“Pink. Mauve is a fancy word for pink, right? I heard it often enough when my ex-wife was picking out stuff for our apartment, but it looked pink to me.”
My goodness, Aunt Jo was right about mauve; it was no longer a definitive test. Wasn’t that interesting? She couldn’t wait to tell them.
“Puce,” she said, and nearly smacked herself in the head. Why couldn’t she leave well enough alone?
“What?” He acted as if he’d never heard the word before.
“Puce. What color is puce?”
“Spell it.”
“P-u-c-e.”
This time he scrubbed his hand over his face. “This is a trick question, right?”
“Why do you say that?”
“Puce. Who in hell would name a color ‘puce’? It sounds like ‘puke,’ and nobody would want something colored like puke.”
“Puce is a very pretty color,” she said.
He gave her a disbelieving look. “If you say so.”
“Do you know what color it is, or not?”
“Hell, no, I don’t know what color puce is,” he barked. “I know real colors; I know blue and green and red, things like that. Puce, my ass. You just made that up.”
She smirked. “I did not. Go look it up in the dictionary.” She pointed to the reference section. “There are several right over there.”
He snorted, then shoved back in his chair and all but stomped over to the reference section. He leafed through a dictionary, ran his finger down a couple of pages, then briefly read. “Reddish brown,” he scoffed, shaking his head. “Not that I’ve ever seen anything that’s reddish brown, but if I did, you can be damn sure I wouldn’t point at it and say, ‘That looks like puce’!”
“What would you call it?” she taunted. “Something really imaginative, like ‘reddish brown’? Though I’ve always thought puce was more of a purple brown than anything else.”
“At least people would know what the hell I was talking about if I said reddish brown, or even purplish brown. And who needs a color like that, anyway? Who in his right mind would go into a store and ask the clerk for a puce shirt? Or buy a puce car? I worry about people who buy purple cars, but puce? Give me a break. Puce is only good as a gay test.”
It probably was, but she wasn’t going to admit that. “You know what color puce is now,” she couldn’t resist pointing out. “From now on, when you see any brown that has the least hint of red or purple, you’re going to think: ‘That’s puce.’”
“Oh, Jesus.” He pinched the bridge of his nose between his eyes. “You give me a headache,” he muttered, then looked up, his eyes narrow and gaze dangerous. “If you mention this to anyone, I’ll deny it, then I’ll have you hauled in if you so much as jaywalk. Is that understood?”
“I don’t jaywalk,” she said triumphantly. “I’m so law-abiding I could be the poster child for responsible citizens. I wouldn’t even let you come in through the employees’ door, would I?”
“People like you need counseling.” He glanced at the computer screen, then heaved a sigh of relief. “It’s finished.” He checked his watch. “That didn’t take any-where near forty-five minutes. More like fifteen. So I guess you do have a fault, Miss Daisy.”
She felt her back teeth lock together at the “Miss Daisy.” If he made another joke about her name, she might just smack him. “What’s that?” she asked as she quickly unhooked the computer. The faster he left, the better.
He took the laptop from her. “You lie like hell,” he said, leaving her speechless, and he strode out before she could think of a good reply.