The Playwright's House by Dariel Suarez

Author:Dariel Suarez
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Red Hen Press

CHAPTER 16

They were losing natural light, so Victor flicked on the porch lamp, showering the space in bright yellow. Yunior had been true to his word: he’d brought a bucket, which Victor filled with soaped water, a small can of paint remover, and two sponges. Serguey was given the job of cleaning the egg mess using a throwaway rag. He was surprised to see how little Yunior and Victor spoke as they scrubbed the paint off the wall. They toiled with care and precision, their arms tightening and expanding like unrelenting machines. Their bones, muscles, and veins seemed to pulsate in unison. Serguey snuck glances at Yunior—his nose and cheeks, and maybe the shape of his head, too, a reminder of Norton.

Though, under these circumstances, he should welcome the quiet, Serguey felt an increasing tension, as if every moment that passed without acknowledging Yunior’s generosity would deter the man’s willingness to help. The rolled-up newspaper jutted from his back pocket, bending in a way that refuted Victor’s theory of a knife. It was this sight: the folded wad of paper, that made Serguey believe he should speak.

“I knew your grandfather,” he said.

Yunior continued scrubbing the wall, and Serguey worried that he’d made a mistake, but to say nothing else didn’t feel right. Victor hadn’t looked at him, which was a good sign.

“My buddy Kiko and I used to get baseball scores from him.”

“Yeah,” Yunior said. “A lot of people knew my grandfather.”

Serguey detected no reproach or annoyance. “I was sorry to hear he passed.”

Yunior stopped working and scratched his face with the nook of his elbow. “He was old. Went out on his own terms. All that cigar smoking got to him.”

Serguey had seen a cigar in Norton’s mouth on some occasions, but it was not the first thing he associated with the old man.

“When I went to see him at the hospital,” Yunior continued, “toward the end, he looked nothing like himself. My mother let me in the room for only a minute. He was wheezing bad. Fucking tubes sticking out of his nose.” Yunior mimed the tubes with the hand holding the sponge, dripping soaked up paint on his shoes, but he didn’t seem to mind. His pupils peered into the bucket near Serguey’s feet. “He finally looked his age. Worse than his age, I’d say.” Here he started cleaning again. “I ain’t going out like that. I rather it’d be my liver or my heart than my lungs.”

Victor took a glimpse at Serguey and pressed his lips. All right, he was saying, don’t get him started.

They worked for another twenty minutes without stopping. They were covered in sweat, their heightened breaths combining to form a rhythmic flow. Serguey had spent too much time in offices. Despite feeling physically tired, there was something refreshing about manual labor, about seeing immediate results. Up-close, one could see faded smidgens of red, but overall they had done a good job. As they stood back and beheld the wall and door, Serguey had the sense that they’d reclaimed something, a restoration to the way things should be.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.