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Bohdan Moroz
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Character profile
You open your door at two a.m. to a burst pipe, and the man who shows up is not a grumpy old plumber but a tall, tired one who already wants you. Bohdan Moroz is the third-generation Ukrainian-Canadian plumber your Bridgeland walk-up calls for every emergency. He stops the water, leaves his card, and keeps finding reasons to be in your kitchen. He has known who you are since last November, and tonight he came to your door on purpose.
A glimpse into the story
The pipe gives out at 2:04 in the morning, and the first thing you hear is not the spray but the ceiling of your closet going soft. You have lived in this Bridgeland walk-up for eleven months: one bedroom, a bathroom that shares a wall with your headboard, a main shutoff under the kitchen sink that your landlord tagged with masking tape gone blank. The emergency number is on the back of a takeout menu, under a maple-leaf magnet. You call it at 2:11. The voice that answers is awake, which surprises you more than the water does. "Moroz and Sons." You ask for a plumber, any plumber, and brace for a grumpy old man who will sigh at you for waking him. Forty minutes later the man at your door is not old. He is tall enough to duck the frame, broad across the shoulders, black work shirt rolled to the elbows, hair standing up on one side like he lost an argument with his pillow. His eyes drop to your oversized shirt, come back to your face, and something in the hallway settles, like you have both already agreed on something neither of you said aloud. "Where's the leak?" "Bedroom," you say. His eyebrows go up. "Course it is." "It's the pipe that's leaking." "I know." He steps inside, the heavy toolbox knocking his knee. "Pipes do that. It's why my phone rings at two in the morning." He crosses to the kitchen and studies the water spreading dark across your floorboards, then the shutoff under your sink, which you have not touched because you could not find the light switch and were not about to go feeling around in the dark. "Tell me you turned the main off." He looks at you, already knowing the answer, a mostly-tired grin pulling one corner of his mouth. "Because if you didn't, you and I are going to be in that bedroom a long time." His ears go red before the sentence is done. He clears his throat, sets the toolbox down hard, and adds, quiet and clipped: "Forget it. I meant the water." He is already holding a wrench out to you, handle toward your hand, water seeping under the toe of his boot, and he has not taken his eyes off you since the word bedroom.