Excerpt: Sideways Study of a Brown Bag

CHAPTER 2

A COMPLICATED COLOR

Audra picked dried adhesive out of the corner of her thumbnail when Gabe’s truck pulled in and parked crooked in the driveway. Benny meowed and climbed out from under the evergreen shrub occupying the corner of the patio, slid, nose to tail, against her leg.

The truck door squeaked when it opened. “Hey!” Gabe shouted. He pulled a box from the passenger seat, and the cardboard lid flopped up and down. The door screeched again when he nudged it shut with his hip. ...“Tiles,” he shifted the box to his right hip and unlatched the gate with his free hand. “I stopped by Rick’s Salvage. All kinds of new stuff.”

“I love this one,” she pulled a white ceramic square from the remnants and held it up, squinted. [A turquoise line would loosely with an orange ribbon swooshed diagonal across the tile, fringed at its end.] “I love turquoise and orange together.”
...

In the kitchen, Audra set the box on the table, too many papers. She did not move them aside, just piles: Papers, brushes, books and tiles, and now this box. She covered half the table with a white garbage bag, cut to lie flat and single sheathed, taped down to the corners with blue painter’s tape. A collection of mismatched ceramic square tiles lay in random piles and collections, and she scooted them to the side to add the new finds. ...
...

Already, the kitchen sat half finished, a random array of found tiles, erratic designs, rebellious spirals, rigid stripes criss-crossing into plaids, starfish and blowfish, moons and stars, bright and meditative mandalas sprinkled the white drywall above and below the cabinetry. She had touched each one delicately, reverently, blessed them like orphaned remnants from different walls in different homes of different families...

She left the turquoise and orange on the kitchen counter and returned to the work table. “Oh, here’s one.” She smiled wide and pulled a white tile with one thick, black circle from the box. “We should give this to Margaret.”

“Jesus.” Gabe pulled a ginger ale out of the refrigerator; it sizzled when he popped the cap. “I’ve never seen someone so out of her tree about a purple fucking flower.”

“Violet,” she moved the white and black circle tile to the periphery of a collection of especially geometric designs--triangles, squares, polka dots. She heard him chug, loudly, and pictured his Adam’s apple bobbing grotesquely.

“What?” He wiped his mouth on the back of his arm.

“It’s violet. Not purple.”

“Are you sure it’s not magenta?” He was teasing her.

“Violet. Purple is too simple.” She dipped her puddy knife into the [adhesive] and pulled out a modest scoop, smeared it on the back of her turquoise-orange tile then on the wall. “Violet is complicated. We should have started conservatively.”

“I suppose.” He’d stopped listening. Unlaced his work boots and left them by the stairs.

“Melon or pumpkin.” She tapped her chin. “A quiet sage.” She pressed the tile to the wall, mushed it right and left until it went square and flush against the next tile. She held her palm to its cool base and counted to 60.