Wind Therapy - A.J. Downey Page 0,20
either side of us, and one straight ahead. He opened the one on the right.
“Spare room,” he said, and I cringed. It was full of a jumble of junk on a canvas drape laid out in the middle of the floor. Bare wires capped with those colorful little plastic caps hung out of the center of the ceiling where a light fixture belonged. There was a paint-spattered aluminum ladder standing up in the middle with a bunch of other random shit like five-gallon buckets, paint cans, toolboxes and other things piled up at its base haphazardly in the room. It was a nightmare disaster zone and I did not like it! What was I supposed to do with that?
“Don’t worry about this room for now,” he said, and I nodded, eyes still wide with my disbelief.
“Bedroom,” he said and popped open the door straight ahead. Hardwood floors, but they weren’t nice. They were scratched, scuffed, and tired—in need of a deep refinish. Again, this room had dirty paint on the walls, cracks, and even some splintered trim along the edges of the room at the floor.
The bed was large, but just a mattress on a frame with some shabby but comfortable looking black bedding. The dressers, unlike the rest of the house’s furniture, were rundown and looked like they’d come from a secondhand store or from a yard sale.
I think there was more laundry stacked on the dresser tops than there was in the drawers, but the room was otherwise somewhat cleaner. It certainly wasn’t as dusty and unused like the living room.
“Take this off,” he ordered and took the weight of my pack from my shoulders. I relinquished it and slid my arms through the straps. He set it on the floor, just inside his bedroom door, leaning it up against the side of the dresser along the wall just inside and to the right, across from the foot of the bed.
I was in a deep dread about what lay behind door number three by now, not knowing what to expect. He turned to the door on the left and I steeled myself, but I apparently didn’t need to. At least not as much as I thought I did, quite the opposite in fact.
The kitchen had been refurbished, but this bathroom had been completely ripped out and redone and was beautiful.
It had that retro vibe, much like the kitchen, but held a modern flair. The tub was a big, beautiful, and deep claw foot. It had a shower curtain that wrapped around on a free-standing rod, but I didn’t see a showerhead. There was, what looked like a square chrome vent set in the ceiling above the tub, but I hadn’t ever seen anything like it before.
The toilet, like the bathtub, was old-fashioned. It had one of those tanks separate from where you sat, high up closer to the ceiling with the old pull chain with a wooden handle to flush.
The sink was one of those beautiful old white porcelain pedestal sinks that perfectly matched the tub and toilet and I loved it. The floor was the old retro white ceramic square tiles with the black diamond tiles set at the corners where they met, but that was the last old thing that was in here.
The walls were painted a deep charcoal gray from about midway up. There was a band of narrow cooler lighter gray glass tile in narrow horizontal strips surrounding the room, and from that sort of chair rail band down to the floor was cool, wide slate colored tile, though I believe it was ceramic and not the actual stone. It was this funky mix of modern and old that didn’t look like it should work, but it totally did.
My first emotion upon seeing it was relief, my second one was abject dread at the potential work involved in keeping it clean… although it didn’t appear that Maverick was having any trouble doing so on his own.
“Panel for the shower is right here,” he said softly, and I turned around. Sure enough, just inside the door to the left as you came in was a touch screen panel. To the right of the door was the set of light switches.
“I don’t understand,” I said, and I didn’t. I looked back at the tub, which had its usual faucet for drawing a bath, but I still didn’t see a shower.
He tapped the button at the bottom of the screen to wake it up and showed me