Standing at the living-room window, Ray looked up from his morning coffee and saw that the garage door of the house across the street, which just yesterday had been a shade of beige, was now painted a sumptuous red. Ray froze mid-sip. He suspected that Cliff, still asleep in their bed, had snuck out and done it in the middle of the night.
Ray had hidden the paint, the brushes and the roller in various drawers and shelves around their house, but when inspiration struck, no matter how tired or stunned by medication, Clifford could sniff out latex paint with the tenacity of a police dog. Since they’d moved into the house, Cliff had painted their living room a color called Rainy Slate, and then, a few dissatisfied days later, a color called Old Parchment, and finally a pale blue called Fog, which made the walls seem moist and insubstantial. At first, Ray found it hard not to indulge Cliff in his aesthetic experiments; Cliff was a decorator after all, or had been before he went on disability, a man who loved to gaze at paint samples, their very names — Almond, Sand Castle, Jade Escape — transporting him like poetry. Eventually, however, Cliff’s aesthetics grew aggressive, seeping beyond the confines of their house; the more Cliff resigned himself to the uncertainty of his health, the more intolerant he became when faced with the world’s ugliness and disarray. "Chaos is loosed upon the world!" he’d quote as they drove through the city. Or, more prosaically, he’d grouse about the graffiti on a bus bench, the bleak uniformity of a strip mall, or a bronze lump that passed for public sculpture. It might have been a side effect of the steroids, or the antidepressants, or the protease inhibitors, or any number of experimental drugs that were mingling in Clifford’s bloodstream, but in recent months he seemed to believe that his acts of decoration would eventually change the world.
The first of these occurred at Christmas, when the poinsettias bunched on the Donahues’ front steps had been mysteriously moved to a spot beneath their bay window and arranged in a perfect semicircle. A few weeks later, Peter and Mehee Hyun discovered that their old porch light had been replaced by a chrome fixture neither of them recalled installing. And only last month, while Ray was at work, Cliff had decided to repaint a cinderblock retaining wall two doors down the street. After Mr. Cabrillo, the wallrightful owner, called to complain, Cliff justified the act by telling Ray that burnt sienna went better with ivy than the original yellow, which he called "acidic and hideous," as if the color were a personal affront.
"But it’s not our wall," Ray had tried to explain.
"It faces our property."
"So does Bingo when he lays on the Cabrillo’s front steps, but you wouldn’t go over and dye his fur."
"I might," said Cliff, sprawled on the velveteen divan he’d bought at an estate sale. "He’s getting a little gray around the muzzle."
"Clifford, you can’t go around redecorating the world because this or that offends your taste."
"You say ‘taste’ as if it’s superficial. But taste is a deep and instinctive drive for order, an essential part of who we are. And my taste, let’s face it, is highly refined."
"Call it whatever you want. The point is, Mr. Cabrillo is pissed. I don’t know about you, but I’d like to live here for a while before we get run out of the neighborhood on a rail." Thanks to Ray’s promotion at the phone company, they had bought this house in the Silver Lake hills after spending four years in a cramped one-bedroom apartment. Their former downstairs neighbor, a portly man with darting eyes, woke them up at least once a week by knocking on their door and shouting, "I know you’re doing aerobics. I know you’re doing aerobics. You woke me up. I need to dream." Ray thought it was clear from the bleary state in which he opened the door that he was the one who’d been awakened, but Benton would pant and babble to himself, finally trying to barge into their apartment, though "barge" was too strong a word to describe the timidity of his assault. Getting rid of Benton had been as easy as nudging a helium balloon back into the hallway and gently shutting the door behind it. In any case, Benton’s early-morning visits highlighted their need to move into a larger, quieter place, especially after Cliff’s T cells had dropped below 200 and the need for rest loomed in their future.
"Okay," Cliff had said at last. "You win. I’ll apologize to Mr. Cabrillo about the wall."
"And . . .?"
"Um, to Bingo, too?"
"You’ve got to repaint it."
Cliff sat up, folded his arms. "Not that awful yellow again. A man’s got limits."
"Clifford, you will paint the wall whatever color Mr. Cabrillo wants it painted. It is not your decision. One does not get up in the middle of the night and decide to remodel a neighbor’s property."
