12. Ethan
ETHAN
The smell of paint hit before I made it all the way inside.
Paul had every window open, but the air wasn’t cooperating. It drifted through his apartment in slow, unhelpful passes, carrying the smell instead of clearing it, which tracked with how Paul generally handled problems.
I stepped in and stopped.
The wall across from the couch looked like a crime scene someone had unsuccessfully tried to cover up. Red paint in uneven streaks—some thrown, some dragged—with a patchy layer of flat grey over the worst of it, which had done nothing except add a new problem to the existing one.
I looked at the small sample pot sitting on the drop cloth, still with the sticker on it. “Is that Agreeable Gray.”
It wasn’t a question.
Paul stood off to the side, holding a roller. “I panicked.”
“You panicked and reached for a four-dollar sample pot.”
“It was what I had.”
“It’s two ounces. You painted a crime scene with a pot of Agreeable Gray. You work for my hardware store!”
Miles walked in behind me, took one look at the wall, one look at the pot, and set his tray down. “Agreeable Gray.”
“I know,” I said.
Paul pointed at us. “I would like to remind you that I called you, which means I am asking for help, which means you could be nice about it.”
“I feel like we are being nice,” Miles said.
“Barely,” Paul whined.
“You should’ve just waited.” Miles picked up his roller.
“Not sure what I was thinking,” Paul said. “Also, who keeps a can of red paint in their car? That’s not a normal thing to keep in a car.”
“What did you do to result in her throwing a can of red paint on your living room walls?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
Miles and I looked at him.
“I mean”—Paul gestured vaguely—“nothing that warranted this.”
“What did you do?” I said again.
Paul examined the wall very closely. “I tried to break up with her.”
“Okay… And?”
“And I was going to be very calm about it. Mature. I had a whole thing.”
“Never break up with someone in your apartment.”
Paul’s jaw moved. “Lesson freaking learned. She cried. Before I even finished the sentence. Just immediately. And I panicked.”
“Okay?”
Paul set his roller in the tray. “I told her I was an FBI agent.”
The room was very quiet.
Miles stopped rolling.
“You told her what?” I said.
“I panicked.”
“So, you told her you were an FBI agent.”
“It just—came out as the excuse for why we needed to break up.”
“Paul.” Miles turned around fully.
“I was spiraling. She was crying, and I couldn’t say what I was actually trying to say, and my brain just—” He made a vague exploding gesture near his temple.
“Went to the FBI,” I said.
“Went to the FBI.”
I looked at Miles. Miles looked at me. This was not, strictly speaking, the first time Paul’s brain had gone somewhere structurally unsound under pressure.
“So,” I said with great care, “you told her you were an FBI agent. And then what?”
“Then I committed to it. I told her I’d been deep cover for two years, and I was getting reassigned. Secret mission. Couldn’t say where.”
“You told her you were leaving?”
“On a secret mission.”
“Right.”
“But that she would still see me on the streets because they were sending in a—”
I stopped. Something cold moved through me. “Paul. Please.”
Paul pressed his lips together. “A clone.”
“A clone,” Miles said without moving from the trim he was working on.
“A classified clone. A government clone. That would—stand in. So no one noticed my absence.”
“She didn’t believe you,” I said finally.
“She did not believe me,” Paul confirmed.
Miles put his roller down. Picked it back up. Put it down again. “I need a minute.”
“She started asking questions,” Paul said. “Reasonable questions, in retrospect. About the clone. And I didn’t have—I hadn’t thought it through. She could tell. Then she got really quiet, which was worse than the crying, and she left. Calmly. And I thought—”
“You thought it was over,” Miles said.
“I thought it was over. And then she came back.”
“With the paint,” I said.
“With the paint.”
I looked at the wall. I looked at the sample pot. I looked at Paul, who was looking at the floor.
“Where did you meet this charming young woman?”
“At speed dating.”
I took the bait. “Speed dating.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m trying to picture it. I can’t. Give me a second… No. Still can’t. You went speed dating. You met…”
“Trixie.”
“Trixie,” I said carefully.
Paul was quiet.
“So, let me sum up. You tried to break up with her, panicked when she cried, told her you were secretly an FBI agent—”
“And that in my place would be a clone.” Paul picked up his roller.
I kept painting; we had a job to do. Three coats minimum, four where Paul had gotten to it first. We were going to be here a while.
“That name alone is a warning label,” Miles said, after a moment.
I went back to the wall, working a heavier section slowly. I stepped back for a second and tilted my head at the full scope of it.
“You know,” I said, “if you’d added another color, you could have passed it off as a Jackson Pollock.”
Paul looked at the wall. “I thought about that.”
“You did not,” Miles said.
“For like three seconds before I got the sample pot.”
“Three seconds of genuine artistic vision,” I said. “Truly a loss.”
“The Agreeable Gray really would have killed it anyway,” Miles said.
“Agreed. Very anti-Pollock.”
“Can you both stop saying Agreeable Gray?” Paul shifted behind me, restless in the way he got when there was still something he wanted to say. “So. Legally speaking.”
“No,” I said.
“You went to law school.”
“I didn’t finish.”
“You went long enough.”
“I went long enough to know I don’t want to have this conversation while I’m painting your wall at nine o’clock.”
He considered that. “Fair. But hypothetically—”
“Paul.”
“If someone damages your property—”
“You could take her to court,” I said. “You’re not going to.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re already painting over it and you don’t want to drag this out.” I worked over the section again. “Also, if Trixie showed up with red paint in her car before you even broke up with her, imagine what happens if you sue her.
“It still feels like I should do something,” Paul said.
“You are doing something,” Miles said. “You’re painting.”
Paul dragged his roller up the wall harder than necessary. “I just don’t get how it got here.”
“I do,” Miles said, not unkindly.
“You didn’t set a clear line,” I said. “That’s how it got here.”
The words were barely out before I recognized the hypocrisy. Miles recognized it at the same time, based on the way he very carefully did not look at me.
“I thought it would sort itself out,” Paul said.
Miles and I stayed silent. Just painting.
“She was crazy,” he said, almost to himself. “I think I might like crazy.”
I sighed. This man was never going to learn.
We worked in silence for a while after that.
Paul eventually found a rhythm, and Miles kept the edges clean, patient, and precise; he was better at the detailed work than either of us and quietly aware of it.
I worked the center in my paint-soaked sock and tried not to think about the fact that approximately forty percent of what I’d said to Paul also applied to me, that Miles had definitely noticed, and that we were all choosing not to address it because that was how we operated.
It worked fine until it didn’t. I never laid out things clearly with Lucy, and that was an issue.
The red faded layer by layer. The wall got whiter.
I rinsed the roller in the sink, watching the water run pink, then pale, then clear. Dried my hands. Grabbed my jacket from the back of the chair.
“Next time,” I said, “call before you start painting over it. Some things need to sit before you can fix them.”
Paul pointed at me. “That was almost profound.”
“Almost,” Miles agreed.
I headed for the door, took one last look at the wall—white now, mostly. Good enough.
The lesson was there. I could see it clearly from where I was standing.
I was doing exactly what Paul had done; I was just quieter about it. No red paint on the walls yet. No government clones. Just a slow accumulation of things I hadn’t said to someone who deserved to hear them.
The only real difference between Paul and me was that my mess hadn’t dried yet.