"You bought it because the burned part made the grain strange," Annie said. "You didn't know if it would work. You were careful. And now it looks like that."
"That isn't a sales presentation," Maren said.
"Maybe that's why somebody will listen."
I helped load the table for transport and checked the route paperwork with Maren before she left. The truck pulled away from the small yard with the long wrapped piece secured and labeled, leaving the remaining redwood on its cribbing beside the shed. Luis stood by the gate until the vehicle disappeared. Then he turned to the work waiting in the shop. Annie stayed with a neighbor that night, and Maren drove south carrying photographs, Shaw's report, a thin portfolio, a list of unanswered questions, and the uneasy knowledge that she had spent more money proving her idea than she'd ever spent selling one before.
The exposition was held in a polished convention building full of materials designed to look effortless. Stone slabs glowed beneath carefully directed lighting. Imported tiles were arranged like jewelry. Representatives in tailored jackets discussed finishes, installation tolerances, and schedules with the practiced ease of people who expected their customers to arrive carrying significant budgets. Maren's booth was near a corner between a stone importer and a company showing ceramic surfaces so perfect that every piece looked manufactured from the same photograph. She unpacked the redwood table, adjusted the lighting, placed the documentation in a simple stand, and waited.
For most of the first day, almost nobody stopped. People glanced at the table and moved on, assuming it was a decorative piece outside the scope of their procurement lists. A few asked whether she carried a range of colors or could provide matching units in quantity. Maren said she could produce designs around the individual material but could not promise that another tree would grow the same figure. Most thanked her and continued toward displays offering complete catalogs, guaranteed stock, and delivery windows they could enter into a project schedule. The very uniqueness that made the table special was, to a busy professional, an inconvenience unless a project had a reason to need it.
By three in the afternoon, the booth seemed to have moved farther into the corner. Maren had eaten half a sandwich, drunk cold coffee, and watched hundreds of people pass. She began calculating how many cabinet orders would have been needed to pay for the exhibition, and how long it would take to recover the cost if the day ended without a serious conversation. She thought of the dinner Annie would be having without her and the empty patch of gravel in front of the shop where the truck usually parked. For the first time since the exploratory cut, she wondered whether the hardest part of the venture had been the thing she'd left too late to learn.