“There you go,” he said. “That’ll give you something to get started with. When you need more just give me a buzz and I’ll be back lickety-split.”
We unloaded the cans into the shed. It made a nice little hill in there. It gave me a stomachache: fireball rage and impotence mixed together. I had forgotten what a horrible feeling it is-it had been a long time since I’d had a taste of it. It’s funny, there were really a lot of things I’d forgotten.
The deliveryman split, whistling. It was sort of relentlessly nice out. I took a sad look at the houses and started lugging a fifty pound can of paint down the road, making sure my fingers got good and crippled. George was waiting for me by the entrance. I didn’t stop. He walked across to join me with his crazy-old-man grin.
“Hey, looks heavy what you got there.”
“Don’t be cute,” I groaned. “Leave me alone.”
“Well, shit, what did I do to you?”
I changed hands without slowing down. I hit myself in the leg with the can and saw stars for a minute. He wouldn’t let me be.
“Jesus, I never saw you like this.”
“That’s possible,” I said. “Did you really have to go tell him that Betty LIVED here?”
“Jesus Christ, you know how he is. He made me spill the beans.
I was only half awake when he came in…”
“Yeah, well, you’re never completely awake. What you
“Hey, is it true you’re going to paint all those things? You really going to make yourself do…”
I stopped. I put the can down and looked George in the eye.
“Listen,” I said. “I’m still not sure what I’m going to do, but I don’t want you talking to Betty about it. Do you get me?”
“Yeah, don’t get bent out of shape, pal, your secret’s safe with… but how are you going to not tell her yourself?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it yet.”
Just as I got to the first bungalow I was hit by a bad case of the runs and had to leave for a little while. The enormity of the job simply had my guts tied in knots. I didn’t have the nerve to tell Betty about it. I knew that she would have chucked the whole thing-she’d never have let herself get screwed like that, she’d have burned the whole place down. What would happen if I told her seemed so horrible that I decided to keep it all to myself-a little diarrhea isn’t the end of the world, after all, it’s just an unpleasant little moment in life.
Betty was talking to the tenants when I got back. I was a little paler than usual.
“There you are. I was just telling these people that we’re going to do a little painting…”
They looked at me benignly, a kind of spaced-out couple, taking it easy in retirement. They’d been there for at least six months already and had hung flowerpots in every possible corner. I muttered a few incomprehensible remarks and dragged Betty out behind the building. My mouth was dry. Betty was looking gorgeous-charged with electricity, all smiles. I cleared my throat a few times, my fist jammed in my mouth.
“Well, what are we waiting for? What do we do?” she asked.
“Ah, okay… you paint the shutters and I’ll paint around them,” I said.
She tied her hair up on top of her head, laughing and carefree-it was enough to make you weak in the knees.
“I’m ready!” she said. “First one finished helps the other one!”
When her back was turned I gave her an incredibly sad smile.
From time to time the geezers came out to see how we were doing. They stood at the foot of my ladder, their mouths twisted in glee. Around eleven o’clock the woman brought us cookies. Betty joked around with them, she thought they were both really nice. Personally, I thought they were boring-I didn’t feel like making pleasant conversation every inch of the way. When I’d finished painting the top of one side, I climbed down the ladder and walked over to Betty to play my next hand. She was doing a corner.
“Jesus Christ, you’re really a pro!” I said. “You can’t do better than that… but there’s a little problem, I didn’t think to mention it…”
“What’s wrong?”
“Well, it’s the corner there… You went a little outside the lines, like…”
“Of course I went outside the lines. What do you want me to do… a brush this size…”
“I know. It’s not your fault. It’s just that now it looks like the other side is wrong.”
“So?”
I felt myself strangling.
“What do you mean ‘so’?” I got out.
“I mean, you’re not going to paint just one side of their building. What good does that do?”
I wiped my brow with my arm like a seasoned veteran who has lost all illusions.
“Well, I suppose…” I said. “I guess it would make them happy anyway. They’ll have a whole new building thanks to you.”
For the rest of the day we were stuck there, slaving over that shitty little house.
In fact that one little gig took up practically the whole week. The thermometer climbed all of a sudden and it was impossible to work outside in the early afternoon. All you could do was stay inside the house with the shades down, the icebox rumbling like a washing machine, unable even to crank out enough ice. We walked around the room half naked. Usually we wound up grabbing each other. I followed the little rivers of sweat that ran down her skin with my fingers, and we knocked all the furniture over, puffing like locomotives, hair glued together and eyes bright. I had the feeling that the more we fucked the more we wanted to, but that wasn’t the problem. What had me worried was that with each passing day Betty was losing her taste for painting-she wasn’t into it like she used to be. The cookies didn’t work anymore. We hadn’t even finished the first bungalow and she was starting to get fed up. I had no idea how I was going to break it to her that we still had twenty-seven just like it to go. I couldn’t sleep at night, I smoked in bed while she slept, letting my mind waft off into the silence and the dark. I wondered what was going to happen. Whatever it was, I knew I’d have a ringside seat. It was like I suddenly found myself in the middle of an arena with a blinding sun in my eyes-I could feel the danger without really knowing which direction it was going to come from. It was not exactly a barrel of laughs.
4
We finished the old couple’s bungalow one evening around seven, just as the sun was going down. It looked unreal-pink shutters on a white background. The two geriatrics hugged each other in ecstasy. Betty and I were dead. We sat clown on paint cans and opened beers, clinking the cans together in a toast. A light wind had come up during the afternoon-it was quite cool out. There’s always something nice about finishing a job, whatever it is, and we took pleasure in it. The fatigue and the pain in our limbs became a kind of special liquor. We started giggling at nothing at all.
We were busy winking at each other and squirting beer all over the place when the owner showed up. His car kicked up a cloud of dust. He drove right up to where we were. We had trouble breathing, especially me. There was whistling in my ears.
He got out of the car and walked over to us with his wet handkerchief. He looked at Betty with a big phony smile. The last rays of the sun gave his skin a purplish tint: sometimes it’s easy to recognize people sent from Hell.
“Well, well,” he said. “Seems like everything’s just fine here. Job moving right along…”
“You can say that again,” Betty answered.
“Yes indeed. Let’s hope you can keep up this pace.”
I broke out in a cold sweat. I jumped off my paint can. I grabbed his arm and changed the subject:
“Come take a good look… check out the workmanship. Great paint, dries in five minutes…”
