“We were made for more than this, Raymundo.” Nils Lawdahl scratched at his patchy blond beard. “We’re supposed to be in big, fancy houses by now—both of us.”

            Raymundo remained ever silent and ever stalwart.

            Nils peered past him toward the alley outside the Galaxy building’s lower level. He’d spent his fifteen minute break out there with a few marijuana cigarettes. And with the kind of traffic he was getting, it might have been as well to stay down there. Nils approached his third Saturday shift without an art sale, and if he couldn’t get an oddly-anatomied portrait or pasta-limbed character out the door, his dues would soon catch up with him.

            “I can’t keep going back to the office, bud,” Nils said. “I can’t keep getting yelled at by people because they don’t know how to fill out a form. I gotta—”

            “Nils Lawdahl?”

            A smooth, deep voice echoed through the Galaxy building’s half-empty second floor. Nils flinched and looked toward the staircase. A man in a black suit and tie and a dimpled smile slowly approached him.

            “Huh? Uh, yeah. Can I help you?”

            “I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”

            “Nah, man. I was just talking with my buddy here. Say hi, Raymundo.” Nils reached over, gripped Raymundo by the statue’s noodley arms, and manipulated him into a wave. He considered pointing out the sculpture of the spaghetti man in a toga was for sale, but decided he wasn’t ready to part with him yet.

            “Ah, of course.” The businessman’s tone was smooth and warm. “I’m sure a friend like that is necessary to deal with a job like yours.”

            “Tell me about it.” Nils paused for a few seconds, then asked, “What can I do for you? How’d you hear about me?”

The other man laughed as he closed the distance. “Oh I’m sure you understand that I can’t disclose that. I’ll just say Nils Lawdahl isn’t all that common of a name, now is it?”

            Nils shrugged. “It was my granddad’s too.”

            “Well, let’s get down to business then. I’m in need of a very special commission.” The businessman reached into his jacket, produced a little black book, and offered it to Nils. “This is for Mister Jacek Novik, head of the Pittsburgh Order of Construction and Demolition. You’ll find everything you need to know about him in there. He has a big press conference coming up at the end of the month, and work must be completed before then.” After Nils accepted the book, he pulled an envelope from the opposite side. “And this is your standard retainer fee.”

            “My retainer fee?” The bloodshot young man looked back and forth between the book and the envelope for a few beats before he accepted it. When he peered inside his eyes widened, but he seemed to swallow whatever was the first question on his mind. After a second to regain his composure, he asked, “Is there anything specific you’d like me to do?”

“I’ll leave that up to you.” His commissioner turned to go. “You have complete creative control.”

Nils waited until his payer was out of earshot to start counting the money, looked to the noodley statue at his side, and said, “Things are finally starting to look up for me, Raymundo! I know I just got back, but this calls for a victory toke!”

            The young artist was hard at work alternating between counting bills, flipping through the black book, and taking notes when his boyfriend, Eric, arrived home that night. When Nils did not acknowledge his initial, “I’m home,” Eric stepped into the kitchen to check on him. “Uh, lovey, what do you have there?”

            “Somebody commissioned me to do an art piece.” Nils hardly looked up from the book. “Twenty thousand up front, twenty thousand when I get done.”

            Eric double took. “Twenty thousand? Are you sure this isn’t a joke?”

            “It’s all there in the folder,” Nils said. “I counted it myself. This is finally it, I’m getting my big break!”

            With a hand in the envelope to count the money, trepidation held in Eric’s voice. “Who is this sculpture for?”

            “Jacek Novik,” Nils said. “Apparently he’s some big—”

            Eric beamed. “Wait, Jacek Novik? He’s my union leader. Someone’s paying you to make something for him? That’s fantastic!”

            “Oh yeah,” Nils said. “And he’s got this big speech he’s gonna give about bad conditions building the Hawley Center. The buyer said it needs to be presented before then.”

            “That’s coming up here fast,” Eric said. “Are you going to have time for that?”

            “I already quit my job.”

            The grin dropped off Eric’s face. “Nils! You can’t just quit your job out of the blue like that.”

            Nils groaned marked his page and looked hard toward his partner. “This is worth more than half of what I made a year at that pit. If I can’t find another art gig after this there are a million other bottom-tier jobs out there I can work. But right now I have the chance to finally work on stuff I care about.”

            That set the tone for the rest of their conversation. Nils couldn’t convince Eric it was a wise decision, but eventually got a kiss on the forehead and an, “All right, we’ll just see where this thing goes.”

            For the next three weeks Nils alternated between pouring over the contents of the book and concepts for statues. He wasn’t sure why his employer had specified things like Mr. Novik’s everyday routine, favorite foods that were susceptible to mix-ins, and history of tobacco use, but it did paint a very specific picture. He sketched blueprints, experimented with foam and plaster, smoked many marijuana cigarettes, and slowly but surely, his inspiration found form.

            At the month’s end, Nils waited with a team of movers the headquarters of the Pittsburgh Order of Construction and Demolition. “Careful with that thing,” he repeated every few seconds as he paced around the moving van. The sculpture within was carved from hundreds of dollars worth of alabaster into an abstract that at once invoked the great wings of a bird and the double-helix of DNA. Nils had taken careful note of the book’s mention of Novik’s casual interest in falconry and taken perhaps an over-literal interpretation of a quote about construction workers forming, “The very genes of this fine city.” In his occasionally addled mind, Nils thought it brought to mind a phoenix rising from the ashes, but Eric said that probably seemed too whimsical for Novik’s taste.

            “What’s all this about, Eric? Let’s hurry it up now.”

            Nils snapped to attention as the rough voice he’d read about and heard in online clips came into earshot. Jacek Novik appeared every bit the stern, gruff father of his men the book described. Though that exterior melted into awe as he stepped outside and saw Nils’ work.

            When he had a moment’s respite from the wonder, he looked back and forth between the men before him and asked, “Eric? Who’s this? And what in the world do we have here?”

            “My boyfriend, Nils, got an anonymous commission to put this together,” Eric said. “We never really learned from who, but it’s a friend of our brotherhood, clearly.”

            Novik slowly drank in the statue from all sides before he turned to face the artist. “This was your doing?”

            “Oh yeah,” Nils said. “Lots of hard work, lots of—uh—coffee. Yeah. Coffee to put this masterpiece together.”

            “It’s perfect,” Novik said. “I—I need to get ahold of the team in trademarking, this could be our new logo, by God! And you say it’s already paid for?”

            “Well, the commissioner did say I’d be getting the rest afterwards—”

            “I can’t take this for nothing,” Novik said. “Eric, Nils, come in my office. We have much to discuss.”

            The next day, Jacek Novik gave a rousing speech to the Pittsburgh Order of Construction and Demolition that effectively ceased all work on the Hawley Center downtown until better conditions were provided. Along with the usual questions of demands came those about the fantastic art installation he gave his speech in front of. Nils Lawdahl, a mostly ignored face at the Galaxy building, suddenly saw an influx in demand for his art. And elsewhere in the city, a shocked, confused commissioner took a phone call from an infuriated George Hawley demanding why in the world he’d apparently commissioned a piece of art.

            From the initial twenty thousand dollars and moleskin of inspiration, Nils grew a powerful new artistic business. In the fall, he single-handedly covered a down-payment on a beautiful house for himself and Eric out in the suburbs of Greensburg.

            As Eric and Nils families arrived, they eagerly greeted them all. Though as the day wore on, one notable absence stuck out.

            Nils approached an older woman by the wine cooler. “Aunt Heather? Did your boy get my invitation? I haven’t seen him around yet.”

            His white-haired aunt went pale. “Oh dear, you don’t know? I would have expected your mother would have told you. Maybe not, you two were always so close.”

            With a frown, Nils said, “Of course we were close. Him and grandpa were the only other Nils Lawdahls on the planet. But what happened?”

            “He was arrested last year.” Aunt Heather hesitated and seemed to swallow back something distasteful. “He—apparently he’d been working as a hit man for the last five years.”

            Nils’ eyes went wide. “What? Like, hit man hit man? Like you see in the movies?”

            “He would always play coy about where all his money came from.” Aunt Heather shook her head. “I always knew he was bringing in too much work as a freelancer. The police said it was an essencial part of the cover, providing him free time and all that.” She pulled a tissue from a nearby box and blew her nose.

            For a moment, the two stood in silence. Then Nils slipped past her, popped open a wine cooler and said, “Poor bastard. Always told him he shoulda gone to art school like I did.”