Adam Levin - Hot Pink

“Where’s the paste?” said the builder. “I wiped it,” the woman said. The woman’s voice came through the door of the bathroom. The man, for some reason, was embarrassed, and blushed, and the worker muttered something, and the builder chuckled. “What?” the man said. “It really doesn’t translate,” the builder told him. “Try me,” the man said. “He says, ‘The wettest goose squawks loudest in the drought.’” “What’s that supposed to mean?” the man said to the builder. “Exactly,” said the builder. “No,” said the man, “because who’s the wettest goose?” The worker, his eyes bright, smiled at the man. “I enjoy your strong animal,” he said to the man. “My what?” said the man. The worker looked puzzled, or maybe aroused, and reached out his hand. The man thought the worker wanted to shake, but the worker had reached out to let the dog smell him — the dog had snuck into the master bedroom to be among people, to stand near the man. “He’s not supposed to be here,” the woman said to everyone; she’d finished in the bathroom; she stood in the doorway. “Are you,” she said. “No you’re not, are you.” The dog sat back and sniffed at the air. The worker said, “Polyp,” and shook the man’s hand — the man, in his confusion, had proffered his hand. “Polyp?” said the man. “How terribly rude of me,” the builder announced. “I come,” said the builder, “from a not-so-classy background, which isn’t to say my parents weren’t gems who helped put me through business school, just that the sociable graces as the wife says aren’t exactly most foremost in my noodle, and sometimes I forget to do the right thing. This here is Polyp, best crackman around. What do you say, Polyp?” “Please meet you,” said Polyp. “And we you as well,” said the woman to Polyp. “I am,” Polyp said.

Then he tore down the wall and put up a new one. There wasn’t any gel to be found in the wreckage, and Polyp’s sledge was bare of gel, too.

The builder told the man, “The painter’s free to come in first thing in the morning.” “He’s a good man, your painter,” the man told the builder. “Best painter in town — how’s eight o’clock tomorrow?” “Eight o’clock’s perfect.” “Perfect,” said the builder. “I thank you,” Polyp said. “You’re welcome!” the man replied. He shook Polyp’s hand, and the builder’s hand, too.

No sooner had the man closed the front door behind them than he remembered his wife had a doctor’s appointment; he had to drive her in the morning to her twice-monthly checkup with the obstetrician. The thing to do — the thing he’d normally have done — would be to open the door and shout out to the builder before he drove away, but the idea of that — of turning the knob, pulling it toward him, raising his voice, comparing daily schedules till gaps coalesced — struck the man as repellant, and, all at once, he seemed to himself to be a great imposition, not only on the builder but on his wife, the whole world, even his unborn child. A sense of failure, a sense of being useless, a feeling of unmanliness, of inhumanity, even — a sense that he was less a person than an obstacle, demanding from others to be climbed or jumped over, to be worked around — nearly overwhelmed him.

What could he do, though? Paint the wall himself? He moved money for a living, money on screens, tiny black digits in spreadsheet cells, his skills were abstract, his work was figurative, he bought and sold debt, he grew and shrunk numbers. He hadn’t held a roller since the summer preceding his senior year of college, when he worked a few weeks for University Painters, a company from which, he now recalled, he was fired not because he was bad at painting walls so much as because he just wasn’t very fast. According to the beer-drunks and potheads on his crew, he was overly concerned about primer. “You’re a compulsive fucken uptoucher, man,” the boss told him. “The tip of your nose should not be white and the tip of your nose is always white cause you look so closely for dings in the wall you just finished priming, your nose pushes up against the wall and removes a patch of primer so that now you’ve gotta re-prime, and after you re-prime, you do another ding check, and the cycle, it whats? The cycle repeats . And repeats and repeats. My advice for you is you should dial down the tight-ass cause that’s why you’re fired.”

He could paint the wall himself.

He bought tarp and a roller at the hardware outlet. The leftover primer and paint were in the basement where the painter had left them. He primed the wall and painted it, untaped the taped parts. His wife said, “Impressive. Didn’t know you had it in you. My husband, my man.” They embraced beside the wall and ate a late dinner, then the man called the painter.

“Good news,” he told the painter. “You’ve got the morning off. I painted the wall.” “Oh, buddy,” said the painter, “I’d have been happy to do that.” “I’ll gladly tell the builder you showed so he’ll pay you.” “No, no, no — seriously. No need at all. Don’t.” “An honest man!” the man ejaculated. “Yeah, well,” said the painter. “Not to say I ever doubted it!” the man quickly added. “Well, you’ve still got my number, so you call if you need me,” the painter told him. “Will do. Thanks again,” the man said. They hung up.

The man called for the dog and they went for a walk. They walked in the park. In the middle of the park, between a couple of hills, they played some fetch with a fallen branch till he tackled the dog and they rolled in the grass, and the dog barked and growled and licked the man’s face, and the man growled back and spoke all the taglines he was able to remember the pro-wrestling heroes of his youth once growling, and his arms got scratched, and the grass stained his shirt, but the stains and the scratches were worth it.

The new wall cracked. The crack oozed gel. The couple didn’t know who to call. A lawyer? No. The rest of the house did not ooze gel. There were no cracked walls in the rest of the house. They didn’t want to sue and they wouldn’t sue, wouldn’t know what to sue for if they could sue — maybe the crack oozing gel was their own fault somehow — but they knew who they’d sue if they’d wanted to sue, and he was, their builder, a decent man who’d tried his best to do what was right: he had put up the new wall at the first opportunity, not to mention free of charge, and above all he’d done so with total humility, without even hinting that replacing the wall in so timely a fashion was anything more than that which dutiful builders must do for clients whose walls have cracks gels ooze from. Plus the house, on the whole, was a very good house, a strong, handsome house, entirely predictable, completely sound, creakless and dripless, sturdy and sealed, proud in the daylight and safe in the dark.

Things, in short, could be much worse. They had a heart-to-heart over coffee on the patio. They decided he’d keep a close eye on the gel, and, in order to avert any chance of it sliding down into their open, sleeping mouths, the couple pushed their bed against the opposite wall. 2

Every night of the following week, the man sat in a chair in front of the wall in order to witness the crack ooze gel, but every increasingly caffeinated night he fell asleep before the oozing, foiled again, then woke at first light to a gel-covered crack.

Each morning that week, he wiped the gel with a kleenex, threw away the kleenex in the can in the garage, fed the dog and himself, and took the dog for a walk.

On the seventh morning’s walk, his eyes were so tender with sleep-deprivation that even the smallest breeze would sting them, but the dog’s fawn coat appeared especially handsome, which filled the man with a prideful affection that, sting be damned, he wanted to relish — there seemed so little to relish of late — so he made the decision to walk the block twice instead of just once, and during the latter half of this walk, in the midst of relishing his prideful affection, it occurred to the man that he needn’t stay awake to witness the oozing, for he owned a camera, and he chided himself for not remembering it sooner, and commended himself for remembering it at last.