Part One•Section XXXI•Paragraph 1

   Sitting on the front stoop, the dog and a Kilkenny beside him, Rennie had sorted through the binder that Arden had left on the kitchen counter for him.  It was filled with paint brochures, pages torn from magazines and tagged “whimsical paint finishes,” and little pinked squares of fabric; she had affixed to the front cover of the folder a Post-it note on which she had written (in her distinctive, perfectly rounded script) “Rennie.  These are the PRECISE colors to use.  PLEASE DO NOT try to be ‘creative’!!!”  Inured to both the tone and tenor of her message, he had opened the pleated card from Farrow & Ball and set about trying to find a match for the colors Arden had selected.  Radicchio had caught his eye, but it was, he supposed, too vermillion, a merlot or cerise.  She would, if he used it, insist that he paint the whole porch again: it would have to be Blazer, the true red of Skye’s kilt when she was in middle school.  And with it (he had bent back the card to compare it to the chip in the folder) he would use Dimity, a linen handkerchief white.  Having made the decision, he had gone into the kitchen for another bottle of ale, leaving the porch littered with bits of red and white, like shards of a shattered Christmas ornament.

Part One•Section XXX•Paragraph 1

  Arden’s taste in decorating, as in all things, was unimpeachable (she held this to be a truth both self-evident and incontrovertible).  Having given the color scheme of the porch much consideration—tearing from magazines any image having a pleasing, nuanced palette; pinning swatches of fabric against one another and tacking them up on a corkboard in the kitchen; borrowing a deck of Pantone chips from a color consultant and wandering the house with it fanned, like an Utamaro geisha in her Floating World—she had decided finally (and fixedly) on a deep red (19-1759: the same shade, although she didn’t realize it, as the polish on her mother’s toenails the summer they spent by the lake when Arden was eight) and an off-white, the rich vellum (13-1006) of the books that weighted the shelves of her father’s library.

Part One•Section XXIX•Paragraph 1

     Still gazing at the front of the house while pulling gently on Talsker’s ears (she had gingerly made her way down the steps to greet him), Rennie thought about how it had taken him a week just to wash and prepare the porch, carefully scraping off any loose flakes of the original dull russet paint, giving it a good scrubbing with a wire brush, filling in any surface imperfections with Polyfilla, then sanding the entire area with both medium and very fine papers. He had wiped it all down again with a damp cloth. It had been a particularly hot August. Most days, his black t-shirt was soaked through with sweat by mid-day, when he would take a break to share some Red Dragon and Celtic loaf with Talisker (whom the girls had refused to take along because, they insisted, she’d be “too stinky” in the car) and a Kilkenny or two with any of the handful of neighbors who were still in town, puttering around their houses, when most of the city had migrated to cottages up north. Some days, he’d take a nap in the afternoon, waking up to have more cheese, bread and ale, and then working through the night, when it was cooler, caulking (with consummate precision) the front door and window by the shadowy illumination of the porch lantern while Talisker lay beside him, intently watching the  moths céilidh in the captive light.

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      ”Oh, you’re in trouble, you,” Rennie affectionately reproached Talisker, who was lying on the porch when he pulled into a parking spot in front of his house.  As he locked the car door, he studied the place.  He sometimes forgot, when he was away, how nice it was: sheltered by an imposing Norway maple in summer (its leaves had yet to unfurl), at this time of year, even in the waning daylight, the front porch was unexpectedly bright and cheering.  He had spent the better part of the previous August painting it while the girls and Arden were at her parents’ cottage.  Someone—could it have been Aimée?—had told him about Farrow & Ball, and he’d gone there (he still experienced a twinge of guilt imagining what Arden would say if she knew how expensive the paint had been), feeling like a pélerin entering the Grotto of the Apparition when he stepped out of the muggy day into the still, dim shop, its walls lined with row upon row of perfectly stacked, perfectly uniform, distinctively Wainscott and String patterned tins.  He remembered chatting with the salesperson (she had long dark hair, smooth shoulders and smelled, faintly, of blackberries), then taking one of the color cards (relique sacrée!) into the cool shade of an adjacent park.

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    Moments later, as if prompted by his having looked at it, Rennie’s phone vibrated three times.  Although he knew there was no rational foundation for his certainty, he could always tell, by the especially insistent quality of its buzzing, when it was indicating that Arden had called.  Without bothering to listen to the message  (he could imagine well enough the irritation in her voice), he turned the key in the ignition—

With each word your tenderness grows,
Tearing my fear apart… 

—and headed home.

Part One•Section XXVIII•Paragraph 1

     Stopping at the corner of Aimée and Morris’ street before making the right turn that would take him, in a few short blocks, to his own house, Rennie realized that he didn’t much want to go home.  He hesitated, spontaneously turned left and, just as suddenly, jogged right onto a little cul-de-sac.  He pulled the car over beside a small overgrown parkette, gave the key in the ignition a half turn, and switched on the CD player. Sinatra crooned,

Some day, when I’m awfully low,
When the world is cold,
I will feel a glow just thinking of you….

Rennie drank some flat coke from an opened bottle that he had left in the car, glanced at himself in the rearview mirror, checked his cell phone (it had been turned off during Pierrot’s lesson) for messages, then shut his eyes.

Part One•Section XXVII•Paragraphs 1&2

     Rennie was, Arden decided,  as she snapped off the woody ends of fresh local asparagus, constitutionally tardy.  In all the time they’d been together, he had never come home—or, for that matter, done anything—when he had said he would.  Snap.

     She gave the garlic and onions, which were sautéing in an All-Clad saucepan that her mother had given them for Easter (even Kyrsten had, with palpable envy, called it a ‘classic’), a quick stir, took a sip of wine, scanned the receipe and then returned to preparing the asparagus for the Crème D’asperges.  Snap.  Snap.  She had to do everything herself: shoulder the full financial burden of the family; keep the house in perfect order (who else could be counted on to do it?);  make a decent dinner every night; deal with the foul dog (Talisker had followed her downstairs into the kitchen, hoping—in vain—that something delectable would be tossed her way); and try, without much success, to manage their seemingly ungovernable daughters. Snap.  Snap.  It was no wonder that Skye (who was, admittedly, looking trimmer and fitter) was, having recently fallen into the habit of disappearing into her room every night before dinner, becoming a recluse.  And that Aran was becoming a slut.  Snap.  If things were falling apart—she poured herself another glass of wine—it was…Snap…certainly not her fault.

Part One•Section XXVI•Paragraphs 1&2

    Standing on the front stoop, Aimée chatted with Rennie about nothing in particular: a card he had noticed, on the hall table, for an upcoming art exhibit; his daughters; Pierrot; the cold April light.  She watched as he crossed the street, unlocked his car door and drove away.  

    Back inside, she appraised the empty living room.  It was, she concluded, too quiet and dim.  She plumped the pillows on the sofa, rearranged the lilacs in one of the cut glass vases and shifted the heavy canterbury—on which Rennie had left (intentionally?  she’d have to call him) a worn leather-bound book of music—to the corner of the room.  Then she sat down, buffeted by a sudden updraft of…what? dissatisfaction? hopelessless? something more like vanity or futility (she had wondered, fleetingly, on noticing a slight brown tinge to the frill of the convallaria, why she bothered at all).  And now sadness—remote yet familiar—settled mote by mote, like a fine dust, on her consciousness.  Aimée looked around.  What had Larkin written?

           Books; china; a life
          Reprehensibly perfect.

Was that it? Her fingers brushed some crumbs from the little celadon saucer onto the polished tray. She was pleased to see, anyway, that the petit fours were gone. She hoped that Rennie had liked them.

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  In the bathroom, Aran unzipped the little nylon bag and rifled through its contents.  She selected a compact of Super Orgasm Blush and, with a soft brush, applied a shimmering pink flush to her cheeks.  Pleased with the result, she dedicated herself to the task of choosing an eyeshadow from the assorted jelly-bird-egg powders: Seafoam, Lavender 9, Tatiana, Lagoon, Jolie Poupée….  She decided on Primer Potion, gently smoothed it on her lids, then carefully brushed some Graffiti Deluxe eyeshadow over it.  She was about to start lining her upper lashes with Covet 24/7 when she was startled by the sudden opening of the door, which she had (out of a habitual yearning for privacy) left barely ajar.  It was, mercifully, just Talisker. 

       “Want me to polish your paw nails, Tali?” She asked.  The dog licked her arm appreciatively.  “Let’s see…” she continued talking to her attentive companion.  “I think we’ll use the Vert next.  What do you say, girl?”  Turning to the mirror, she was taken aback to see another face, behind her own, reflected in the glass.   At first, Aran thought that she was looking at Skye’s contemptuously cocked eyebrow and derisive smirk.  But then she recognized her mother’s voice.

   “You might as well write ‘MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT’ on your forehead while you’re at it,” Arden sneered, then pivoted abruptly and walked away.

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     Funny, she had thought that Skye would be so impressed by her cleverness in squirreling away the treats, but, instead, her sister had called her a ‘pathetic, fat cheater.’ Skye was probably out running with their mother now and would come home and go directly to bed, saying that she was too tired to have dinner. Aran unwrapped a KitKat bar, snapped it in two, scrutinized both of the chocolate batons with the skilled eye of a younger sibling to determine which was the choicer and, having made her assessment, took a bite from the better half.