The man took a step forward and hugged the painter. “What a man!” he told him. “What a decent man you are! What a true friend!”
And what a tale! That the painter would be willing to speak all those lies — Polyp a jerk? The builder a con-man? The painter, himself, plying his trade in a dishonorable manner? Please! Oh please! Likely story! Get out!..That the painter would be willing to tell all those big lies — and to do so with such artfulness; the crack didn’t come back, right? the risk I’m putting myself at here, etc. — in order to convince the man to repaint the wall, or replace the wall… Clearly the man’s wife had not been as okay as she’d seemed with the attention the man continued to lavish on the crack, and, still worried that the gel could endanger their child (she was a dutiful mother), had, from desperation (a desperate need not only to try do everything in her power to protect their child, but to, at the same time, continue to be seen by the man as nothing less than the loving, faithful, and above all supportive wife she and he the both [the man and his wife] knew that she was), called up the painter, prior to the baptism, and concocted, or asked him (the painter) to concoct, this crazy story of tainted paint and crumbling walls in a last-ditch effort to rid the home of the gel and the crack from which it oozed, and, clearly, the painter had agreed to tell the man the made-up story in order to ease the strain he (the painter) imagined the crack might be putting on his good friend’s (the man’s) marriage.
Not even for a second had the man believed the painter, though. He knew better than that.
He squeezed the painter tighter.
“I’m glad you’re not angry,” the painter whispered.
“Life is so good,” the man whispered back.
HOW TO PLAY THE GUY
Vet Prospective Jennys
To play The Guy, first you need a Jenny.
Get a girl. Not a child. A mid-to-late-adolescent girl you can loom over. Make sure she looks slutty and abused, too. Bangs, spray-cast to the sky with something shiny. Bangles and bracelets, enough to make noise when she scratches herself. Lots of eye shadow, some glitter in it. A low threshold for startling, paired with a strong tendency to wince when startled. Slam the car door and see. Lip gloss with a powerful fruit scent. If lipstick, then the kind that comes off in flakes. A T-shirt with a violent graphic, tied in a knot at the bottom, its crew collar scissored to create flaps of mock V-neck so that, when she bends forward, the flaps open and you can see the tops of her breasts. Kind of fat is okay, even preferable, but avoid morbid obesity like you would the AIDS. It draws too much attention. The buffalo hump is a no-go. So is a stomach that smiles in more than three places when she sits.
Which brings us to midriff. If she’s sporting midriff, make sure the midriff is either too flabby or too sucked-in-looking. If her midriff is good, have her keep it covered. Unless she has an ugly face.
Shorts are actually better than a miniskirt. She should look like the kind of slutty-looking girl who says that girls in miniskirts look slutty. Before teaching her the activities she will synthesize (see subseq.), stand her before a full-length mirror for an hour and have her repeat the following while she looks deep into her own eyes: “Remember that girl in the miniskirt? What a slut.” And if she’s kind of fat, have her also repeat: “That one girl was such a fat-ass it sickened me. It sickened me.” The repetition of these words will eventually move her.