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If poker was his common ground with his father, home improvement was their battlefield. Weekends and evenings, Dad had always been dragging him along to paint rental units or help him sand and refinish cabinets and floors. If Bruce or Martin had work to do—and they always had work to do—Carson had been expected to tag along and help out.
“How’d that oven cleaner work out?” Bruce asked.
A big, burly man in his late seventies, he was six years older than Carson’s father and considerably easier to get along with. He’d opened the Potter Falls hardware store–slash–mercantile right after he came home from the Korean War.
“It’s working. I need a bunch more, though.”
“That’s a big kitchen your Julie’s got.”
She’s not my Julie. But he didn’t bother correcting Bruce. Everyone in town did it, had always done it, would always do it. Carson had brought her to Potter Falls, so as long as they both remained single, Potter Falls mentally coupled them up.
Hell, he’d been mentally coupling them up himself. In any number of different positions.
Julie had failed to mention that the spare room was part of her living quarters. They were at opposite ends of the sprawling attic, but they shared a bathroom. They could ignore each other all day long—and did, once breakfast was done with—but when the sun went down, they each had to strip naked and get wet within ten feet of the other.
At least he was making rapid progress on the kitchen job. Sublimation could be productive. He spent mornings working at his dad’s, afternoons on Julie’s ceiling, and he still had more energy left than he knew what to do with.
“Lotta ceiling,” he agreed. “I’m uncovering about a three-foot clean strip with every can.”
“Taking more than one pass, like you thought?”
“Yeah, twice over, letting it sit on there, then spot treatments and scrubbing with the toothbrush.”
“Better you than me,” Bruce said with a smile.
“Yeah, no kidding. So have you got four or five more cans?”
“I think so. Check the shelf, and if there’s not enough, I’ll look in the back.”
Carson wound his way through the narrow aisles of the store to the row of aerosols. “You decide yet if you’re going to lacquer it when you’re done?” Bruce called.
“Going to let Julie decide.”
He’d talk to her about it. It would give them something to discuss at breakfast besides the weather.
Carson wouldn’t have thought it possible, but Julie had managed to become even more distant and haughty since their first conversation in the kitchen. She served him breakfast in the formal dining room, elaborate omelets and scones with currants, linen napkins and heavy silver. Every time he got a conversation going, she remembered something he ostensibly needed—ketchup served in a little ceramic dish with a doily underneath it, a refill on his coffee. Then she cleared the table and went to work, and he didn’t see her until the afternoon, when she’d already had lunch and was usually on her way out to a meeting with the historical society or the Methodist ladies that kept her through dinner.
She disappeared into her room at night, and he sat on the couch in her living area, watching TV alone for hours.
Carson ran a finger along the row of aerosol cans.
“You need to put some kind of sealant on there,” Bruce shouted. “It’ll discolor on you if you don’t.”
“I hear you, Uncle.” His finger stopped at the oven cleaner. Six cans still sat on the shelf. He swept all of them against his chest with one arm and carried them up to the front.
“Leo was in here the other day,” Bruce said.
“Leo Potter?”
“You know another Leo?”
Carson shook his head. “He still a self-important wanker with too much money and no common sense?”
Bruce made a tsking noise. “Shouldn’t speak ill of him. With his dad gone, he owns the whole town these days.”
“Bet he acts like it, too.”
“He’s not so bad. Was askin’ me about you.”
