Care of Wooden Floors by Will Wiles

Care of Wooden Floors

Will Wiles

You only need to outline the combination of mischievous cats, plenty of red wine, and a friend's extremely expensive wooden floor, to know where this is headed. The subtext is, was it intended ...? An enjoyable retrospective-introspective search into self-discovery, the nature of friendship, and the personal value of status symbols.

Extract
Excluding the outer drips and splatter, the bulk of the damage was concentrated on only five or six boards. This was extensive, but not beyond control. Novack's instructions had not yet been followed through and, I saw, he had more to say beyond oxalic acid. I selected a new test area - a short streak near one of the kitchen cabinets - and again set to work with the sandpaper and corrosive crystals. There were no suitable white cloths, so I had to sacrifice one of Oskar's linen napkins to the greater good, figuring that he was unlikely to miss one. And it worked - in the first and only positive development of that whole day, the acid did what it was supposed to do. The stain had gone.
Parallels
  • Scenes from the Life of a Best-Selling Author by Michael Kruger
  • Harry, Revised by Mark Sarvas
  • Solar by Ian McEwan