by J. G Hayes
“A problem my father can’t relate to,” Billy called from behind the counter.
“Hey, Wise Guy, I’m the comedian today, remember?” Mr. McGillicuddy laughed. He turned back to Danny. “They say they turned the whole goddamn place into a single family,” he murmured. “Spent as much as they paid for the place redoing the whole friggin’ thing.” He paused and shook his head. “All that space for two people—can you imagine? And there were twenty-five in there years ago, and nobody never complained.”
“Ahh … yeah,” Danny answered. A shiver went down his spine and settled in his testicles. He grew bold. “Do you ahh … know them at all?”
“What them?” Mr. McGillicuddy asked, tossing his head toward the ocean. He laughed. “She came in here once looking for lah-tay, if you don’t mind. Seemed offended that we didn’t have it. I told her ‘Dear, I’ll give you ten bucks if you can find lah-tay between here and the Broadway Bridge.’ She seemed a little uppity, like the rest of ’em. She bought The New York Times on her way out. I said, ‘All set for scratch tickets today, dear?”’ Mr. McGillicuddy chuckled, his belly shaking beneath his white apron.
“Dad has a flair for chasing new customers away,” Billy said dryly.
“And this one got on the phone and ordered a latte machine that afternoon!” Mr. McGillicuddy cried, pointing a plump outraged finger at his son.
“Wait’ll I’m running this place, Dad,” Billy went on. “Gonna be Yuppie Heaven.”
“Jesus wept, don’t tell me that!” Mr. McGillicuddy roared. “I’ll never retire!” He turned back to Danny but his eyes were laughing.
“He seems like a nice enough guy. An architect, somebody said. Young guy. Comes in for the paper once in a while. Friendly. But still curious when he’s in here, like he’s visiting the zoo. I think he travels a lot for work.” Mr. McGillicuddy paused. “Must be made o’ money.”
“Like you’ll be, Dad, if you sell the house,” Billy joked as he put the finishing touches on Danny’s sandwich.
“And I will, too!” Mr. McGillicuddy roared. “Gonna sell it and spend it all so the seven of yous won’t be fighting over it at my wake!”
“She’s gone to Nantucket for the summer,” Billy said, handing Danny his waxed paper-wrapped sandwich. “Right?”
“Ahh … I don’t know. I saw her this morning,” Danny said.
“Maybe just back for the day. Hi-o Higgins did some of the contractin’ inside a few months ago, and he told me she ‘summers’ in Nantucket. That’s what she told him.” Billy chuckled.
“Well, la-dee-da for her,” Mr. McGillicuddy boomed. “If someone told all them phonies that Revere Beach was the new place to go, they’d swarm up there and settle right in with the guineas. Don’t tell me they wouldn’t!”
Billy rolled his eyes. “Daaad,” he moaned, half-laughing.
“What, what?” he said, giving Danny his change for a five, “I only speak the truth! Everyone else thinks this stuff, but I have the balls to say it!” He turned and winked at Danny. “Hey, what’d you think o’ that trade?”
“Uh … trade?”
“The big Sox trade! You didn’t hear?” Mr. McGillicuddy’s bushy eyebrows lowered and he leaned into Danny, scrutinizing. It was obvious that Danny hadn’t heard, or hadn’t cared if he had.
“Dan-ny! Dan-ny! Dan-ny!” played in his head as he hurried out the door.
“See ya later, Danny Boy,” he heard Billy call, as the door tinkled shut behind him.
THF WOMAN RETURNED to the house around 3:30. Danny turned as if on cue and saw the Range Rover slide up to the curb. She said nothing as she passed into the house, a matte-gray department store shopping bag swinging from each hand. Ten minutes later Danny heard urgent footsteps and noise from down on the second floor as he scraped a third-floor window. He tried not to notice a few minutes later when the woman suddenly appeared in the room before him, but their eyes met again. They both looked away instantly. The woman, now in white khaki shorts and a yellow blouse, began closing and locking windows. Danny kept his eye on the casement frame in front of him as she closed the window he was working on. Then she left the room.
Fifteen minutes later she returned to her car and began heaving things into its gaping back. She started up the engine and pulled out into the street. Danny heard the car pause but didn’t turn. Then she beeped; Danny knew she was trying to get his attention but still he didn’t turn.
“Excuse me,” she called, her voice dipped in annoyance.
Danny turned. The woman was leaning way over in her seat, the front passenger window halfway down to keep in the frosty air-conditioning.
“Where’s your boss?”
“He’s getting supplies,” Danny called down. This was the response Mr. Palmer told him to give should a client ever ask for his whereabouts.
“Well, tell him he needs to call me,” the woman said behind her sunglasses. Her voice was nasally and tight. “On my cell phone. I won’t be back for a month or two.” She paused and tilted her head, the points of her hair swinging down like scythes. “Can you do that?”
“Yes,” Danny said.
The woman stared at Danny for a moment longer, then she disappeared as the reflective window eased up with an almost apologetic quietness. As the woman drove off Danny wondered what would make her happy, if all of this didn’t. It didn’t equate; his mind wouldn’t accept it. She must be happy. She’s just having a bad day; maybe she’s missing her husband. You’re always happy when you’ve made it. when you’re rich—
MR. PALMER CAME BY at a quarter to five, his usual time. His face-twitching doubled when Danny told him “the lady here wants you to call her.” His mouth had been open to speak when Danny turned to see him, but his words were forgotten as he rushed back to his truck to make the call. Ten minutes later he reappeared, seemingly relieved.
“How many you do today?” he asked, rubbing his hands together. Danny was just coming down the ladder.
“One,” Danny said. Mr. Palmer said nothing. Danny reached for the ladder.
“Leave it up,” he said. “I’ll check it out. Foot me now, will ya?”
Danny pressed his feet against the bottom of the ladder as Mr. Palmer ascended carefully. The ladder jiggled under his weight. Danny lifted his head and watched his progress. All he could see was Mr. Palmer’s legs and buttocks, as if Mr. Palmer were just an ass, carried about on a pair of legs. Danny smiled and reminded himself to tell George about this when he got home. But by then George would be out, and it wouldn’t seem funny later.
“It looks good, real good,” Mr. Palmer said when he came down. “It’s taking a long time though, huh?”
“It is,” Danny said, washing his hands at the house’s ancient outdoor spigot.
“Well …” Mr. Palmer said. He scratched his head. “Just do the best you can. Maybe it’ll go a little faster once you get the hang of it.”
“Maybe,” Danny said.
“Fuck it. She’s gone for the rest of the summer anyway, and I think whenever he comes home from traveling he’ll go right down there too. So as long as we have most of the job done by then …” His voice trailed off as he walked back to his truck.
DANNY SETTLED INTO a bit of a routine, as he did with every job. He brought his lunch every day to avoid further embarrassing conversations at McGillicuddy’s, though once or twice Billy McGillicuddy drove by honking and waving. Danny started at 8:00 now, took his lunch from 11:30 to 12:30, then packed up at 3:45. George would be napping by the time he got home. Danny would shower, nap, get up around 8:00, eat the dinner his mother had saved for him, then wander down to the beach or just do design work until about midnight. He wasn’t sleeping well. Lying in bed at night, he felt utterly alone and hopeless.
He finished the six windows on the west side of the third floor at the end of his first week. The following Monday he started the front side of the third floor. He slept especially poorly Sunday night, thinking about how the design room, as he called it, would look from thi
s new angle. After lunch on Wednesday afternoon, he moved his ladder over to the third front-facing window. He had finished cleaning the casement with the wire brush when he noticed the window. The blind was drawn but the window was open about an inch. He leaned his head in and sniffed. A chilly smell of newness wafted out to him, a new-house aroma of freshly installed floors and rugs, new furniture— it was the smell of Possibilities. Danny pressed his nose against the screen as he inhaled deeply. To his shock, the screen nudged forward and slipped from its track. He set it to rights again, but couldn’t get it down all the way; he was on the wrong side of the window.
Then he froze.
He turned around slowly, looking. The maple behind him—there were plenty of street trees on the East Side—screened him from every direction except for one house across the street at an angle, McGillicuddy’s Spa at the other angle, and the sidewalk directly below him. Don’t do it! a voice inside him shrieked, but something stronger made Danny lift up the screen halfway, then reach in and slide up the window. Before he knew fully what he was doing he was inside the third floor, as shocked and breathless as if he had passed through a mirror. For a minute, two minutes, he could only stand motionless as he waited for his heart to stop thudding in his ears. His nipples rose up under his cotton shirt at the air-conditioned chill. He looked around. He was one foot from where he’d been all morning, but he thought he might as well be on a different planet.
The room seemed even bigger inside, maybe sixty-by-forty feet. The hardwood floor shone as if from within. The ceiling, molding, and window trim gleamed a snowy white. Seven aluminum beams ran from front to back just below the ceiling. The four walls were a deep marine blue and without adornment. An especially fat shaft of sunlight, particles swimming in it, fell upon the vast drafting table in the middle of the room. Danny approached it, then stopped. He looked right, then left, seeing who might be able to spy him from outside. The windows to the right, the ones facing the ocean, were unobstructed in that direction, the next house being set back quite a distance from the street. The windows to the left showed perhaps ten feet of space between this house and the neighboring one. But the women had pulled down the white blinds on these six windows. He turned around. The street tree just outside shielded his view from two windows, but the windows at each end of the front side were open to the street and the houses across the street, and the blinds were halfway up. He slipped to the ground. He crawled over to one window, then the other, slowly lowering the blinds while his body remained hidden beneath the windows, as if the Holy Ghost were doing this.
He stood up and breathed deeply, trying to smooth his jagged pulse. The room reeked of the odorless aroma of newness. Danny decided this was his favorite smell. He let the utter silence of the house fall upon him, just to be sure. Then, his feet barely grazing the floor, he walked over to the drafting table.
He looked at the computer first. The monitor was flat and larger than the television in Danny’s living room at home. It was black, as were the curved keyboard, the huge printer/copying machine, and the two computer towers. A multicolored bouncing ball zipped noiselessly across the monitor’s screen. There was a silver writing instrument on some papers beside the keyboard. Danny picked it up and its heaviness shocked his sweaty fingers. It was a metal drafting pencil. Danny slipped it into the pocket of his painter’s pants without thinking. A truck went by outside and banged loudly as it boomed over a pothole. Danny jumped wildly. His vision narrowed and he turned his head, almost twisting his neck, to the door at the far end of the room. When he stopped trembling he sped back to the window. He let himself out, then yanked down the window, then the screen. He didn’t think there was a way to pull the screen all the way down, but he wasn’t sure if he would have done this even if he could have. He wanted to think that he would have.
Mr. Palmer seemed in a good mood when he stopped by close to 4:00 that afternoon.
“Oh … is it time?” Danny asked, looking down when Mr. Palmer called, “Hot one today,” up to him.
“Just about quitting time,” Mr. Palmer said. He smiled. “You’re making good progress.”
“Getting there,” Danny said, sticking his wire brush, scraper, and sandpaper into his pockets. He felt the rigid stiffness of the drafting pencil as he did.
“You oughta be done with the third floor by the middle of next week, huh?
“Ahh … yeah. Ahh, I’m sorry; what did you say?”
“I said you oughta be done by the middle of next week. With the third floor.”
“Ahh … yeah.”
Danny told himself that night, and the next morning, that he wouldn’t do it again.
He realized by lunchtime that he had to.
He wolfed his sandwich on the ladder and hurried through his scraping so he’d have more time. He slipped into the design room right after 1:00, when it became unbearable to not be in there. Again he lost his breath when he went in. He closed his eyes and stood motionless, listening to the quiet, breathing in the smell until his breath slowed. The blinds were still drawn, so he felt he could walk around with slightly less apprehension. Thinking more clearly today, he took off his boots and sweaty white socks and left them on the floor at the bottom of the window. The hardwood floor was cool and smooth against his damp, bare feet. He walked to the drafting table and leaned over to study the plans lying there. His blistered red fingers caressed the soft grayish-white paper, almost touched the indigo lines and circles and slashes denoting rooms and ceilings and fire walls and stairwells. Some kind of industrial building. Danny looked at the bottom of the large sheet of paper and saw BRENNAN PLACE written by hand in fat, blocky letters. The smell of the paper, its crispness, filled him with desire. He wasn’t sure if life was encouraging him, showing him what he could have, or mocking him, shoving his face into what would never be his. Dan-ny! Dan-ny!
The smell of the black leather chair in the sun wafted up to him. He noticed a red tie covered with swirls of powder-blue paisleys slung over it—had that been there yesterday? He hadn’t noticed it. Mr. Palmer said The Architect traveled a lot, and when he came home from traveling he’d most likely join his wife on Nantucket. But that was surmise on Mr. Palmer’s part—in which case The Architect could come home at any second. There were always the urgent plans left at home, the early workday, the afternoon meeting that was canceled, the unendurable headache. A tingle of something swept through Danny. He couldn’t be sure if it was excitement or fear. He wanted it to be fear.
He fingered the tie, running its rich, pillowy silkiness between his thumb and forefinger. Gooseflesh ran up his hand to his forearm. Yes, this was just the type of tie he would someday put on in his dressing area—quietly luxurious, understated but bold. A red light against the stainless white field of his starched shirt, shining bright as Daniel Sullivan went forth into the world—a man, an architect. A vague scent of cologne drifted up from the tie. It made Danny think of chattering, laughing people on a boat in tropical waters, the air throbbing to the hypnotic thud of consumerism as everyone exchanged business cards.
Without thinking of what he was doing, Danny doffed his baseball cap, then slid off his white long-sleeved jersey and the gray T-shirt beneath. He hadn’t worn a tie since Grandmother Shea’s funeral two and a half years ago, so it took him three tries to get it right. His fingers were trembling as they slung the knot up to his bare neck. The tie dangled just below his waist, its silkiness swishing against his bare chest and the fine golden hairs that ran down his stomach. He became painfully erect inside his tight painter’s pants. He willed himself to ignore this. He felt his cheeks flush up.
A slam of a car door outside flooded him with panic. His heart leaped into overdrive. He found he couldn’t move for a moment. He twisted his head in the direction of the street and felt something like electricity jolt through him when he saw the tracks his sweaty bare feet had trailed across the flawless floor. He grabbed his jersey and dropped to his knees, polishing the floor as he crawled backward to the windo
w. He slid the jersey on, picked up his socks and stuffed them into his pocket, then stepped into his boots. He hit his head on the window as he climbed outside to the ladder. He pulled down the window and screen, then grabbed onto the ladder with wet hands, his heart pounding. He didn’t dare look down yet in case someone was there, looking up. He reached for his scraper too quickly, knocking it off the top ladder rung. He heard it clattering on the cement sidewalk two seconds later.
“What, are you tryin’ to kill me?” he heard. The sound froze him, but there was something about the voice that kept his panic from becoming hysteria.
Holding tightly onto the sides of the ladder, Danny eased his eyes downward. Billy McGillicuddy was standing three floors beneath him, his arms on his narrow hips, squinting up at Danny.
“That musta been a lousy sub I made you; you ain’t been back since and now you’re throwing shit at me!” he called up. He laughed easily.
“Ahh, s-sorry,” Danny said. He realized he was smiling.
Billy bent over to pick up the scraper. Go down! Danny heard inside him. It seemed what came naturally to others—the common rules of friendly interaction—Danny always had to guess at.
His heart was still racing when he jumped off the bottom rung.
Billy was still smiling. He handed Danny the scraper. “Lucky for me it wasn’t a bucket of paint!” He laughed.
“Sorry,” Danny repeated. “No, ahh, the s-sub was good, I just… I been startin’ earlier.” He heard the lameness of this excuse as it came out of his mouth. I felt like an idiot because I didn’t know about the Red Sox trade.
Billy waved him away like anything Danny said was okay. Billy’s light-brown hair was buzzed on the back and sides and longer on top, cut in uneven bangs that fell casually onto his forehead. The sea breeze played with them as Danny watched. Danny thought Billy’s eyes were the color of the sky he’d someday see from his dressing area.