Page 7 of The Happy Month
July 22, 1996
Evening
El Matador was a Spanish-style courtyard building built in the twenties. The stucco was a fading terra cotta with reddish brown trim and woodwork. There was a fountain, which no longer worked but still had wonderful handmade tilework. The stairs, both up to the back of the building and up to our unit, had red tiles as tread and those same handmade tiles between.
Our co-op was on the west side of the building, in the front on the second floor. It was one of four larger two-bedroom units, with a dining room, a large living room, a kitchen with a tiny breakfast nook and three Juliet balconies.
We’d closed early in June. It was an all-cash offer, sixty thousand dollars, so it was an easy closing. Ronnie immediately began rehabbing the apartment and volunteered to be on the homeowner’s board. He fully intended to turn the place condo within a year, which would double or triple thevalue. Not that we would sell it, but we could easily get a second that would provide down payment money for another… Even thinking about it is a little exhausting.
Ronnie was sure we’d be in by Thanksgiving. I thought spring ’97 more likely. We’d already had the floors sanded, stained and varnished. Given the age of the building, we were told that was the last time it could be done. In twenty or twenty-five years the wood itself would need to be replaced. To Ronnie, who was more than twenty years younger than I am, that seemed an eon. Something we’d never have to worry about. To me, it was just around the corner, just the way my life of twenty years ago felt. Reachable. Touchable. Yesterday. Tomorrow.
Painters were next; the kitchen and bathroom were both being retiled. As was the tiny breakfast nook. Ronnie had decided that walls in there should be tiled too. Halfway up in light blue with painted Mexican tiles on the edge. We were using lots of Mexican tiles which sort of matched the tilework on the fountain and steps in the courtyard. At least, in spirit. Ronnie had even figured out a way to put in a stackable washer and dryer on the landing right outside the kitchen door. Technically a ‘common’ space, but he’d already worked his magic with the board.
I’d left work at four-thirty for a meeting with a painter. I didn’t really need to be there. Ronnie was making the decisions—though I suppose it was nice of him to pretend I had a say. I would have begged off except there wasn’t that much going on at The Freedom Agenda. We were ready for the deposition on Wednesday. Karen had run Vera Korenko’s name through Lexis/Nexis and not found anything too old, and the avalanche of mail we got from prisoners wanting to be freed had slowed almost to a stop after Lydia (or rather I) had shot one of our clients.
Still, I was late. When I walked in I stopped to look at the floors, which I hadn’t seen. They looked amazing. It was the first thing we’d done which hinted at what the place would be like someday. I was getting excited about living there, just Ronnie and me.
Ronnie Chen, a swirling mix of Chinese, Vietnamese, Irish, Native American and a few more ethnicities, was small, in his late twenties, and, to me at least, gorgeous. I found him in the kitchen with the painter.
“My tile guy says we should tile first,” he said to the painter. He was roughly around my age, growing in the middle and dressed in overalls that advertised his trade.
“Yeah, they always do,” he said. “They just want to make a mess and leave it for me to clean up.”
“I see,” Ronnie said skeptically.
“Since you’re on a tight deadline, you should let schedules decide. Whoever’s available first goes first.”
When I stepped into the small kitchen, the first thing I noticed was a Kelly-green sink sitting on the counter. I didn’t remember talking about that.
Ronnie said, “This is my partner, Dom Reilly.”
“Hey,” he said to me. “Bob Flannigan. You guys flipping this place?”
I almost said ‘not that kind of partner,’ but we were also that kind of partner. Ronnie breezed through it saying, “Oh no, we’ll be living here. That’s why everything matters so much. It’s going to be our home.”
Flannigan just said, “Oh. Okay.” He had to have encountered this before. It was Long Beach after all.
“Let me show you the color I’ve chosen for the kitchen,” Ronnie said, picking up a handful of swatches.
“It’s this one,” he said, pointing to a very pinky beige.
“Isn’t that a bit subtle for you?” I asked. He hadn’tshown me this. Nor had he talked to me about the green sink.
“This is the tile,” he said, picking up a tile off the counter. It was a mix of cobalt blue, Kelly green and the pinky beige. It was pretty, but…
“Wow. Isn’t that going to be a lot?”
“If we had more counter space, yes. But we only have ten feet of countertop with a sink in the middle. It’s exactly the kind of kitchen where you can make this kind of statement.”
I didn’t know what that statement was going to be, but he was right, the kitchen was small. All the cupboards and counter were on the one side. The other side had space for a range and the refrigerator. There was a door to the dining room, another to the breakfast nook and a third out to the landing. A small kitchen with that many doors did take some cleverness, so maybe he was right.
“What about the other rooms?” Flannigan asked.
“Well, we just need you to paint the bedrooms, the dining room and hallway, and the bathroom. We’re going to do the living room ourselves.”
“We are?”
“It’ll be easy. Trust me.”
