Page 20 of Perfect Mess

“You know what does NOT go great with slate grey cabinets?”

Gary bit his lip. “Pink and green flower wallpaper?”

I cocked my finger at his face. “Bingo.” You might say I was about to lose my patience at that point, but that would imply I had any patience to begin with. I took a deep breath. Janet always said that taking a deep breath was calming. It gave you time to think before you said something you’d regret later. As I was breathing deeply, I thought of several things I wanted to say to Gary and I knew I wouldn’t have regretted saying any of them.

“Just hear me out.” Gary pointed to the back wall of the kitchen, a wall covered in pink roses and green vines. “You see that wall over there?”

I decided I needed a few more deep breaths. “Let me guess. It needs a pop of color?”

“Actually no. More of a color … blend.”

“Color blend?”

“Color blend,” Gary confirmed. “A merging of palettes. Sometimes, two colors that don’t seem like they would go together end up complimenting each other nicely.”

I took more breaths. Many more. “Right.” I nodded. It was to acknowledge that I had heard Gary’s words, not to signal agreement.

Gary placed a hand on the wall like he was touching a sacred relic. “It’s just so …”

“Hideous?” I asked.

“Original,” he said.

“Deplorable.”

“Genuine.”

“Gruesome.”

“Unique.”

“Repulsive.”

“They don’t make it like this anymore.”

“Thank God.”

I’m not sure what Gary thought he saw on my face that made him keep talking, but he kept talking. “I found a few colors we could merge. Tie in the pinks and greens from the wallpaper with the slate cabinets and the greige.”

Now I’ve made many bad choices in my life, and there have been many hard lessons that I’ve learned over the years. In the fourth grade, I didn’t fully apply myself in Mrs. Fitzgerald’s English class, which she thoroughly documented in my permanent school record. As a teenager, I snuck out of church in the middle of Pastor Hanson’s sermon to make out with Billy Hanson in the confession booth. In college, Janet and I accidentally joined a cult because the guy handing out the pamphlets was super cute, and there was a promise of donuts. But in hindsight, those were nothing. Hiring Gary Wright was the biggest bad choice of them all.

I took another breath. Not because I was trying to control my emotions. I just had nothing left. I said the only thing left to say at that point. “Gary.”

“Yes?”

“You’re fired.”

Gary tilted his head sideways. For a moment I thought he hadn’t heard me, because his face scrunched up like he was trying to listen to something faint and distant. Finally he said, “What was that?”

“I said you’re fired.”

“No.”

“No?”

“No, I mean, what’s that noise?”

“It’s the noise of you getting fired.”

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