“Yeah.”
I look around the bathroom. “Tonight?”
“Sure. If you can.”
“Out of what?”
“Oh,” she covers her mouth, turns, and walks into the dark space. “Just a second.” The lights come on, orange and low. “It’s in here.”
I stand in the opening, the entrance to her bedroom.
“Come in.”
It’s a fifteen-by-fifteen square. On the opposite wall are stacked milk crates filled with books, clothes, and random possessions — an old, medium-format camera. To the left is a couch covered by a light blue bedsheet. On the wall above the couch is a large corkboard; several photographs — too small to make out — are tacked onto it.
“Come in.”
She’s to the right, next to her bed — a boxspring and mattress on the floor with a balled-up comforter in the middle. On the floor beside the bed are two large, flat boxes, with what looks to be warnings written across them in some Scandinavian tongue.
“Okay, here’s the deal. I completely went against my better judgment and designed a kitchen online. I try to stay away from that whole world — technology — but it just seemed so easy.” She taps one of the boxes with her foot. “So easy. I measure everything, I study all these kitchens in magazines. I go to all the expensive design shops around here — you know them? — And I chat up all the salespeople for hours, like I’m going to drop eighty thousand dollars on a kitchen. I get it all done, send it out, and they send me back a bathroom.”
She waits for me to comment, but I have nothing to say. She wraps her hands around her neck and sighs, exasperated. She releases her neck, stretches up toward the ceiling, exhales then quickly bends and stretches to the floor. She holds her pose for a moment, relaxes, and drops somewhat awkwardly onto the edge of the bed.
“So somehow I wind up with a bathroom and a kitchen. For a substantial discount, so they say. All I know is I spent more than I wanted to. They’re supposed to be good, better than that Ikea stuff. But I’ve been too scared to open it. It’s a vanity and a medicine cabinet. They look pretty good, pretty simple in the pictures, but I don’t even know if they’re going to fit in there.” She goes to run her fingers through her hair but remembers that it’s tied up. She sighs. “What should I do?”
“Send it back.”
“I can’t,” she whines.
“Why not?”
“I’m not a good consumer. I can’t complain.”
“Okay,” I point at the boxes. “Let’s see what’s in there.”
“Wait,” she shoots a hand up. “I don’t want to see.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t want to be here when they’re opened. I think my presence will jinx it. My luck kind of runs that way. You know what I mean?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, so take the old cabinet out, just leave it outside the door. We can sneak it down later.” I question her with a wrinkled brow. She leans forward. “They have a trash pickup every Friday,” she almost whispers. “Did you see the containers?”
“No.”
“They must have come after you left. They’re just inside the door.” She looks through the bathroom opening. “We can break it into pieces and kind of slip it in under their stuff. Beth won’t mind.”
“Then why do we need to hide it?”
“Oh, come on. After what happened today — with you?”
“All right,” I nod. “I guess I should get started.”
“Right,” she jumps up. “Let me leave first.” She skips across the room looking for something she can’t find. She stands for a moment by the door, then opens it and jogs out into the living area. I follow her to the door. She senses that I’m there and calls out from behind the mudroom wall. “I have to do a bunch of things I forgot to do, before everything closes.” She rustles through the coats and shoes. I hear her keys jangle. She pokes her head around. “Help yourself to whatever you need. There isn’t much in the fridge, I’m sorry.” She steps into full view. “There’s wine — somewhere — there,” she points at three bottles by the sink. “But I don’t think you should drink and use power tools.” She reaches behind her and puts on her transparent coat. Thinks better of it and drops it on the floor. “I can pick up food for later — yes?” I don’t answer, and it slows her, makes her listen to herself. She exhales, kicks at the floor, and twirls her keys around her fingers. “I’m sorry. I’m crazed. I’ll stop.”
“It’s okay. I’m all set. I’ll be fine.”
“So you’re okay with being left alone. I won’t lock you in — in case there’s a fire or something.”
“Or something,” I mumble, but she hears it. It makes her laugh.
“Remember, help yourself to what you need — music,” she points in the direction of where the stereo is. “Okay, I’m gone.”
“It’s colder than that,” I gesture at her clothes.
“I’ll be fine.”
All I need for the prefab units are pliers, a screwdriver, and a set of Allen wrenches — all of which she has laid out on the floor. The cabinets simple — white laminate, predrilled holes for everything. The vanity has three slide-in glass shelves and a ready-to-hang mirror door. I ignore the rebuslike instructions and put them together by sight. It only takes about fifteen minutes each. I go back in the bathroom, eyeball the size of the vanity and find the studs in the wall above. I shut off the water, disconnect the supply and drain, and pull the cabinet away from the wall. There’s a lot of water damage — mold, stains — on the exposed wall. It has to go. I cut it out.
I cross the hall and go to the job site, creep along the walls in the low light collecting supplies — cement board, screws, mesh tape, joint compound, plaster, and primer. I bring them back to her place and rebuild the wall, mixing a lot of plaster in with the compound so it will dry quickly. While I wait for it to dry, I salvage the sink bowl and fixtures, break the cabinet down, and stuff it, along with the other trash I’ve made, into the mix in Johnny’s rolling dumpsters.
The place is too quiet without my moving about. The wind picks up outside, making the skylights creak; light rain, a soft tapping on the wire glass. I dust myself off and sit on her bedroom couch. Across the room, on either side of the bed, are two windows, the same size as the ones I’d sanded, but these frames are covered in thick coats of glossy gray paint. They seem to look out onto nothing — tunnels to the dark. There can’t be anything out there other than an airshaft or solid wall. The dim orange lamplight seems pulled to them as does everything else they’ve caught to reflect.
The couch is comfortable, soft, and smells faintly of lilac, but those windows make me get up, check the plaster that I know isn’t dry, stir the primer once more, and decide if she really did mean for me to “make myself at home.” I look through the crates; she has records and CDs — The Animals, Robert Johnson, Coltrane. I take them out, find the stereo around the corner in the big room, load them up, and wait for them to shuffle. I stand over the table and eat a pineapple slice and a strawberry, but they turn my stomach.
“Me and the Devil Blues” comes on. I go to the kitchen counter and fumble with the kettle as though I’m going to put it on. I see the wine she referred to — three bottles of red, two of which are open, one corkless. There’s a partially drunk bottle of mezcal — dirty rocks glasses on the edge of the sink.
“Johnson claims he’s going to beat his woman.”
I don’t want to acknowledge the line so I get out a piece of paper and start to make an invoice — the specs for both jobs — but it’s difficult to consider. She’s got money, but that’s not the point. How do you bill for this — hourly? By the scope of the job? I can’t charge her ten grand, but I can’t be here for a couple of hundred bucks either, and that notion makes me ball up the paper and lob it into the trash. It’s not about the money. It never has been, which, I suppose, is why I need so much, but that so much can’t be gotten here — anywhere on this or any other night. So why are you here?