Taz picks up a week of work, a week and a half, all more handyman than carpenter or cabinetmaker. It helps, but not much for the way it stalls out the work at home. Only a month out, the living room and baby’s room floor still plastic-covered, the walls’ every screw and seam smooth with sanded mud, he presents Marnie with her packed bag, tells her about the weekend at the motel. She stares, shaking her head, asking where he thinks money really actually comes from, but eventually lets Taz usher her into the truck, saying that they’ve got arrivals to think about, that the money’s something they can worry about later. He leaves her bobbing in the pool, like a manatee, she says, and he races home, grabbing Rudy on the way. Together they throw up the paint, living room first, Rudy rolling at light speed, Taz cutting in the corners. They barely speak, moving around each other like they’re the married couple, knowing each other’s movements, thoughts.
Until Rudy, eyes on his rolling, says, “How’d she take it?”
“Take what?”
“The whole banishment thing.”
“Banishment?” Taz stops. “You think she should be breathing this shit in?”
“What, I don’t have brain cells?”
Taz laughs, leans as far as he dares, slides his brush along the ceiling line. “Just a few terrified survivors.”
Rudy takes a swig from his beer. “They can run, but they can’t hide.”
They work, falling back into silence until Taz climbs down, resets his ladder, climbs back up.
“You tell them yet?” Rudy asks.
Taz turns, finds Rudy loading the roller in the tray, not looking anywhere near him. “Tell who?” he says.
“About the grandbaby and all?”
Taz dips his brush into the paint. “Yeah, I told them.”
“So, they’re racing up here?”
Taz runs the brush along the ceiling line. “Not exactly,” he says.
“Happy at least?”
“Mom’s thrilled. My dad just wondered How the hell you plan on supporting a family?”
“Nice to see him mellowing.”
Taz reloads his brush, reaches as far as he can.
Rudy says, “You told them you bought this place, right? They don’t think you’re still living at my place? Still finishing high school?”
“Even told them I got married.”
Rudy eases the roller onto the wall, up first, then back. “Wow, full disclosure.”
“Mom’d come,” Taz starts, but leaves it at that.
“No doubt,” Rudy says. “I just kind of wondered if a baby might be enough to make it happen.”
“There’s nothing bringing him back.”
“The, um, current administration?”
“Could be Bozo the Clown. Wouldn’t make any difference.”
“Well, pretty much is. Bozo, I mean. But, still, a baby. Kind of a game changer, right?”
“They left me here with you, Rude.”
“And my parents,” Rudy says. “Not exactly raised by wolves.”
Taz resets his ladder, climbs, dips his brush. “He got wiped out. Holds the global economy against the whole country. The whole globe. You know how he is.”
“Dude does have some anger-management issues.”
“How much difference you think a baby is going to make?”
“My folks left, too. The crash smacked us all.”
“Arizona, Rudy. They hated winter, not themselves.”
Rudy finishes his section, and they shift over to the front wall, the one they saved for last, the windows eating up that space. He waits for Taz to get the corner in, stands leaning against the roller pole like a wizard’s staff. “What’d Marnie say?”
“She’s never done more than seen them on Skype. I don’t think she had any big ideas.”
“Doesn’t bum her out?”
“She lived here six months without heat, Rude. I don’t think much else is going to phase her.”
“It was summer,” Rudy says. “Mostly.”
Taz laughs. “She could handle him.”
“And anyone else.”
“I’m sort of just kind of glad she doesn’t have to.”
Taz gets the corner in and Rudy finishes with the roller. “Baby room next?”
Taz picks up his ladder, starting that way. “But it’s not the baby’s room anymore. She’s calling it the nursery now. For real. Marn.”
Rude kneels to change roller heads, switch paints. “Calls the baby room the nursery,” he says. “Totally insane. I mean, like, where does she even come up with this shit?”
Taz opens the new paint, something called Gemstone, blue or green. Both maybe. Marn’s going to stencil dragonflies in around the ceiling, mayflies and stoneflies, and, of course, midges—another bridge he’s decided to cross when they come to it.
The next day, they start with the floor, predawn, pre-coffee. “What!” Rudy says, and Taz says, “We can get all three coats in if we fly.”
“Three?”
“Place is going to last forever.”
“Overkill,” Rudy says, but takes a knee on the front porch, works the lid off the five-gallon bucket.
“Coffee’s on me while the first coat dries.” Taz says, “Promise.”
Rudy gives him a look and stands back to let Taz stir, and without a word of planning, both of them knowing the drill, they open the door and start. Rudy pouring while Taz spreads, they finish the living room and move into the hallway between the bedrooms without so much as lifting their heads. They slick down the hall into the nursery, stepping around each other as they shimmy through the doorway, the maple popping out so golden they smile all the way into the back wall before they realize what they’ve done.
Rudy says, “No way.”
Taz, “We didn’t.”
But they’ve painted themselves in, no way out but through the nursery window, Taz first, Rudy handing out the bucket, the roller pole, both of them laughing till they can hardly stand. Catching his breath, Taz gets out, “Marnie never hears a word,” and Rude’s eyes widen. “To our graves.”
They get into the kitchen through the back door, the sun still not up yet, but the east lurid with the smoke from the wilderness. Taz builds coffee and has almost a whole cup before going out to the shop, getting a few more pieces marked out for the bed he’s making for the nursery. A surprise. Rudy leans in the shop door, sips his coffee, watches a while before asking, “Do you even sleep anymore?”
“Time for that later.”
Rudy walks in, pulls a chair out from the gigantic dining room table Marnie had found, some Civil War leftover, something peace treaties could be signed at, leaf after leaf after leaf, a dozen chairs, all of it shoved up against the jointer, the band saw, the shaping table, which are all shoved up against the back wall. “Later,” he says. “Like after the baby comes? I hear that’s a good time for sleeping.”
They get the second coat down before noon, starting in the nursery this time, and a third before nightfall. Half dizzy from the fumes, Taz braces himself in the doorway of the still-1917 kitchen, Rudy cleaning brushes in the stained and rusted farm sink, the linoleum pattern beneath them long, long gone. Aching and exhausted, he admires their work, the reek of fresh paint wrestling with the drying poly. Behind him, Rudy shuts off the water, pops a beer, then a second. “And they said it couldn’t be done,” he says.
“Not by mortals,” Taz says, and they click bottlenecks. “Not a chance.”
He turns to the kitchen’s rough old plaster wall and raises his bottle to Marn’s fanged smiley face. “Here’s to Marn, too,” he says. He had, he has to admit, guessed they’d have the kitchen wrapped in a few months, the whole house in six. Been fool enough to tell her so. Out loud. Six months. Three years ago.
“When are you picking her up?”
“Tomorrow, I suppose. Maybe the next day.”
“Coward,” Rudy says.
Taz smiles, though to himself he admits it’s been a relief, having her gone a few nights. “Just depends how long it takes to air out.”
“We’ll be able to open the windows soon. This heat? It’ll be a few minutes. You hear about the fires?”
Taz nods. The wildfires breaking out of the wilderness, raging, zero percent containment. Seeley Lake already evacuated. Lincoln prepped for it. Holed up in here, he can’t really remember what all. He could sleep standing up, if he had time. “Want to poly the baseboard tomorrow, the door trim?”
“You already got it?”
“They were tearing out the old bleachers at Loyola.”
“All that clear fir? They didn’t sell it?”
Taz glances his way, smiles. “Not all of it.”
Rudy stares, says, “Dude,” but can’t come up with anything else. “That’d be a surprise for her. Coming back to find you in lockup.”
“Just re-sourcing, Rude. If they sold it, it’d just wind up as crap somewhere.”
“But you, you’re serving a higher purpose?”
Taz taps the neck of his bottle to his forehead.
“And you’ve got it all milled already? Ready to go? When the hell did you do that?”
“Nights.”
Rudy keeps shaking his head. “And you still got all your fingers? Wonders never cease. Marn know?”
“It’ll be a surprise.”
Rudy slaps his hand against the tabletop, fumed oak, nearly black. “You want to get this bad boy in too, get it all set, plates, salad forks, teacups, candles lit?”
“Got to let the poly harden up a little first.”
“But, seriously. You’re going to try to have this all finished before you bring her home from the motel?”
“No, even god couldn’t do that.”
“So, what’s the rush?”
Taz blows a long, sorrowful foghorn across the neck of his bottle. “What’s the rush? There’s a baby coming, Rude. I told Marn the whole place would be done two years ago. Maybe three.”
Rudy turns to look Taz in the eye. “Her mother,” he says, and Taz turns away. “She’s on her way. Am I right?”
“Not till the baby is born.”
“Oh, jesus, and Marn’s holding your toes to the fire, get this place all Martha Stewart before she gets here.”
“The main rooms, anyway.”
“Well, what time do we start tomorrow?”
“The crack.”
Rudy groans.
“Whenever you want to show up, Rude. You know that.”
“Yeah, but with Moms on her way, we better scorch.”
Taz tosses his bottle toward the garbage can across the kitchen. “Might be time for you to take a break anyway, Rude. I got no idea when I can pay you next. Not a clue.”
Rudy opens up the fridge, backs out empty-handed. “Pay? Man, that’d be a novelty,” he says. “I’ll see you in the morning. I’ll bring some beer.”
Taz follows him out, watches him walk down the drive, a wave over his shoulder, then turns to the shop, flips on the lights, starts brushing stain on all the trim he’s made out of the stolen bleachers.