Page 19 of Perfect Mess

My brain was still frozen because instead of confronting him about my escalating water bill, what came out of my mouth was, “I forgot your Justin Bieber T-shirt.” Apparently, missing shirts were top of mind.

Gary stood up from where he was bent over the hose, hair dripping, rivulets of water cascading down the hard lines of his chest. “No problem.” He shrugged his broad shoulders. “Just bring it next time.”

There was no way the man standing in front of me was the same dungeon mastering, chess playing geek from high school. Unless lugging cans of paint and hoisting ladders was the optimal exercise for the pectoral muscles. And the glutes. I had seen Gary’s arms and shoulders packed into the overalls already, but now set free with no encumbrance, they looked sculpted out of marble.

Gary bent over to pick up a dark blue T-shirt draped over one of Aunt Catherine’s pool chairs. His butt was so tight I could have bounced a quarter off it. Which I really, really wanted to do. When he looked back over at me, his jaw twitched. “You want me to bring you a chair so you can sit down or something?”

As much as I could have spent the rest of the day, the rest of my life really, watching Gary carry heavy things, I said, “No, I’m fine, really. I just came over to check on the paint.” Somehow, I kept from slobbering.

Gary smiled, showing off his perfectly white, perfectly straight teeth. Nestled between his perfectly pink, perfectly shaped lips. “Okay then. Follow me.”

As I followed him to the back door, Gary slipped his T-shirt over his head and smoothed it down his muscle lined stomach. It read Yale across the front, right where his nipples would be. I assumed he had found it at a thrift store.

“I just finished so your timing is perfect.”

That’s not all that’s perfect.

Once inside, Gary swept his hand from wall to wall like he was doing a reveal in one of those home improvement shows. “See? Greige. All greige.” I made my way through the house, critically inspecting. True to his word, the entire house was now a blank, greige slate. Not a trace of red, or any other color. It was like we were in an old black and white movie before they invented color film. It was glorious.

“You know, I almost bought a house in this area,” Gary said as I ran my finger along a wall, feeling for any imperfections in the texture.

“You did?”Yeah, sure,I thought. Aunt Catherine’s house was in the good part of town. Within walking distance of the revitalized downtown, where every weekend there was a new wine festival, street fair, or art show. Over the decades, the oak trees had grown as big as buildings, shading the brick lined roads. It was the part of the town where doctors and lawyers lived. Not painters.

“I heard the schools are some of the best in the area. Who knows, maybe someday I’ll be your neighbor.”

“Sure,” I said.When hell freezes over.

Gary waited for me to finish my inspection of the wall paint. “So you really like it?”

Begrudgingly, I nodded. “It’s not horrible.” Despite Gary’s earlier missteps, I had to admit that the walls looked pretty good. Granted, it wasn’t rocket science, but Gary obviously knew how to use a paintbrush. Perhaps I had been wrong about Gary. Maybe hiring him wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

“Shall we take a look at the kitchen now?” I asked. Once I verified Gary had completed his work in the kitchen, we would be able to shake hands, complete our transaction, and then go our separate ways for good.

“So about the kitchen …” Gary started.

Alarm bells began blaring. My dad, like Gary, had been a big Star Trek fan, the original show, with Captain Kirk. We used to watch the reruns together all the time. It was like when the Klingons showed up and the guys in the red shirts started running around, the screech of the red alert echoing throughout the starship.

“What about the kitchen?” My eyes turned the same color red as the wall used to be. And the shirts of the Star Trek guys.

“I was thinking …”

I didn’t let him finish his thought. Nor did I complete any thinking of my own. Instead, my legs started moving toward the kitchen. Naturally, I assumed the worst. He had painted the walls eggplant purple. Or the ceiling was now stenciled with rainbows. Perhaps he painted a mural of unicorns frolicking in a gumdrop forest.

I burst through the kitchen door. To my horror I discovered the kitchen was … still exactly the same as Aunt Catherine left it. Pink cabinets. Formica countertops. Avocado green linoleum. But as bad as each of those things were, the worst of the worst was the wallpaper. Pink rose blossoms and scrolling green vines. It gave off a serious grandma vibe. A grandma’s grandma even. My kitchen guy, Gus, was scheduled to rip the cabinets out with a sledgehammer and a crowbar. But getting rid of the wallpaper was the job of the painter. Gary’s job. A job he had clearly failed to do.

Behind me, I heard Gary say, “I think we should keep the wallpaper.”

“We?” An image of Gary as a hockey player formed in my imagination, weaving and spinning as he skated down the ice in the middle of a frozen pond. After a heat wave in July. With sharks swimming underneath. The ice Gary was skating on wasn’t just wafer thin, it was translucent.

I pointed an accusing finger at Gary’s muscled chest, trying not to look at his muscle-y-ness. Muscle-y-ness that was still very evident beneath his thrifted Yale T-shirt. “Do you always have this many personal opinions about the jobs you’re hired to do?”

“Let me explain.”

“There’s nothing to explain,” I fired back. “Gus is installing brand new slate grey cabinets at the end of the week. You know what goes great with slate grey?”

“Greige?”

“Greige.”

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