Page 30 of Just Say (Hell) No
“The screen was in the rubbish,” Nyree said. “I rescued it. Why would you buy something in a shop when you could make it your own?”
Her bed was a non-regulation mattress, laid across the corner of the room and barely raised off the floor. It didn’t look much like his own in that long-ago Dunedin flat. Hers was a… nest. Throw pillows in white fur, in deep blue velvet, in orange satin. More blue velvet on the coverlet, an orange throw that cascaded onto the floor, and swaths of orange gauze stapled across the corner of the wall. A piece of old wood nailed to the wall held a collection of antique doorknobs hung with necklaces and scarves. There were hooks on the other side as well. The same type? On the same level? Of course not. Scattered all over, and hung with lingerie.
It was mad. It was the last thing from spare and simple. Color. Texture. Everything.
Pinpricks ran down Marko’s arm, and then the kitten jumped onto the bed and was picking her dainty way across the velvet.
“Sorry,” he said, and scooped her up.
“No,” Nyree said, “leave her. This bed was made for a kitten to curl up in.”
Marko could imagine that without any trouble at all. There were two nighties hanging from those hooks. They were silky, they were short, and the ice-blue one was edged with lace. There was a black silk dressing gown as well.
“It’s all amazing,” Ella said. “You do painting, too.”
“I do.”
That would be hard to miss. It wasn’t that there were so many paintings on the walls. There wasn’t room, not when you considered all the hooks holding clothes hangers, the boxes nailed next to the tiny kitchenette crammed with mismatched dishes, cereal boxes, even vegetables. But there was a painting on an easel, and one hanging over the Honda seat. It was of mandarins, some in a bowl and others, still on the branch for some reason, in a shabby white enameled pitcher set against an orange wall. It wasn’t flowers or anything you’d normally see, but it was quite nice. Cheerful. At least it wasn’t random blobs of color, or scribbles. You knew what it was meant to be.
He couldn’t decide if she’d done it or not, though, because the thing on the easel was so different. He was going to have to say something nice about it, too. You respected a woman’s ambitions.
Bloody hell.
Nyree took a look at Marko, then sighed and said, “You may want to cultivate your poker face.”
“What?” He was still gazing at Pookie like he couldn’t tear himself away. Or like he was horrified. “It’s a dog. Dachshund, right?”
“I think it’s adorable,” Ella said. “Funny, too.”
Nyree took a good long look at Pookie. She’d painted his younger, better-natured self lying on his back, emerging halfway out of a studded motorcycle boot, with his tongue hanging out and a paw draped casually over the front edge like a boy racer hooning around with his elbow out the car window. His long ears flopped around him, and he had an “I’m too cool” expression on his face. “He’s meant to be a badass dog,” she said. “As he’s black. His owner and her husband have Harleys and thinkthey’rebadass, and he was cuter as a puppy. To say the least.”
Marko seemed to be groping for a response, and she said, “You’re thinking it’s one step away from cigar-smoking dogs playing poker. It’s a commission. It’s psychology. Not of the dog. Of the person paying for the painting.”
“I thought artists were meant to be, like, all hung up on artistic integrity,” Ella said.
“Yeh, well,” Nyree said. “Rent. Rich people don’t have enough ways to spend their money, I make them happy, and I stay out of an office for one more month.” She added, just in case Ella needed to hear it, “Not always easy to support yourself even with a degree, eh.”
“I thought you had a job,” Ella said. “You said you had to go to work today.”
Marko was watching her too closely, and Nyree was starting to feel narky about that. “I’d love to hear what you’re thinking but not saying right now,” she told him.
He gazed at her for a long moment, then said, “I reckon everybody does what they have to do.”
It took her a second to switch out of combat mode. “Yeh. They do. So I paint dogs. And have a job. I need to be at that job today, so if you’re looking for a lift to Sylvia Park, we’d better go do it.”
When they arrived at the enormous shopping mall, though, and headed into Hunter Furniture, Ella wandered the aisles silently, walking more and more slowly. Five minutes. Ten, as she picked up price tags and dropped them again. Marko was standing back, not helping, and Nyree suppressed a sigh. Couldn’t hesee?
Finally, she asked the girl, “What do you have already? What do you need?”
Ella shrugged. “A bed, that’s all, so I need… a tallboy, I guess. A table for beside the bed. One, anyway. A desk, too, and a chair. Some sort of carpet, because it’s a wood floor. But it’s only for a few months, and…” Her voice dropped. “Some of these tallboys are thirty-five hundreddollars.And they look like they were designed for an orphanage. Like all your walls are gray, and you eat lumpy porridge for breakfast, because pretty things are bad for your character. Marko probably likes them, though. That’s what his furniture looks like. What he actually has.”
She looked around glumly, and Nyree had to agree. Orphanage for sure. “Besides,” Ella went on, “even if I got the very cheapest ones, it would be thousands, and then there’s a duvet and sheets and all, and the carpet. He only has one pair of sheets for my bed. White. Also two extra towels. White. And I need a desk, because he doesn’t even have a kitchen table. I’m going to need other things, too. Clothes. All new school uniform. Which ismoremoney. D’you think he saw the prices on this stuff?”
Marko said from behind them, “I don’t need a table,” and Ella jumped and looked guilty. “I have the kitchen bench for that,” he said. “And stools. I’m all good. I saw the prices, yeh. Pick out what you need, desk and all, and we’ll get your duvet cover that isn’t brown and the rest of it, and we’ll be done. When you need the special clothes and the new uniform, we’ll buy those as well. We don’t need to talk about it. You just need to do it.”
“What about when I leave?” Ella asked.
“Then I’ve got a guest bedroom furnished. Choose, and we’re done with this and can move on.” Marko didn’t appear to lose his temper easily, and he wasn’t doing it now. He was definitely getting more curt, though, and Ella was starting to look agitated.
