that never came. A slim upper body followed the voice out onto the roof as she turned around and spotted him sitting on the peak.

“Yeah. Hi.” Charlie blinked slowly, smiling tiredly.

Karin slipped out onto the roof and padded barefoot up to where he was sitting. She twisted around and sat down beside him, shivering from the early morning Spring chill. He could see the hairs on her arm raise.

“Whatcha doing out here?” she asked quietly, fingers splayed out for support. She let out her breath quickly, then drew it back in slowly, trying to keep her teeth from chattering.

Charlie slipped off his denim jacket and draped it over her slim shoulders. He felt his skin tighten as the chill slipped past his t-shirt. He leaned forward, his arms resting on his knees. “Watching the sun rise, I guess.” He tussled his own hair, then rubbed the side of his face, rough from the three days of untouched stubble creeping down his neck. “It’s easier to think out here. Quiet.”

She threaded her arm through the crook of his elbow and leaned on his shoulder. Her legs pressed up against his, pulling his warmth towards her. Her light blonde hair fell in her face, blurring the sunrise like a curtain. “It’ll be alright, Charlie. You’ll find another job soon. I can feel it.”

He sat quiet for a moment. “It’s not that, Karin. I’m not losing sleep over that.”

“What, then?”

Charlie took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. “I had a dream last night. It wasn’t even a dream, really, it was just an idea in my head, and I couldn’t shake it, so I got up and made up these plans for it-” he rummaged around in his pocket and drew out a handful of crumpled papers. ”-and I just realized I need to do this. And not just do it for a little while and stop, Karin, I need to follow through with it.”

“What is it, baby?” Karin moved her head so her chin was resting on his arm. Half his face was shadowed by the light coming in sideways. His one eye lit up like a planet.

“Here. Look.” Charlie pushed the papers at her, and the pen he was holding dropped from his fingers and rolled down the roof into the eaves-trough.

Karin let go of his arm and crossed her legs. On the papers was a lattice-work of schematics, lines and curves, all written out on blue lined paper. Each paper had a small view of the whole, and all the papers fit together to continue the large schematic. She tried laying them out in her lap, but the moment she let them go, the wind kicked up and scattered them across the roof. She started after them, but he pulled her back.

“It’s okay. They’re replaceable. I’ve got everything up here anyway.” He tapped at his temple with his index and middle fingers.

Karin looked hard at him, resisting the impulse to brush the hair tickling her eyelashes from her face. She sighed, lay her head back down on his shoulder and hugged his arm with both of hers, her hands twining around his like ivy. She watched the sun pulling itself out of the horizon. “Everything will be fine, Charlie. You’ll find a good job soon and everything will be just fine again.”

Charlie opened his mouth to say something but stopped. Instead he took her hand in his and kissed it. “You’re right. Everything will be fine. I’ll go out again today and see if anyone’s hiring.”

“GLASS!”

Charlie ignored the bellow and stayed facing the alley the bay doors looked out on, scribbling schematics in his hand-sized notepad. Only when he could feel a short man’s sweaty bulk behind him did he flip the cover of the notepad shut and slip it into his breast pocket. He turned around and looked down onto the balding forehead of manager.

“Does this look like break time, Glass?! Did I hear the bell go off?! Do you see anyone else quitting, packing it up for the day and going home?!”

Charlie just stood there, staring at him.

“Does it look like you shouldn’t be working at the moment? Does it? No? Am I not doing your lousy ass a favor by letting you work here? You’ve been working here six weeks, Glass. Six lousy weeks. Don’t think I won’t drop your ass in favor of someone who actually wants to do their job!” He poked Charlie hard in the chest and stormed away.

Charlie used his whole arm to slough the Summer’s sweat off his forehead as he pulled his notebook and pen out with his other hand.

A head with slick, jet black hair and a thin goatee popped out from under the hood of the car in the next bay. “Man, you crazy. You want to get fired? I’s not like you have job security or something, man.”

“I couldn’t care less, Miguel.”

“That is perhaps the stupidest response I’ve heard to date, man. Let me explain to you why it is such. Like the man said, you’ve been working here for little over a month, which is not longevity by any means. You want to keep this lousy job because it’s all you’ve got right now, besides your beautiful wife and child. That’s reason enough for me, and should be reason enough for you.” Miguel pulled the bottom of his grubby white t-shirt up to his face to soak up the sweat.

“True, but it’s still a lousy job. You can’t deny that.”

Miguel shrugged. “It’s honest work, man. I’m good with my hands, you’re good with yours. Neither of us had much school, so this is about the best we gonna get. Yeah, it hard, the pay’s bad, and baldie treats us like garbage, but it’s not like we can complain, eh?”

Charlie chewed on the inside of his cheek. “What would you change if you had the chance, Mig?”

“Don’t matter. Can’t change nothing.”

Charlie propped his arm on a tool chest. “If you could, I mean. Change something for the better. What would it be?”

“Never thought about it, man.” Miguel looked down, stroking the few hairs on his chin. “I don’t know. I’d save up enough to get my family a new house. It’d have a yard. A big one. I’d get a dog, too. Like a Pitt Bull or something.”

“Is that it?”

“Yeah, basically. Don’t knock it, man. It’s my dream, not yours.”

“I didn’t say anything about dreams, Mig. You’re already saving up for a new house. If you could change something, anything at all, what would it be?”

Miquel looked away and fumbled around in his pocket for another cigarette. He leaned against the bumper as he lit it, then flicked his wrist to put out the match. He took a long drag, then blew out for an equally long time. “I’d bring my little brother back.”

Charlie waited as Miguel silently finished his cigarette. He pulled out the last bit of smoke, then dropped the butt to the concrete. “Why you ask? You got a plan or something?”

“Yeah, but I don’t even know if it’ll work or not.”

“What’ll work?”

“Ahhh… This machine I’m building.”

“What’s it do?”

“You’re gonna think I’m nuts,” Charlie walked out into the alley and started pacing, rubbing his greasy hands through his hair. “But I got this dream a few months ago for this machine. And I just started building it. It was weird, because I didn’t have any idea what it was supposed to do. And now I think that,” he laughed, “That it’ll fix things. Make things better. Like whatever I want, it’ll change. Anything bad, anything not right, anything that should be but isn’t, anything I want, it’ll change.” He stopped pacing and looked straight up at the sky. “But that’s crazy. Right?”

“You never know.” Miguel shrugged and pushed his hands into his pockets. “Might actually work.”

“GLASS!”

“Man, get back to work before he actually does put you back on the street like he’s been promising.” Miguel picked up his tools and disappeared under the front of his car.

Charlie took out his notebook, opened it to the first blank page he could find, and set it beside him in case any more ideas came. He clicked his pen so it would be ready.

“Come on, sweetie. Eat up.” The six-year-old didn’t respond, his face resting on his folded hands, smushing the baby fat up into his cheeks. Karin glanced across the table at her mother, who shifted in her seat. The air smelled faintly of solder.

“I mean it, Jared. Eat your noodles so you can grow up and get big and strong like your Daddy.” Karin’s fork paused over her plate as she spoke to her son, who made no move toward his spoon. She followed his gaze over the lip of his plate, across the table at Charlie, who was absentmindedly sketching schematics on the table, pausing occasionally to try to rub something out of his forehead.

Jared reached for the plastic tumbler with faded cherubs chasing each other around the inside, took a drink, and put the cup back down, his hand coming away wet from the condensation. He wiped it on the underside of the table, then kept watching his father.

“Mom? How’s the potatoes?” Karin fidgeted her hand under the table.

“Fine, dear. They’re fine.” The older woman set her fork down and took a sip of water, leaving red lipstick on the cut glass. She glanced around the room, the light over the sink with a handful of dead flies in the glass globe, the refrigerator with more diagrams covering crayon pictures, and back to her daughter, who was smiling weakly.

Charlie pushed the vegetables and spoon cup aside to make room for his sketch.

“Honey?” Karin prompted along with a jab from her foot.

“What. What.”

Karin just stared at him.

“Oh. Right.” He turned and placed the pencil on the counter top behind him and moved his table-mat to center nicely in front of him, partially obscuring the pencil marks. Karin cleared her throat softly and gave Charlie a look from under raised eyebrows. He looked back blankly until she moved her head slightly towards her mother.

“Oh. Right. So Margaret. How was the, um,” he rubbed his forehead hard, “Trip up here? Traffic alright?”

“It was fine, dear.” She rotated her glass slowly and smiled nervously. “Karin tells me you’ve, um, lost your job again?”

“Mom!”

“Well it’s a legitimate question, dear. I need to be concerned for the welfare of my grandchild if nothing else.”

“You could at least be a bit more tactful about it, Mom.”

“It’s fine, baby.” Charlie said to Karin after a sip of tea, then to Margaret, ”There was a problem with hiring and they actually signed on more people than they needed. I wasn’t expecting to work there for long anyway.” He jabbed his fork at a potato and it split in half.

“And when were you planning on going to find more work?” Margaret smiled sweetly and dabbed at the corner of her mouth with the napkin.

“Next week maybe. I don’t know. The job market is pretty slim pickings.”

“I see. Well. What’s preventing you from going out to look now?”

“We’re building somethin’.” They all looked at Jared, who looked back at them as if he wasn’t the one who’s spoken up in the first place.

“Oh?” Margaret took another sip of her water and kept her perfectly arched eyebrows raised as she watched Charlie.

“Yeah. We’re building a machine that’s gonna fix things.” Jared mumbled through his hands.

“What do you mean, sweetie?”

“Daddy showed me how it’s gonna work. It fixes things.”

“Fixes what things?”

“Everything,” Charlie and Jared said at the same time.

Margaret looked quickly at Charlie, then back at Jared. Karin’s ears went red and she stared at her plate.

Jared sat back in his too-big chair and sighed, showing bright pink bands across his cheeks where his face was resting on his arms.

“How does this, machine?” Margaret rubbed her fingers together, as if she were trying to rub grease off her skin, ”’fix things’, dear one?”

“Well, it takes somethin’, and it just fixes it. Like when you come home from school and the toy you broke is fixed, and you don’t know who did it, but then you do, ‘cause Daddy fixed it. Only the machine fixes everything you want fixed all at the same time. And that’s what it does. Dad explained it to me. It’s not done bein’ built, though. When it gets done, everything’s gonna be better. Right Dad?”

Margaret stared at Jared for a moment as he sat up to take a slurping drink. He put the cup back down empty and cracked the plastic hard on the table. He trawled the back of his hand across his mouth and let out an exaggerated “Ahhhhh,” then put his arms back on the edge of the table and smushed the baby fat back up in his cheeks.

“Hey Dad?” Jared jumped up on his bed, landing on both knees and bouncing once before he slumped into sitting on his feet.

“What.” Charlie scratched his belly and turned on a lamp.

“I don’t think Gramma likes you much.”

“You’re not the only one.”

“Do you think you’ll finish it soon?”

Charlie floated over to the small desk in the corner of the room and looked at the colored pencils scattered across sheets of notebook paper. He reached for a pencil and his hand passed under the shadows made by the yard light filtering through the leaves outside. He stopped and turned his hand in the pale light, flexing his fingers like he was trying on a glove.

“Dad.”

“What.”

“The machine. When are you going to finish it?”

“This weekend, I think. I don’t know.”

“You’ll let me know, right? When you get it done? So I can watch you turn it on?”

“Yeah… Yeah, sure buddy.”

Jared bounced to the head of his bed, tucked his legs under him on his pillow, then pushed his feet under the sheet. “Well it’s a good thing it’s almost done, ‘cause there’s alota stuff that needs to be fixed.”

Charlie sat down on the end of the bed, feeling older than he was.

“What are you gonna fix?” Jared asked quietly, just over a whisper.

“I don’t know yet.” He smiled. “I’m open to suggestions, though. What do you think I should fix?”

“Like, uhhh,” He bit his upper lip and looked at the wall above his head. “Like Mom. That she’d stop bein’ so worried sometimes with things. Or maybe you, that you wouldn’t be so sad about losing your job again. And maybe you could get another one. Like driving tractors or something. Or maybe you wouldn’t have to get a job, and you could just stay here and we could build stuff and have fun. Like that.”

“Sounds good to me.” Charlie smiled and slapped Jared’s leg under the covers. “Say your prayers.”

“It’s gonna be so cool.” He bounced once and closed his eyes.

“It’s not normal, Karin dear. He shouldn’t be wasting his time building this ‘machine’, he should be out there, looking for another job and providing for his family. He should be out there right now for heavens’ sake.” She sighed. “The jobs he gets pay almost nothing and he can never hold them down anyway. What he needs to do is stop acting like a child – like he doesn’t have any responsibilities, just not working so he can putter around in the basement- and provide. For my daughter. And my grandson.”

Charlie stopped at the railing, light pooling in the stairwell. He stepped where he knew the floor wouldn’t squeak and listened.

“Mom, I know, I just…” A long pause. “I’m making some money waitressing, and yeah, we’re doing without a couple things, but Charlie’s doing his best…”

“Karin.” Charlie imagined his mother-in-law leaning forward and putting her hand on her daughter’s knee. “You know how I feel. Promise me you’ll call me if it gets too bad. I can be here in two hours to pick you up, anytime.”

“Mom-”

“Promise. Me.”

Charlie stepped out of the shadows, hitting the spots he knew would make noise and jogged down the stairs. When he got to the bottom, Margaret rose and shouldered her purse.

“Stay for coffee, Margaret?”

“No thank you, Charles.”

“You sure you don’t want to stay the night? It’s a long drive. Especially this late.”

“Quite sure.” She smiled painfully, turned to hug her daughter, and left, her shoes clicking on the linoleum floor. The door clicked shut behind her.

Charlie and Karin stood there, waiting. A car started and pulled out of the driveway. Charlie twisted his hands on the railing like he was giving an Indian burn and felt the finish rub off, grimy from the many years worth of sweat and dirt.

They stood there a long time.

“Can you, um,” Karin hugged herself and rocked from side to side. “I was able to pick up another shift this weekend. Can you watch Jared?”

“Sure.”

Karin hugged herself tighter. “His birthday is in a couple weeks. He needs new, um,” Her eyes darkened and she blinked hard. “New shoes. He needs new shoes. I want to get him that paint set too, the one that he’s always looking at. He needs new shoes, but I think that if I got him that paint set too, that would make him really happy.”

“You won’t have to work there much longer, honey. It’s almost finished.“

Karin narrowed her eyes and stormed into the kitchen.

“What’s wrong? What’d I say?”

“You know what.”

“No, I don’t. Really. What?”

“That machine.” She said it like she was cursing.

“Yeah, it’s almost done. What about it?”

Karin muttered and turned to the sink, jamming on the water. “She was right.”

“Right about what.”

“That machine. That stupid, awful, horrible, damned machine.”

“Karin—“ He winced and rubbed his forehead again.

“Charlie, what happened to you? Where did you go? You are wasting too much of your time working on this stupid thing that is, is what, Charlie? A magic machine? Something that’ll just turn on and make things wonderful?”

“You’re over-simplifying it.”

“I’m over-simplifying it? What was that you pulled at dinner? What have you been feeding poor Jared, who already thinks his daddy can walk on water and shoulder the moon? What is this, Charlie? What are you doing to yourself? To us?”

“I’m trying to make things better. I thought you knew that, honey.”

“With something you put together in your basement, Charlie? Normal people do not do things like this! You’ve lost jobs and found jobs and lost those and it all comes back to you pulling this crap about this stupid machine! If you had gone out and got a job, a steady one, and just puttered with this thing on the side in the evenings maybe, then I would not be making a big deal out of this! At first I thought you’d do it on the side and eventually lose interest, but you actually believe what you’re telling me, aren’t you!”

“Yes. I do. Because I got the vision about the machine. I got it because I’m the only one who can make it. I know it will work, and I have to build it, Karin. I just have to. Look around you, Karin. Just look around you. Do you like this house? The bills it comes with? Your job serving lousy food to degenerate people? Do you like it? And as far as Jared is concerned, I am doing this for him. I am trying to fix this.” Charlie winced and pressed his palm hard into his eye.

Karin blinked, waving her arms around like she was balancing confusion in one hand and rage in the other. “What?! Why do you think we’re living like this! Because of you. All of this is your fault. All of it. We’re living here because you spend all your time in the basement instead of going out and getting a job and working hard enough to actually keep it long enough to do any good! We’re poor because of you. We have overdue bills because of you. I have to work that job because you’re too lazy to do it. Because we have to eat. Because Jared has to go to school everyday. You look around, Charlie! This is your fault!”

“I am trying to fix this!”

“Fix your family!”

Charlie pressed at his head with the heels of both hands. “I’m – Trying to – I can’t – ” he gritted his teeth hard they slipped. He yelled and swung his arm out wildly, smashing the dirty glasses lining the sink. They shattered and the shards flew across the kitchen.

Karin backed up to the counter, almost climbing up onto it and out the window.

Charlie leaned on the counter with his one arm, then dropped to his knees and started hitting his head on the edge of the counter over and over, crying, whimpering.

Karin knelt beside him, glass crunching under her knees. “Charlie?” Her voice wavering. “You have a choice now.”

Charlie stopped hitting his head on the counter and let it rest there, just letting the tears run down his face and drip off his chin.

“Charlie?”

He stood up and turned on the water. Blood went over the dishes as he picked pieces of glass out of his arm. He let his arm stay in the water for a bit, then turned it off and wrapped a tea towel around his arm. He turned and walked towards the basement door.

“Charlie?”

It was dark and smelled of rain and mold in the basement. Mason jars filled with canned fruit lined the dusty shelves. Charlie could hear Karin pacing in the kitchen above him. As she walked the length of the room and back, the ceiling above him would creak and dust would drift down to scatter across the canvas covering the machine.

Karin stopped pacing and pulled out one of the chairs, scraping it across the floor. After a pause, he could hear her talking, but he couldn’t tell what she was saying.

He listened for a moment, and she stopped talking.

Charlie walked over to the machine and put his hand on it. The canvas stirred like something under it was moving, turning over as it slept.