Page 1 of The Lipstick Flip

1

“No more gay shit,” I said halfway up the steps to the house.

In the front window hung one of those vinyl clings, this one in the shape of the pride flag or the progress flag or whatever the fuck we were supposed to call it. It hadn’t been there yesterday. And I had an idea who’d hung it, mostly because her rape van—currently parked in my driveway—had blacked-out windows and a rusted-out spare and a ladder racked on the roof, but it also had two of those gay-as-shit flags poking out of the front windows. When you rode in it, with those damn flags snapping and humming, it sounded like you were in a fucking motorcade.

I shifted the saw to my other hand and went inside. Then I took down the cling.

“Si,” I shouted as I went through the house. “No more gay shit.”

She didn’t answer. Of course.

I made my way toward where I’d last seen her, and as I did, I took stock. Floors looked good. Walls were taped and mudded, ready to paint. We’d already been testing colors, just little patches on the walls to see how it looked in each room, and the smell of fresh paint was nice mixed in with the sawdust and kerosene and cold metal.

Two weeks.

Two weeks meant we were almost there. Finally.

Two weeks meant we had a lot of shit to get done.

Si wasn’t on the stairs where I’d left her. I called up, “Si?”

Nothing.

I started for the basement, shouting ahead of me, “Si, you down there?”

A grunt came back.

Basements could be where an old house like this crapped out on you—sometimes they had dirt floors, or low ceilings, or cinderblock walls, or all three. Sometimes you were looking at a real torture-dungeon situation. But Si and I had lucked out with this one: no major cracks in the foundation, walls that were mostly square and more-or-less plumb, no history of flooding. It was cold as balls, sure, but the whole house was cold as balls—that’s what you got when you worked on a house at the end of December and you were a cheap-ass son of a bitch who wasn’t going to run the furnace above fifty.

I found her standing on a work stool, drill hanging from one hand as she studied something above her—one of the joists, maybe. Si was six-three—if she stood up straight—with short dark hair that was mostly gray on the sides. Sawdust made a line along her forehead, and she had her cheaters perched on her nose. The padded coveralls she wore kept her nice and warm and made her look like the lesbian version of the Michelin Man.

“Si,” I said.

She grunted again.

“Si.”

“Do you see where that jackass ran a telephone line? Maybe it wasn’t a telephone line. It was definitely something.”

“Si!”

She glanced down. “What?”

Displaying the vinyl cling, I said, “No more gay shit.”

A long moment passed as she stared at the cling. And then finally she said, “What’s that?”

“You know what it is. No more window clings. No more signs on the lawn.”

“Why not? You don’t believe in science?”

“No more cute little flags at the front door.”

She grinned. “You know what I thought you said? No more cute little—”

“No more gay shit.”

“It’s our brand.”