Restless Dreams
Page 18
Dru looks around at the dispirited dump that is Park Avenue and snorts. She calls out to Eve. “Brea wants to paint the place. What color, you think?”
Eve looks up from her magazine. “Purple. Smoky purple.”
“I like it,” Dru says.
“I don’t have a car,” I say, “but I’ll buy the paint.”
Eve waves her hand dismissively. “We’ll all chip in. Let’s surprise Polly and do it tonight.”
“Mirror tiles are cheap,” I say, remembering how Mama put them up for a kitchen backsplash in our double-wide. “We can stick them on our counters.”
AROUND SIX WE start to work, painting the salon’s walls a color called Purple Haze, the trim a pale gray. We cover the floor with marbled gray peel-and-stick floor tiles, an impulse buy after Dru spotted four boxes on the fifty-percent-off table.
We work like women possessed, mostly quiet until Eve starts with the dirty jokes. She’s practicing for open mike at a club called The Joke Joint, and I laugh and gasp until my face hurts though I wonder why, Eve, with your sweet deadpan face and milky skin, are you spewing shocking stories, filthy language? Dru and I agree she’ll be a real hit and we’ll be there to cheer her on.
The ripped sofa will go to the dump, to be replaced by these armless leather chairs Dru had spotted in the Habitat store.
“Brandi won’t have anywhere to lie down,” I say. Polly’s texting daughter had owned the couch yesterday.
“Brandi can take her decorative self to the break room. Anyway, she and Polly won’t be here for a few days. Polly’s going in for another treatment tomorrow.” Dru looks at her watch. “Oops. It’s after midnight. Guess I mean today.”
I have a little surprise for them. On each of our counters I place three tea lights. They flicker against the mirror tiles.
“Ooo, pretty,” Dru says. Under specks of Purple Haze, her face shines with fatigue.
Eve smiles, showing a mouthful of braces, transforming herself from undead into pretty. “We’re glad you’ve joined us, Brea,” she says, and I’m overcome with the oddest sensation. I can’t name it, it’s new and tender. I hold my breath, cherishing the way I feel.
Karen Pullen’s restless dreams were achieved when she escaped the cubicle and took up fiction writing. After earning an MFA from Stonecoast at the University of Southern Maine, she published two traditional mystery novels, Cold Feet and Cold Heart, both with Five Star Cengage, and numerous short stories. Karen serves on the national board of Sisters in Crime, and works as an innkeeper, editor, and teacher of writing. She lives in Pittsboro, North Carolina, and blogs occasionally on her website, karenpullen.com.