A Basic Renovation

by Sandra Antonelli

  ‘Come on, Dad, it’s not like she can do that on command.’

  ‘Wanna bet? You have to make it an association.’ The newspaper crinkled as he wrapped it bandage-like around his dirty foot. ‘Take her out to the side of the house where the fence is. Let her walk around on the grass and tell her to pee. Soon enough she will. Praise her when she does it. Then take her out to the same place every twenty to thirty minutes and use the same door when you go outside. She’ll catch on pretty fast.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I’ve had a dog before.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘When I was a growing up. I had to train him.’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  Dominic started to shuffle across the tiles wearing a paper slipper. He was heading for the powder room off the kitchen, rolling up the rest of the newspaper to toss into the recycle bin. ‘Ask Grandma about Horton sometime. She told everyone she hated the dog, but she used to talk to him like he was a baby. She was really upset when he died. It was over thirty years ago, but if you mention Horton now, she’ll get all misty eyed.’

  ‘Grandma misty-eyed? Right. Hey, I forgot to tell you she called this morning.’

  Dealing with crap on his foot was easier than dealing with his mother. Dominic rolled his eyes. ‘Did she say what she wanted?’

  ‘Uncle Terry’s visiting.’

  The newspaper in his father’s hand froze above the recycling basket. He snorted, his distaste thinly concealed. ‘I better save some of this for all his shit.’

  Kyle chuckled.

  So did Dominic. In the last year or two, the kid had started to pay more attention to the certain, subtle dynamics within his family. Kyle liked to listen and hear family stories. He’d worked out that his Grandpa had been laid-back, while his Grandma was always a force to be reckoned with. Kyle understood Uncle Marcus, in a natural manner befitting a second-born sibling, seemed to resent and emulate his Dad, while Middle brother Uncle Christian, the sensitive, quiet one, played peacemaker.

  Then there was Uncle Terry, Grandma’s favourite. He told funny stories about Vegas showgirls, talked frankly about sex, and always stuffed a fifty or a couple of twenties into his nephew’s hand. Kyle knew Uncle Terry was good for a laugh, but when he was eleven or twelve, the boy had figured out his father’s baby brother was a sleazy, deadbeat asshole.

  Chapter 10

  Dominic had become accustomed to the odour that greeted him at the screen door as much as he had Lesley’s loud music. This morning, the scent of tile glue and latex paint had conquered the last overtones of cat urine, but the portable stereo still blasted out songs and Lesley still sang along. When he let himself inside, she was singing something about the healing properties of new shoes.

  Canvas drop cloths were spread in the dining room, which was in the process of being painted. The windows had been washed. Natural light showed off the new colour in the living room. The fresh green-white shade and the new wood flooring that ran from the hallway to the edge of the dining area, had transformed the open area into something he hadn’t pictured. He knew painting the ceiling white would expand the big room even more. He even understood the concept of going with something neutral to appeal to buyers, but in his mind neutral meant taupe carpeting and beige walls. What Lesley had chosen was fresher and used the light from outdoors to show off the vast space much better than bland beige ever could. Well, that’s why I’m a carpenter, not a decorator.

  Lesley came out of the kitchen. She wore her glasses and had a box of chocolate Thin Mint cookies tucked under her arm. Startled, she stopped in her tracks, her singing ending abruptly. She crammed a cookie into her mouth and brushed past him, moving into the start of the dining room where the stereo sat on one of her folding chairs. ‘I didn’t expect you for another day or two,’ she said, shutting off the music.

  ‘Same here, but that weed-n-feed you wanted came in. It’s out in my truck. My Cherokee, not the store’s Chevy. Those white stones you’re after for the front garden should be here by Friday.’ He glanced around the place. ‘You got a lot done over the weekend.’

  Lesley’s heart slam danced inside her chest, and not because he’d frightened her by letting himself inside. He’d been doing that for a few weeks now and she was used to it. The problem was she liked him. She really, really liked him. Put plainly, she had a crush on Dominic Brennan, Terry’s older brother.

  Startled by the realisation, she glanced away from his face and focused on the yellow screwdrivers sticking out of a pocket of his tool belt. Gazing at his array of tools wasn’t any better. He looked outrageously hot with that stupid leather pouch slung around his hips. On top of that, he’d had a haircut and shave. His face was smooth and tanned. There was a small nick at the edge of his chin. She wanted to reach out and touch that little spot, to run her fingers over his jaw line.

  Unnerved, she stuffed a hand into the cookie box and held out one to him. ‘Want some?’ she said, hoping her voice hadn’t actually cracked the way it sounded to her ears.

  ‘Sure. Got any milk?’ His hand brushed against hers when he took the chocolate sweet.

  She jerked a thumb towards the kitchen and turned around, heading for the rust-coloured fridge. ‘How’re Kyle and Clementine?’

  ‘I’m a little concerned he’s going to start talking about entering the Westminster Dog Show,’ Dominic said, following her. Without counters and cabinets, sound echoed in the mostly empty kitchen. He leaned against the unplugged stove and watched her set aside the cookies to take a paper cup out of a box sitting on a card table.

  ‘Why’s that?’ she asked.

  ‘Once it was DC Comics versus Marvel, six-point-five litre big block engines, and Kirsten Dunst’s rack in Spiderman. Now he rattles off the seven groups in an All Breed Show and talks about how well Clementine stacks.’

  Lesley laughed and handed him a cup full of milk. ‘Missing those father-son bonding moments?’

  ‘Nah, it’s just funny.’

  ‘As funny as the other night in the cemetery?’

  ‘Ah, so now you think it was funny? I told you, you would.’

  Oh yeah, it’s hysterical how much I wanted you to feel me up. It’s a riot how good you felt smashed against me. ‘John Tilbrook said the county caught the bear.’

  ‘So he believes us now?’

  She nodded. ‘I made sure o—’ a sharp snap bounced off the tiles and bare kitchen walls. Something thumped and rattled against metal. ‘Hot damn!’ she shouted, ‘I think I finally got one!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A rat!’ Lesley felt ready to burst with sheer glee. ‘Why didn’t I think to use peanut butter in the first place?’

  Dominic chuckled. She looked ready to do some kind of victory dance.

  She waved her hands. ‘Get out of the way and let me by. It’s under there.’

  He stepped aside to give her access to the kick-plate at the bottom of the stove, just under the oven, which she’d sealed up with duct tape. ‘You got a plastic bag and some gloves?’

  ‘Over there on the table,’ she said, crouching down to work off the kick-plate.

  Dominic grabbed a bag from the table with the paper cups. ‘Where are your gloves?’

  ‘The bag is enough.’

  He crossed the space and put the grey plastic into her outstretched hand. She moved to her knees and began to pull off the metal facing. A second later she shifted and reached inside, the bag over her hand.

  Her shriek hurt Dominic’s ears. In the next instant, Lesley was standing on the other side of the kitchen, shuddering violently. ‘Oh my God! Oh my God!’ she squealed in a voice that would make a dog howl, ‘It’s still alive!’

  He was beside her in a half-second, grabbing her wrist to look at her plastic-covered hand. ‘Did it bite you?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Then what’s the big deal?’

  ‘It’s alive!’

  ‘So?’

  Glaring at him, she wrenched from his grip
and threw the bag on the floor. She took a breath, still shuddering, hands on her hips. ‘Look, I can deal with something dead. I can pick it up and toss it out in the trash, but it’s squirming and thrashing!’

  Dominic started to laugh. ‘Come on, it’s not going anywhere.’

  Lesley glanced at the stove and her nose turned red. ‘I knew I should have used those little poison packs instead of traps.’ She took off her glasses and covered her face.

  Dominic rolled his eyes. What the hell is it with women and spiders, worms and rats? He was about to make a crack about how she should be standing on a chair, but something really odd made him hold his tongue.

  She was crying.

  Lesley wailed as the unfortunate rodent shuffled and rattled beneath the oven, ‘It’s suffering! Oh God, I can’t be here right now. I can’t be here while it’s like that.’ She backed out of the room shaking her head, sniffling, half-sobbing. ‘Why don’t we go get a nice Cherry Lime and come back in a few hours? My treat.’

  Dominic looked at her and poked his tongue into this cheek. He sighed and unclipped his tool belt, setting it on the table beside his milk. ‘Get out of here. Go paint or something. Find a happy, quiet place and forget about this.’

  ‘Don’t you want a Cherry Lime? I’m sort of in the mood for onion rings. Yeah, onion rings, let’s go get some.’ She swabbed her nose with her wrist, glasses twirling in her fingers.

  ‘Lesley. Get out of here’

  She stopped snuffling and put on her glasses. ‘What are you going to do?’

  Dominic cocked his head to the side, his mouth a flat line.

  ‘Oh, God.’

  He crossed the tiles and put his hands on her shoulders, backing her out of the kitchen and into the dining room. ‘Get busy,’ he said thrusting a paint roller into her hand. He waited until she moved to the wall. A second later he switched the stereo on again and went out to his Jeep to grab a pair of rubber-lined work gloves.

  As soon as Dominic was out the front door Lesley gave one final full-body shudder, then wiped her nose. She missed her Harley. If there had ever been a time when she needed to be out on the open road it was now. She would have headed west along that winding back road up into the Jemez, along the Valles Grande Caldera, to the Hot Springs. She would have gone skinny dipping and forgotten all about rats.

  Daydreaming about a relaxing float in thermal waters only lasted a few seconds. An instant later she was furious with herself. Vermin eradication may not have been part of her renovation plan, but she could have handled things with a little more grace.

  ‘Oh save me, save me! Boo-hoo-hoo, let’s go get some onion rings,’ she grumbled out loud, ‘You think you could have been any more of an asinine feeble female, you pathetic little wuss?’

  Exasperated, she attacked the wall in front of her. The roller didn’t have enough latex coating it and it barely left a mark. She huffed and turned to the ladder where the paint tray sat on a platform. She dipped into it with a little more force than necessary. Greenish tinged white splashed up over her hand, but she didn’t care. She smeared the excess on the leg of her overalls and resumed her assault, covering a large section of the white undercoat she’d slapped on yesterday.

  As one song segued into another, Lesley began to laugh. Her behaviour was less than stellar. In the future, she’d act with more fortitude. But the future didn’t have to include the next few minutes with a suffering rat.

  When Dominic came back inside, she kept on painting and disregarded the sounds coming from the kitchen. She didn’t want to think about what was happening in there. The front door opened and closed two more times. She continued rolling on paint and chimed with the song blasting from the stereo.

  Dominic had to wash his hands in the upstairs bathroom since the kitchen lacked a sink. Once he finished, he went back to the dining room to give Lesley the all-clear. He watched her for a moment. She pushed a colour-covered reel across the wall in an overlapping manner. Her ponytail bounced. She stood on her toes to reach as high as she could.

  It wasn’t seeing art in action by any stretch of the imagination. It was nothing more than manual labour, but watching her paint held him captivated. She had a sort of boundless energy. Nothing was slap-dash, she was just quick, and she sang while she worked. All that physical activity made him wonder what she’d look like asleep.

  It was an odd thought to have. Maybe it was the fact everyone looked vulnerable asleep, but thinking of Lesley sleeping soundly seemed a hell of a lot more intimate than picturing her naked on a mattress with rumpled sheets. Skin prickled on the back of his neck, an odd warm chill ran down his back, air hitched in his chest.

  The next song on Lesley’s CD mix said something about it getting harder to breathe. The lyrics matched his current physical state, the music a little more upbeat than the last tune. Lesley’s painting matched the tempo and she sang along. She had a nice voice and Dominic liked hearing it. He felt himself smile when he lowered the stereo’s volume. ‘Anyone ever tell you you’re a good singer?’

  Lesley shrugged, but didn’t turn around. ‘Singing is the one thing I miss about teaching music.’

  ‘When were you a music teacher?’

  ‘Back when I was with…You never knew what I did for a living back when I was with Terry, did you?’

  ‘I know what you do now. Does that count for anything?’

  ‘What you did in the kitchen counts for more.’ She paused, paint roller in hand. ‘You did…uh, you did…Is it done?’

  ‘Yeah. He’s gone. You’re rodent free.’

  She blew out a breath. ‘One down, God knows how many more to go. Thanks for that.’

  ‘Sure.’ Dominic didn’t remember moving, but he was suddenly standing right behind her. It would have been so easy to reach out, slide his hand around that ponytail, and pull the band from her hair. It was mussed up already. He wanted to muss it up some more.

  ‘Sorry I wigged out. I don’t enjoy doing that sort of thing.’ She dipped the roller into the paint tray and resumed her task.

  ‘You think I do?’

  ‘No. I mean going all “scary helpless chick”. I’m not normally the kind to freak out over stuff.’

  ‘Yeah, well, that was a surprise.’

  She looked at him over one shoulder. He was about two feet away, hands stuffed into his pockets. ‘If I surprised you, I guess I’m not so dull after all.’

  ‘No, you’re quite colourful.’ Lesley may have been forty-something but Dominic thought she looked sixteen in her paint-stained overalls. There were confetti-like speckles of faintly green paint in her ponytail; a fine, misty spatter coated the lenses of her glasses. He shook his head and grabbed a strap of denim, turning her around. ‘How can you see anything?’ he chuckled.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He reached up, gently pulling the glasses from her face. He held them in front of her eyes.

  She squinted. ‘Huh. Funny what you get used to.’

  There was a damp cloth hanging from the ladder to her left. Dominic grabbed it and carefully wiped the paint haze from the lenses. Curious, he held the glasses to his eyes and made a face as everything bent and distorted. ‘Whoa, you can’t see shit, can you?’

  ‘Sure I can. The colour is a dead giveaway.’ She smiled, her eyes crinkling.

  He laughed, holding out her glasses. There was a spray of teeny-tiny polka dots, like freckles, across the tip of her nose and cheek. He meant to wipe the speckles away with his thumb, but an impulse, a whim void of thought took over. Instead, he lifted her chin and kissed her. It lasted three seconds, long enough for her to inhale with surprise, long enough for reason to poke his brain. He drew away and took a step back, just in case she threw a punch.

  Wide-eyed, Lesley blinked a few times, her jaw jutting forward.

  ‘Now, let’s not do anything that’ll require stitches.’ Dominic said, instinctively raising an arm for protection.

  When she lunged, the shield of his forearm was no match for her
onslaught. Fierce, paint-sticky hands gripped his neck, her fingers at the base of his skull. She jerked him down and kissed him with an intensity that drove him back against the ladder. The lowest rung gouged into the back of his ankle. He smacked his head on the edge of the utility arm where paint lay in a plastic tray. The ladder scooted back a few inches, bunching up the drop cloth beneath it when her breastbone slammed into his chest.

  Dominic planted his hands on Lesley’s hips. Her kiss was clumsy, uncomfortable, rushed, and…absolutely wonderful. He shifted so he was no longer sandwiched between her body and the ladder. The movement sent it skipping to the left. Momentum carried them in the same direction, their combined weight more than the wobbling ladder could tolerate. His elbow scuffed against the ladder and an abyss opened behind his shoulder. They fell backwards into the empty space. The tray of paint went one way, a thin, graceful arc of green-tinged white fell to the covered floor with a soft splash, while he and Lesley went the other. She landed on top of him, heavily.

  Lesley had a brief flash of memory. When she was five, she’d tripped over a mound of manure and fallen against the electrified fence that was meant to keep the cows from straying off her uncle’s farm. The jolt had left her drained. Electrocution was supposed to burn out every synapse, nerve ending and autonomic pathway in the human body. Dominic’s kiss had done that, yet she was anything but a strangely numb mass of flesh and bone. A single word filtered through her paint-spattered, grubby pores. It permeated every corpuscle in her blood stream, energising her: More.

  Slightly out of breath, Dominic rolled off the sloppy, paint-splattered drop cloth onto the new flooring, taking her along, tucking her beneath his body. She made small noises against his mouth and it thrilled him. He lifted his head, his hands on either side of her face, and looked at her in amazement.

  For a few seconds, his eyes skipped over her features. She had a shiny, wet smear of fresh paint across one flushed cheek. Her ponytail had come undone even more, strawberry blonde spilled out beneath her head. At the right corner of her mouth was a miniscule fleck of chocolate from the thin mint cookies she’d eaten earlier. She was a complete mess, a kindergarten finger-painting activity gone awry, and he had never wanted a woman more. He dove back under the startling wave, licking that chocolate mintiness from her, flicking his tongue into the little cleft where her top lip joined the bottom.