Page 45 of The Happy Month

Her face turned white under her makeup. People didn’t speak to her like that. I walked up to the porch and Ronnie. When I turned around, she and her protégé were climbing into her BMW.

Ronnie leaned toward me and said, “You know what’s funny? I know that guy. He started working for us right before I got my real estate license. I caught him in the back once sucking off a customer.”

“You didn’t fire him?”

He shrugged and smiled in a way that made it clear he’d done the same thing.

“Oh.”

“By the way, you are so getting laid tonight.”

“You won’t get an argument from me.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

July 27, 1996

Saturday morning

Saturdays with Ronnie were a rare treat. Most weekends he was completely booked with clients who wanted him to show them properties. Given that we had the commitment ceremony in the afternoon, he decided it was simply easier to move all his clients to Sunday.

We stayed in bed until nine, which was now late for us. My hours were much more normal since I’d quit bartending. We skipped showers, put on some old crappy shorts and T-shirts, and hopped into my Jeep. After a stop at a fast-food place for some breakfast biscuits and borderline coffee, we drove to our co-op.

He hadn’t said much about the stunt his mother pulled the night before. I was curious, of course, but I didn’t bring it up. As we walked up the steps to our future home, he said out of nowhere, “The joke’s on her. By the time she dies, I’mgoing to be so much fucking richer than she is. She can give her money to whomever she wants. It won’t matter to me.”

“You don’t need her. You’ll be fine.”

“Did you go through this with your parents?”

This put us into territory I didn’t talk about. They, too, disowned me. And eventually I left town. I gave the simplest answer I could think of. “It was a lot cleaner.”

Inside the co-op, Ronnie had already spread-out plastic in the living room. Sitting in the corner were several bottles of pigment, a can of white paint, buckets, rags and a bag of big sponges.

“Okay, this is going to be interesting,” I said, mainly to get off the subject of family. “You’ve got it all set up.”

“Yeah, I was here yesterday morning.”

We ate breakfast standing up and Ronnie explained how this was going to work.

“We’re going to mix up three different colors: one dark, one light and one in the middle.” He pointed at three bottles: red brick, yellow and terra cotta.

“Okay.”

I must have sounded dubious because he said, “You’ll see.”

We finished our biscuits, and he scurried around getting ready. He filled three buckets partway with water and then with white paint. He added pigment and then stirred. When he was done, he said, “You like?”

“I guess,” I said. I had no idea what I was looking at.

“We should see what it looks like on the wall,” he said. “Sponge or rag?” Anticipating my next question he said, “One you dab, the other you roll.”

“Roll,” I said, not sure what I was getting into. He handed me a rag which was folded together and bound in three places with rubber bands. He picked one for himself.

“Let’s start with the dark color,” he said, dipping his rag into the brick-colored paint and then squeezing it out with his hands. This was going to be messy. “We’ll start with this wall.”

He walked over to the north side of the living room which had one window looking into the courtyard. I watched as he rolled the rag up and down the wall. It left a mottled mess in its wake. Ronnie turned around and looked at me.

“Start at the other end.”