Touchy Subjects: Stories Read online

  "That's the stalk and stuff," she informed him. "The leaves are green; the flowers are blue."

  "They're frigging purple!"

  First thing in the morning Leroy was out there again, staring at the freshly painted woodwork. He knew he was going to be late for work, but he hung around till Rod showed up in his van. "Hey!"

  A nod for answer.

  "I think we've maybe got a problem," said Leroy, clearing his throat. "Is that really the colour I gave you?"

  Rod produced the dog-eared chip from his back pocket, set up his ladder, climbed up, and held the chip against the paint-work. Leroy could barely see it, which, he supposed, meant it was the same shade. "OK," he said unhappily.

  "They colour-matched it."

  "Yeah, I'm not calling you a liar. I just—I guess I didn't know it would come out so bright."

  Rod climbed down.

  "It's awful, isn't it?"

  The painter didn't demur.

  "Maybe it's because there's so much of it," Leroy hazarded. "And outside, in the sun. Or maybe because it's gloss, that must make it shinier. Or do I mean darker? More intense, I don't know."

  Rod stood with arms folded, looking up at the woodwork.

  Leroy shaded his eyes. "Shorelle likes it, can you believe that? I told her, it'd be great in a scarf or something, but not on a house."

  "Women have different eyeballs," said Rod at last.

  Leroy stared at him.

  "I mean, literally. It's the layout of the light-receptor cells. So your wife and you are probably seeing different colours."

  "Really, is that true?"

  "Also, blues can be tricky." Rod seemed to be relaxing into conversation.

  "You said it! Seems like they turn green or grey or purple depending what you put them up against." Leroy could hear a whining tone in his voice, so he deepened it. "And the names don't help. Evening Sky, it's nothing like an evening sky." Rod didn't answer, but Leroy became aware how foolish it was to pay any attention to the names some schmuck of a copywriter made up. "What do you think, Rod?"

  A massive shrug. "You're the customer."

  "I know, but you work with this stuff."

  "You can have your house any colour you like. Take your time." He looked at his shoes. "It's up to you." Another pause. "It's you folks who've got to live with it."

  What was he hinting? That this colour would be impossible to live with? Leroy tried to reckon up how much they'd already spent on Rod's labour and all those pots of historic lavender paint. "No, but what would you do?"

  "Me personally?" Rod scratched his eyebrow with one stained finger.

  "Sure."

  "I kinda liked the peach."

  "No way!" Leroy stared at the old flaking woodwork.

  "But if you're looking to increase the resale, go for cream. It's classic."

  Later, Leroy told Shorelle, "Rod's agreed to get on with sanding and priming the porch floor, so we've got a couple days to make up our minds about the colour."

  "I thought we already had," said Shorelle, shredding a bit of beef with her fork to put on Africa's tray.

  "Honey, don't be like that."

  "I'm not being like anything. We looked at lots of brochures, we discussed it, we agreed—"

  "We were in a rush! The light was bad. And those were the wrong colours. Here, look, I picked up some more paint chips at Home World today—"

  "What were you doing way over there?"

  "I drove by after from work."

  "So that's why you were late picking her up from day care. They called—they left a message."

  Leroy decided to ignore that. He would take a fresh tack. "Remember our first date? That house we drove past, the perfect slate blue?"

  Half a smile.

  "Let's go take a look at it again, compare it to these chips."

  "Right now? I don't know. Africa's bath—"

  "Oh, she looks clean enough, she can skip it for once."

  The sky was pink and pearl, and the breeze coming in the sunroof was delicious. Leroy kept one hand on Shorelle's leg as he drove, and in the back Africa was making her birdlike sounds into her plastic cell phone.

  "We've been up and down this street four times," Shorelle pointed out.

  "OK, Ms. Clever, where do you think it was?"

  She pursed her lips. "One of those side streets past the church?"

  He shook his head. "Why would we have gone down a side street?"

  "I don't know; you were driving."

  "Well, exactly. I was taking you straight to the lake, I was all excited about our first date and maybe making out in the dunes, I'd hardly have started combing the side streets."

  Shorelle scanned the houses. "Well, it's not here. Maybe they repainted it."

  "Why would they have done that? It was perfect as was."

  "Turn here," she told him, and he did, so suddenly that Africa's cell phone flew across the car.

  "It can't be down here," he said over the child's screams. "It was a real big house, three storeys at least. Don't you remember?"

  Shorelle was twisted round in her seat belt trying to retrieve the toy. "It was years ago," she said through her teeth.

  When they got home there was still enough light in the sky for the gaudy shine of the top half of the house to make him wince. He was ashamed to think of people driving by, making remarks about it.

  While they were brushing their teeth, he passed on Rod's theory about the sex of eyeballs. "Oh please," said Shorelle, spitting foam. "That's just bullshit male bonding."

  "No, you're missing the point, he didn't say we see better—"

  "Well, if it comes to that, far more guys are colour-blind than women are."

  At four in the morning Shorelle took hold of his shoulder. "OK, I give in," she said, gravelly.

  "What?"

  "If you stop heaving about and let me get some sleep, OK, you can change the colour."

  Halfway through his morning bagel, Leroy grinned at Shorelle. "So you agree it's a bit too purple?"

  "No, I think it's beautiful, actually."

  "But honey—"

  "You win, OK, Leroy? Do it—tell Rod to throw away all that paint and start again, never mind the cost. Whatever makes you happy," she said, checking her watch.

  He pored over the latest brochures. What if the colour he chose came out even worse than the first? Delphinium was pallid; Foggy Dusk looked like dirty water; Deep Shale was depressing. Denim Jeans had the potential to be glaring; Lake Prospect was plain navy. Leisure Time—what the hell kind of name for a colour was that? "Maybe we should err on the safe side and go for Rocky Creek," he suggested, sliding over the catalogue.

  Shorelle looked at it without much interest. "That's grey."

  As soon as she'd said it, it was true. "Bay of Fundy?" he suggested, tapping the card.

  "Urgh."

  "You barely looked at it."

  "It only takes a second to hate something," she told him. "Imagine living with that for the next however-many years..."

  Leroy consulted the couple of neighbours he knew to say hi to; they all agreed the current patch of Evening Sky was an eyesore. Several suggested cream; he had to be polite enough to pretend to be considering it. He asked a guy going by with his short-haired poodle, and a woman from FedEx. Shorelle came out with Africa on her hip. "Timothy's going to drop by Monday morning," she announced.

  "Oh yeah?" he said neutrally.

  "I thought, if you're polling every passing dog, it's time to call in an expert."

  "Rod's an expert," Leroy pointed out.

  "No he's not; he's just some guy who happens to paint houses for a living. Décor is Timothy's business."

  "Interiors," said Leroy, aware he was quibbling. "He'll probably suggest pistachio or cerise."

  "Oh, for Christ's sake." She mouthed the swearword, so Africa wouldn't hear it. "You have got to get over your gay thing."

  "Since when have I had a gay thing?"

  "Since forever. You get all su
lky like some rapper thug."

  Leroy chewed his lip.

  "Timothy's in the business; he knows about colour. We've got so stuck on this, I thought we could do with an objective opinion."

  But there was no such thing as objectivity, Leroy was coming to realize. Colours were private passions and weaselly turncoats, bland-faced losers and enemies in disguise. His head ached from pursuing, through a forest of azures and cornflowers, cyans and midnights, the perfect slate blue.

  On Monday he was sitting waiting for Rod on the gritty primed porch. "Hey," said the painter, getting out of his van. "You picked a colour?"

  "I think so." He scanned the strip in his hand nervously, checked that he'd folded it so the right one showed. "It's not absolutely what we had in mind, but it seems the nearest to it, at least as far as we can tell." The we was a lie; the last time he'd brought out the brochures for a discussion, Shorelle had screamed and said she was going to put them down the Garburator.

  The painter adjusted his baseball cap.

  "It's called Distant Haze," said Leroy as he handed it over, immediately wishing he'd used its number instead.

  Roy glanced at it and put it in his back pocket.

  Was that it? No endorsement, after all this work? Leroy heard a car door open and looked over at the slim guy getting out of a black PT Roadster convertible. "Timothy!" he called, overdoing the enthusiasm. "Friend of Shorelle's," he told the painter in an apologetic undertone. "This'll only take a second—"

  "Rod, my man!" Timothy and Rod were embracing.

  Leroy blinked. Well, it was a bear hug, he supposed. "You know each other."

  "Rod's done a lot of great work for me over the years. Looking good, man," said Timothy, giving the painter's shoulder something between a whack and a rub. "Where've you been?"

  "Busy," said Rod, with a brief grin.

  Leroy hadn't known the painter was capable of cracking a smile.

  "I've got half an hour, you want to grab a coffee?"

  "Why not," said Rod, heading for the convertible.

  Leroy's jaw was throbbing. They weren't even going to ask him along. "Hey, what about the house, Tim?" He knew the guy hated to be called Tim. "That's the colour Shorelle likes," he added mockingly, pointing at the upper section of paintwork.

  Timothy shook his head. "Stylish in itself, but not on a west-facing street."

  Leroy should have felt vindicated.

  Rod produced the folded chip from his back pocket. "That's their latest."

  Timothy tilted it to the light. "Grey?"

  Leroy stalked over. "It's slate blue; it's called Distant Haze. If you put it up against real grey—against the pavement, even—you can see how blue it is."

  "OK," said Timothy, as if humouring a child. "Listen, tell Shorelle I'll call her later?" He made that annoying finger-and-thumb-spread gesture that meant a phone.

  "So Tim, what would you do?" Leroy was leaning on the hood, aware he was holding them up, trying to sound casual.

  "With this house?"

  "Yeah."

  "Cream, probably," said Timothy.

  "Can't go wrong," said Rod.

  "Classic."

  Leroy waved them off with a rictus smile. He shut his eyes, saw hot and red.

  The Cost of Things

  Cleopatra was exactly the same age as their relationship. They found this very funny and always told the story at dinner parties. Liz would mention the coincidence a little awkwardly, then Sophie, laughing as she scraped back her curls in her hands, would persuade her to spit out the details. Or sometimes it would be the other way round. They prided themselves on not being stuck in patterns. They each had things the other hadn't—Liz's triceps, say, and Sophie's antique rings—but so what? Friends would probably have said that Sophie was the great romantic, who'd do anything for love, whereas Liz was the quiet dependable type, loyal to the end. But then, what did friends know—what could friends imagine of the life that went on in a house after the guests had gone home? Liz and Sophie knew that roles could be shed as easily as clothes; they were sure that none of their differences mattered.

  They had met a few months before Cleopatra, but it was like a room before the light is switched on. After the party where they were introduced, Sophie decided Liz looked a bit like a younger Diane Keaton, and Liz knew Sophie reminded her of one of those French actresses but could never remember which. At first, their conversations were like anybody else's.

  Then, on one of her days off from the gardening centre, Liz had come round to Sophie's place to help her put up some shelves in the spare bedroom. Sophie insisted she'd pay, of course she would, and Liz said she wouldn't take a dollar, though they both knew she could do with the money. When the drill died down, they thought they heard something. Such a faint sound, Liz thought it was someone using a chain saw, several houses down, but then Sophie pointed out that it was a bit like a baby crying. Anyway, she held the second shelf against the wall for Liz to mark the holes. They were standing so close that Liz could see the different colours in each of Sophie's rings, and Sophie could feel the heat coming off Liz's bare shoulder. Then that sound came again, sharper.

  They found the kitten under the porch, after they'd tried everywhere else. Its mother must have left it behind. Black and white, eyes still squeezed shut, it was half the size of Sophie's cupped hand. Now, Liz would probably have made a quick call to the animal shelter and left it at that. She didn't know then how quickly and completely Sophie could fall in love.

  It knew it was on to a good thing, this kitten; it clung to Sophie's fingers like a cactus. They said it for the first few days, not knowing much about feline anatomy. It was hard to give a kitten away, they found, once the vet told you she was a she, and especially once you knew her name. They hadn't meant to name her, but it was a long hour and a half in the queue at the vet's and it started out as a joke, what a little Cleopatra she was, said Liz, because the walnut-sized face in the corner of the shoe box was so imperious.

  Sophie was clearly staggered by the bill of two hundred dollars for the various shots, but soon she was joking that it was less than she spent on shoes, most months. Liz was a little shocked to hear that, but then, Sophie did wear very nice shoes. Sophie plucked out her Visa card and asked the receptionist for a pen, it having been her porch the kitten was left under. Liz, watching her sign with one long flowing stroke, decided the woman was magnificent. Her hand moved to her own wallet and she spent ten minutes forcing a hundred-dollar bill into Sophie's breast pocket, arguing that they had, after all, found the kitten together.

  Cleopatra now belonged to both of them, Sophie joked as Liz carried the box to the car, or rather, both of them belonged to her. It was—what was the word?—serendipitous.

  That first evening they left the kitten beside the stove in her shoe box with a saucer of milk, hoping she wouldn't drown in it, and went upstairs to unbutton each other's clothes. So, give or take a day or two, they and Cleopatra began at the same time.

  These days she was a stout, voluptuous five-year-old, her glossy black and white hairs drifting through every room of the ground-floor apartment where Liz now paid half the rent, never having meant to move in exactly but having got in the habit of coming over to see how the kitten was doing so often that before she knew it, this was home. On summer evenings, when Sophie took out the clippers to give Liz a No. 3 cut on the porch, Cleopatra would abuse the fallen tufts as if they were mice. Cleopatra had commandeered a velvet armchair in the lounge that no one else was allowed to sit on, and in the mornings if they delayed bringing her breakfast, the cat would lift the sheet and bite the nearest toe, not hard but as a warning.

  They had a fabulous dinner party to celebrate their anniversary, five years being, as Liz announced, approximately ten times as long as she had ever been with anybody else. Three of their guests had brought champagne, which was just as well, considering how hard Liz and Sophie were finding it to keep their heads above water these days. Sophie's hair salon had finally gone out
of business, and Liz's health plan didn't stretch to same-sex partners.

  Over coffee and liqueurs they were prevailed upon to tell the old story of finding the kitten the very day they got together, and then Sophie showed their guests the marks Cleopatra had left on her hands over the years. Sophie had bought appallingly expensive steel claw clippers at a pet shop downtown, but the cat would never let anyone touch her feet. Her Highness was picky that way, said Liz, scratching her under her milk-white chin.

  They knew they shouldn't have let her lick the plates after the smoked salmon linguini, but she looked so wonderfully decadent, tonguing up traces of pink cream. That night when they had gone to bed to celebrate the best way they knew how, the cat threw up on the Iranian carpet Liz's mother had lent them. It was Sophie who cleaned it up the next morning, before she brought Liz her coffee. Cleopatra wasn't touching her food bowl, she reported. "She must still be stuffed with salmon, the beast," said Liz, clicking her tongue to invite Cleopatra through the bedroom door.

  The next day she still wasn't eating more than a mouthful. Liz said it was just as well, really—Cleopatra could do with losing a few pounds—but Sophie picked up the cat and said that wasn't funny.

  They'd been planning to take her to the new cat clinic down the road to have her claws clipped at some point anyway. It took a while to get her into the wicker travel basket; Liz had to pull her paws off the rim one by one while Sophie pressed down the lid an inch at a time, nervous of trapping her tail. The cat turned her mutinous face from the window so all they could see was a square of ruffled black fur.

  The clinic was a much more swish place than the other vet's, and Liz thought maybe they should have asked for a list of prices in advance, but the receptionist left them alone in the examining room before she thought of it. Cleopatra could obviously smell the ghost aromas of a thousand other cats. She sank down and tucked everything under her except her thumping tail. The place was too much like a dentist's waiting room, but Liz, who knew that Sophie relied on her to be calm, read the posters aloud and pretended to find them funny, WHY YOUR FURRY FRIEND LOVES YOU, said one poster on the wall, IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH, began another. The two of them whispered to each other and gave the cat little tickles, as if this sterile shelf was some kind of playground.