A Basic Renovation

by Sandra Antonelli

  Music, the psychedelic strains of Iron Butterfly, blasted out from the open windows and screen door. ‘Hello!’ he called out.

  No one answered

  He rapped his foot against the metal-framed door and called out again, ‘Hello!’

  Still no one answered.

  Mildly irritated, he shouted, ‘Hey! We’re here with the Bush Hog!’ He put down three cans of paint and pulled an envelope, the one Daphne had thrust at him before he left the store, from his pocket. ‘Hello! I’ve got your driver’s license! You left it at the store!’ He waited for another fifteen seconds, and peeked inside the house.

  There was a large, blue plastic box full of cordless power tools on the seat of a folding lawn chair. Kneepads, a couple of Stanley FatMax ergonomic hammers, a crowbar and a pair of pliers hung off the armrests. A portable stereo sat atop a large tool chest that rested against a ladder with several orange power cords slung over the rungs. With the carpet relocated to a pile in the middle of the driveway, the cement floors had been exposed and music resonated in the empty shell.

  ‘Screw this,’ he muttered. He shoved the envelope back in his pocket, hoisted the paint cans, and left the front door, walking around to the tall wooden gate at the side of the house. In order to pull up the latch, he set down the paint again and poked his fingers into a small gap. Lifting all six cans by the skinny wire handles, he used his butt to push against the gate. He left it wide for Kyle to get the Bush Hog through, and followed the cement path to the backyard, lugging the paint.

  After wrapping a towel around her wet hair, Lesley put on her glasses and looked down at her bare breasts. ‘In-a-gadda-da-vida, honey…’ she sang along with the CD spinning on the player out in the living room.

  Her grandfather’s cantankerousness aside, it was true that with age came wisdom, and she was so much wiser in her forties than she had been in her twenties. Lesley felt stronger, healthier, more confident and better looking. Life now wasn’t about trying to look younger, as her mother thought she was trying to do; it was about staying strong and maintaining the health and mind she had.

  Admittedly, she could have done without a few things. Cellulite was just cruel and unfair, considering she wasn’t fat – yet. Eventually, middle-aged spread would hit and add more of a curve to the little tummy she already had. She was vain enough to think about trying Botox or collagen injections to counteract the deepening grooves between her eyebrows. It was a bit of a shock when she found peach fuzz on her big toes. She didn’t realise toe fur was part of nature’s path to maturity, but she could deal with it. However, the real stunner came in a completely unexpected form. A few months ago, seemingly overnight, a number of dark hairs sprouted around her nipples.

  Fortunately, as long as she kept on top of grooming, a pair of tweezers took care of everything.

  She plucked out two offending sprouts and hung up her bath towel to dry. After setting out a few things in the bathroom, she tidied the raggedy edges of her fingernails, massaging moisturiser around the nail beds, adding a protective layer of clear nail polish. She’d thought the backyard would ruin the modest length of her nails, but ripping out the downstairs carpeting with Toby yesterday had taken care of that. She’d managed to tear and chip every fingernail except a thumb.

  She thought her stubby fingernails would look silly painted with colour, but her toenails wouldn’t. She dug a bottle of nail colour out of her polka-dotted toiletry bag. The polish was supposed to be diamond hard and chip-proof. She wondered how long it would last on her toes.

  Shaking the bottle, she left the master bathroom and moved into the bedroom, where the roll-away bed Toby lent her was made up with sheets and piled with clothes. The exposed cement floor was cool against the soles of her feet. Unfortunately, since she’d neglected to replace her broom, grit dusted the surface. Powdery grime stuck to her clean feet. She slipped on a pair of purple flip flops and flap-flapped out to the breezy, empty living room, singing along to Iron Butterfly’s seventeen-minute masterpiece.

  The wire handles dug into the pads of his fingers. Dominic ignored the discomfort and rounded the corner of the house where he came to a complete stop.

  There, rising through the high grass and weeds, were tiny mountains that led to an underground kingdom of moles. There were so many holes it amazed him that the house hadn’t been swallowed up by one.

  Eager to be rid of the tins gouging into his flesh, he looked for a shaded spot and found an area beneath the eaves of the roofline, just up against the huge rear windows of the house. He set down the paint and noticed a small, football-shaped hive of bees hanging overhead. He was mindful of their position when he lined up the cans. As he stood, flexing his fingers, rubbing at the marks left behind by the handles, he saw a paper wasp nest tucked along the window frames. Fascinated by its simple construction, he moved to have a closer look. The small, compartmented shell sprouted from the woodwork and glass panes. He studied it, engrossed by the angles and texture until movement inside the house caught his eye.

  Long strips of reflective amber window tint had been peeled from the inside glass, the drapes pulled back wide, and Lesley Samuels walked across the dark tiles. Turban-style, she wore a towel on her head, a stylish pair of plum glasses, bright purple rubber flip-flops, and nothing else.

  Dominic felt his tongue move inside his mouth.

  Psychedelic organ music blasted out of the boom box and a gloriously naked Lesley stopped beside a large blue cooler. She kicked off the flip-flops, propped her left foot on the chest, and began painting her toenails.

  Strangely mesmerized, unable to move as he stood in the shade, a streak of heat started at the back of his neck and corkscrewed through the middle of his chest, twisting lower and lower. He had a clear view of her nude form as she painted her toes and she was nothing at all like he remembered, nothing at all like the sister-in-law his mother had carefully cut out of old family photos. That Lesley had been nondescript, as grey and characterless as Western Ohio in winter; bland, flat, featureless, boring, but this Lesley, this Lesley was…was…was changing her position, raising her arms overhead, arching her back to stretch, showing every fascinating hill and dale of her womanly, curvaceous body.

  ‘In-a-gadda-da-vida,’ he mumbled.

  A second later, she changed position again, turning directly towards the window. He flattened his back against the house, his peeping-Tom heart pounding so hard in his chest it made his teeth rattle.

  The second after that, he was stung by a bee.

  And then another.

  And another.

  The pounding on the aluminium screen door startled her so much the bottle of nail polish slipped from her hand. It hit the cement slab floor, bouncing once before splitting open in a gluggy shower of Revlon Velvet Rose.

  ‘Excuse me!’ someone shouted.

  Lesley took a step towards the spilled nail polish, hesitated, and turned to the front door before she remembered she was naked. She jerked the towel from her head and held it in front of her, trying to stretch a terry cloth hand towel into a bath sheet. She looked up at the door to see a tall boy.

  ‘S-s-sorry! We have a situation here!’ the teenager yelled over the start of a new song.

  Lesley shuffled over to the stereo and stopped the playback of 1968’s Solid Gold. She’d forgotten all about the kid dropping by with the Bush Hog. Her lower half hidden by a tool box and a few orange power cords, she leaned around the ladder, using it for more cover. ‘The back,’ her voice screeched with embarrassment, ‘Go around to the back yard!’ She glared as best she could. Since she was naked she’d sort of lost the authority to pull off virtuous anger.

  The kid from Trujillo’s, the one who had called Dominic boss yesterday, did his best to avert his eyes. ‘S-s-sorry. I-I didn’t m-mean to,’ he stammered, ‘to uh, bother you…its just…um…W-we came here with your delivery, but we had a little problem and m—’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ Big hands shoved the kid aside and jerked open the
screen door, breaking the flimsy lock. ‘Lesley, have you got any ice and pair of tweezers?’

  ‘Dominic?’ She hunched over, hugging the tool box. ‘What do you want?’

  He enunciated each word, ‘A. Pair. Of. Tweezers. Have you got any?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Get them.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘No? What do you mean, no?’

  ‘It’s the opposite of yes, it’s used to deny, refuse or disagree. English lesson’s over, Dr. Brennan. Now get out.’

  ‘Kee-rist, Lesley, this is no time to be vindictive. I’ve been stung by a couple of bees. The kid’s fingers are too big to take out the stingers. I need frickin’ tweezers. Go get them. Now!’

  Naked or not, indignation rose up and she leaned around the toolbox and power cords. ‘Hey, jock-itch, you don’t rip my door open and tell me what to do!’

  For a moment, Dominic forgot about the throbbing pain in his shoulder. Even though less than three minutes ago he’d seen exactly what she was trying to hide beneath that little scrap of towel, his imagination took off. The corners of his mouth twitched before he turned around, offering his bare back. Then the stinging returned with a vengeance. ‘Get your tweezers, puh-leeze!’ he bellowed.

  Lesley squinted. ‘Fine,’ she said, teeth clenched. She eyed the young man standing beside the broken storm door. ‘Both of you. Turn around.’ Once they complied she bolted to the master bedroom and snatched the tweezers out of the polka-dot toiletry bag.

  ‘All right, Lesley, hurry it up a little!’ Dominic shouted from the front of the house.

  Lesley had been hurrying. She’d yanked on a short, pale green, waffle-weave bathrobe and started to rush back, but with that remark, she took her time, stepping into a pair of pink cotton bikini panties, running a comb through her damp hair. She shoved the tweezers into a pocket and padded out to the living room, tightening the sash of the robe.

  ‘No need to haul ass, Lesley, I’m only dying here,’ Dominic snapped, his eyes wandering over her like a pair of greedy hands.

  She gazed heavenward. Be it a splinter, stubbed toe, hangnail, or bee sting, men experiencing discomfort were always dying. The towel she’d used to hide her nudity was slung around her neck. She used it to wipe grit from her feet, slipped on her discarded flip-flops and draped the cloth over one shoulder. ‘Hey kid,’ she called out, ‘go in the kitchen and see if there’s any ice in the freezer.’ She smiled at Dominic tartly, ‘You, get in here and sit on that.’ She pointed to the blue cooler.

  Stiffly, but quite quickly, Dominic moved to take a seat.

  ‘You’ve sure got a lot of power tools,’ the boy said, sauntering into to the kitchen. ‘Whoa! Nice wallpaper! Did you see the wallpaper in here?’

  Dominic sucked in air through his teeth, ‘Jay-zus Kee-rist! Would one of you hurry up?’

  Lesley adjusted her glasses and drew the tweezers from her pocket. Terry had had a lean, runner’s physique, her last boyfriend was a doughy teddy bear, but Dominic had a marble-hard body that cried out touch me. The little thrill rocketing up her spine reminded her she was about to. She peered down at the crimson patch spread across his bare back and counted thirteen lurid welts running from the top edge of his left scapula to the middle of his back. The worst had a purple tinge. She leaned forward, settling her cool fingers against Dominic’s burning skin, and lifted out a tiny, dark stinger and venom sac.

  He flinched.

  ‘Hold still.’

  ‘I’m holding still. Just get it out, will you?’

  ‘You got quite a few stings all over your back.’

  ‘The little bastards went right through my shirt.’

  ‘I’m sure they were attracted to your endearing personality.’ Lesley’s tone was derisive, but her touch with the tweezers was light. She got two stingers in one yank. The next tiny poisoned barb she went after was trickier. She had to change her angle, her fingers gently pressing into his flesh, damp strands of her hair slipping over his neck.

  Dominic winced again, but not exactly in pain. She smelled wonderful, extraordinarily fresh, wholly and completely female…and he swallowed. ‘They’re bees. It’s what they do.’

  ‘I knew the kid was supposed to come at seven-thirty, but what are you doing here?’

  ‘Helping him with deliveries. I already put the paint in your backyard. By the way, you might want to rethink what you wear when you paint your toenails.’

  His voice had a condescending, leering quality. Lesley felt her face get hot and she curbed the desire to deliver a slap to his perverted, raw back. ‘I think I need to thank those smart little bees for your comeuppance.’

  ‘Comeupp—’

  ‘Dad, there’s not really any ice,’ Kyle said, staring at the two ancient metal trays in his hands, ‘just some icy water.’

  Dad? Did the boy just call him Dad? Lesley snapped upright to stare at the blond teenager, her mouth opening, tweezers slipping.

  ‘Ouch!’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Oh, I just bet you are.’

  ‘Is he your son?’ she asked, leaning around the edge of his shoulder, her face cocked sideways. ‘Is that Kyle?’

  Dominic’s eyes were par with her breasts, the soft curves partially displayed by the way the neck of her robe gaped open. He jerked his gaze to hers. ‘I thought you weren’t interested in my family,’ he said with more than a touch of malevolence.

  Lesley set her jaw. She straightened and looked at Kyle. He smiled at her, beguilingly so, and she wondered why she hadn’t noticed his sculpted jaw bore a resemblance to the nasty piece of work that sat on her cooler. ‘All right, junior, don’t stand there observing like a med student. Bring the trays. We can still use them.’

  Kyle crossed the space, stepping over a sledgehammer lying on the floor, ducking around the ladder. He held out the ice trays, perplexed by the mechanics of how to proceed with the first aid, but very curious to uncover the root of his father’s animosity. ‘You want me to hold the metal against your back, Dad?’

  Dominic grunted. ‘Go out to the truck and get the cherry limeade I got with breakfast. We can roll the cup over the stings.’

  Not wanting to miss a thing, Kyle bolted for the truck. This was way better than The Flash comic rolled up in his back pocket. The whole saving-the-world-from-an-asteroid-crashing-into-the-earth thing was a rip off – Bruce Willis did that already in Armageddon – watching his dad exchange blows with a female adversary was engrossing and more colourful than any comic book he’d ever read. By the time he’d returned, the woman had pulled out two more stingers from his father’s back.

  Trying to hide his grin, Kyle held out the Styrofoam cup to her. ‘Should I hold this against his back, or do you want to?’

  Lesley whipped the damp towel from her shoulder. It was smudged with the dirty imprints of her toes. She grabbed the cup from Kyle, dumped the semi-frozen, electric pink cherry-limeade contents into the cloth and, smiling, slopped it over Dominic’s swollen, vermillion skin.

  A frigid slurry of fluorescent slush ran down his chest, soaking the waist of his sandy pants, staining them in an instant. He bellowed in surprise, springing to his feet, spinning to face her, ‘What the hell?’

  ‘Sit down, Dominic,’ she said, biting her top lip to keep from laughing. ‘You’ve still got a few more to go.’

  ‘You little bi—’

  ‘I thought you preferred the word that started with c?’

  ‘You have no idea what I prefer.’

  She pulled the neckline of her robe together then held up her hands. ‘You’re free to go, buzz-boy. No one’s forcing you to stay.’

  ‘Oh, no. You’re not backing out of this, Lesley. This time, you’re going to see something through to the end.’

  ‘Even if it kills you, huh?’

  ‘Why does it stink in here? What the hell is that smell?’

  ‘Testosterone. Gamey, isn’t it?’

  Kyle had been pretending to check out an expensive, keyless chuck
Bosch hammer drill. He tried to stifle his snicker of amusement and hoisted himself onto an orange countertop dividing the kitchen and dining room. His long legs dangling over the edge, he pushed aside a pricey electric circular saw and watched the exchange. It surprised him how adult hostility was so amazingly juvenile.

  Eyes narrowed, Dominic’s top lip curled into a perfect Elvis sneer. He sank onto the cooler, his glare toxic. ‘Get on with it, you demented Florence Nightingale.’ He squared his back, waiting for Lesley to jab the tweezers and dig into his flesh, but her touch remained gentle. He looked around the dingy shell of the house. Even more awful than the outside, the inside of the place also reeked. ‘You didn’t actually buy this litter-box did you?’

  ‘Yes, and you’re going to clean up the nail polish you made me spill all over my pretty floor.’

  ‘You call that floor pretty?’

  ‘It will be once you’re finished with it.’

  Her hair tickled over Dominic’s neck again. He smelled of sickly-sweet cherry-lime, but her more subtle, clean scent of soap and citrus-mint shampoo set off a hum in his brain. Lesley’s deft, soft fingers did a slow ballet over his back, her breath, warm and silky, brushed over his skin. Incongruously, stinging pain combined with a bizarre jolt of simmering desire. He wanted to reach back and slide his fingers into her hair. He wanted to run his nose up along the curve of her neck. He wanted to dart his tongue into her ear. He wanted to suck her bottom lip into his mouth. He wanted to press himself against the smooth, naked back he’d seen just a few minutes ago. He wanted…he wanted…

  Dominic inhaled slowly. He relaxed his muscles, readjusted the sloppy, cold towel and his mindset as well, focusing on a fact he sort of overlooked a moment ago. ‘Oh, great glory days, you’ve moved back to town!’

  ‘You make it sound like something out of a Western.’

  ‘Not a Western, Lesley, a Cinemax skin flick.’

  ‘Watch a lot of those, do you?’