Peter DeWolf asked if he could visit Naked Girl in a Dress with a short fiction guest piece. I love his writing. How could I say no?
Enjoy!
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She’s never liked this paint colour.
Not when she first saw it on the card.
Not when her husband wanted her to make a decision quickly, so he could go home and watch baseball because the Blue Jays are playing the evil Red Sox and it’s opening day and I need to watch it, babe.
And not when the first brush stroke made contact with the wall. Her wall.
She hates that things like this stay with her.
She hates that they get under her skin.
She runs her hand over the wall, as she tries to decide what colour should replace it.
Darker. Definitely darker.
The bathroom door opens and her husband jumps back when he sees her standing there.
“What were you doing?” she asks.
“Uhm… this is a bathroom…” he replies.
“What were YOU doing?”
“Nothing,” he says, while trying to hide a laptop with a 17 inch screen behind his back.
Without much luck.
“What were you doing?”
“Work…?” he offers.
“What work?”
“Shopping for a present for you.”
“What occasion?”
“Arbor day…”
“What were you doing?” she asks. Again.
“Researching the Large Hadron Collider.”
“Do you think they should modify the two high-luminosity interaction regions?”
“Fine. I was playing Cheeky Bingo.”
“Mmmmmhmmmm.”
He smiles sheepishly.
“We need to paint these walls out here,” she continues.
“Because of what I did… in there?”
“No. Because I hate the colour. Though you could have cracked a window.”
“Sorry.”
“So painting, yes?”
“Sure, love,” he replies.
“When?
“Arbor Day?”