a tray, and an assortment of brushes—and mounted the steps. At the front door, Lila fumbled with her keys.
“Now, this always sticks a little.”
She shouldered the door open to a wash of stale air. Grey followed her into the foyer. He had expected the interior of the house to be like something in a castle, all heavy drapes and overstuffed furniture and dripping chandeliers, but it was the opposite, more like some kind of office than a place people actually lived. To his left, a wide arch led to the dining room, which was occupied by a long glass table and some uncomfortable-looking chairs; to the right was the living room, a barren expanse interrupted only by a low-slung couch and a large black piano. For a moment Grey just stood there, dumbly holding the cans of paint, trying to put his thoughts together. He smelled something, too—a pungent whiff of old garbage coming from deep within the house.
As the silence deepened, Grey scrambled for something to say. “Do you play?” he asked.
Lila was depositing her purse and keys on the little table by the door. “Play what?”
Grey gestured at the piano. She swiveled her head to look at the instrument, seeming vaguely startled.
“No,” she answered with a frown. “That was David’s idea. A little pretentious, if you ask me.”
She led him up the stairs, the air thickening as they made their ascent. Grey followed her to the end of the carpeted hall.
“Here we are,” she announced.
The room felt disproportionately snug, considering the dimensions of the house. A ladder stood in one corner, and the floor was covered by a plastic drop cloth taped to the baseboards; a roller sat in a tray of paint, hardening in the heat. Grey moved farther in. The room’s original tone had been a neutral cream, but someone—Lila, he guessed—had rolled broad, haphazard stripes of yellow up and down the walls, following no organized pattern. It would take him three coats just to cover it.
Lila was standing in the doorway with her hands on her hips. “It’s probably pretty obvious,” she said with a wince, “I’m not much of a painter. Certainly not a professional such as yourself.”
This again, Grey thought. But as long as he’d decided to play along, he saw no reason to disabuse her of the notion that he knew what he was doing.
“Do you need anything else before you get started?”
“I guess not,” Grey managed.
She yawned into her hand. A sudden weariness seemed to have overcome her, as if she were a slowly deflating balloon. “Then I suppose I’ll leave you to it. I’m going to get off my feet for a bit.”
With these words, she left him alone. Grey heard the snap of a door closing down the hall. Well, wasn’t this the damnedest thing, he thought. Painting a baby’s room in some rich lady’s house certainly wasn’t anything he’d imagined himself doing when he’d woken up at the Red Roof. He listened for more sounds from her but heard nothing. Maybe the funniest thing of all was that Grey didn’t mind, not really. The woman was as nutty as they came, and not a little bossy. But it wasn’t as if he’d deceived her about who he was, since she’d never even asked. It felt good to be trusted by someone, even if he didn’t deserve it.
He retrieved his supplies from the foyer and got to work. Painting wasn’t anything he’d ever done much of, but it was hardly rocket science, and he quickly settled into its rhythms, his mind a pleasant blank. He could almost forget about waking up at the Red Roof, and Zero and Richards and the Chalet and all the rest. An hour passed, and then another; he was cutting in the edges along the ceiling when Lila appeared in the doorway, bearing a tray with a sandwich and a glass of water. She had changed into a high-waisted denim maternity dress that, despite its roominess, made her appear even more pregnant.
“I hope you like tuna.”
He climbed off the ladder to receive the tray. The bread was covered with furry green mold; there was a smell of rancid mayonnaise. Grey’s stomach flipped.
“Maybe later,” he stammered. “I want to do a second coat first.”
Lila said nothing more about this, instead stepping back to look around the room. “I have to say, this really looks better. So much better. I don’t know why I didn’t think of white before.” She pointed her eyes at Grey again.