I open the door again and grab hold of the shelves to see if I can make any headway in moving the cabinet out of its space. I gain a few inches. There’s a big enough gap between the cupboard and the wall now that it’s clear there’s a door behind it. I grab my phone to shine a light in the back. There’s no doorknob, only a round hole where a knob should be. I lean over, stretching all the way from my toes, and can barely fit the tips of my fingers into the hole where the doorknob should go, but I can’t get a grip.
I blow my hair out of my face and step back, trying to assess how to get sufficient leverage to pull this cupboard out. I twitch my nose partially from the dust, partially because I’m not sure what to do next. Then Zaid and his ridiculous physics jokes pop into my head. He would find this whole slapstick situation hilarious. He could probably make me laugh about this whole thing. And he would know what I need: force equals mass times acceleration.
Force. I need more force. And I’m the force.
I take a deep breath and grab the open cabinet door with one hand and the side of the cabinet with the other. I pull. Hard. The cabinet inches forward. I pull again; I feel a few drops of sweat beading above my lip. I can do this. A surprising buoyancy fills me. The cabinet gives some more and now is sort of twisted, the side of its open door angled toward the kitchen. This time, I grasp the door with both hands and pull hard with all my strength.
My right hand slips, and I fall right on my ass.
“Dammit,” I say as I stand up, rubbing my backside and rolling my head to stretch my neck.
“What are you doing?” Alexandre stands in the doorway with a book in his hand. He puts it on the counter and walks over. “This breaking French antiques thing is getting to be a habit. I’m going to have to report you as a menace to the Minister of Culture.”
“What?”
Alexandre points to the cabinet. The upper part of the door is off its hinge, and it’s leaning forward at a precarious angle.
“Oh crap. Sorry. I was trying to get behind it.”
Alexandre grins, amused, but also raises an eyebrow. “Why?”
“There’s a door.” I point behind the cupboard. “I hope this cupboard isn’t on the historic register,” I say, wincing.
“Don’t worry, it’s hardly a national treasure. But that door behind it—I’ve never seen that. Step back for a second.”
I step aside, happy to give Alexandre the chance to pull out the cupboard or fall on his ass trying.
Alexandre wraps his long arms around the entire cabinet and first tries to lift it out, then resorts to dragging it forward, which works. I step up and help guide the cabinet far out enough into the kitchen so that we can slip behind it. The door is painted the same dull white as the rest of the kitchen and is much smaller than a standard door. It looks like someone painted right over the seams. I wiggle my fingers through the doorknob hole and pull. There’s some cracking, but it doesn’t budge.
“Hang on,” Alexandre says, then grabs a dish towel from the counter and hands it to me. “Use this. That looks like a sure way to get splinters.”
I lay the small towel along the bottom edge of the hole, place my hand on it, and try pulling again. “God, a million layers of paint are gluing this shut. Why would they do this?”
“A careless paint job? And then when whoever redid this kitchen saw it, they probably figured it was easier to stick the cabinet here.”
“Grab a knife,” I say. Alexandre hands me one, and I chisel through some of the paint on the side of the door. “Can you reach the top?”
Alexandre slips into the small space next to me. I hand him the knife, and he wedges it between the door seam and wall, working his way from left to right,