Chapter 21: Green Again

On Saturday morning the whole eighteenth floor smelled of wet paint.

I stood in the doorway of the study with a mug of decaf and watched the white wall go green.

The stroller woman was on a stepladder with a roller.

The man from 1802 was taping the baseboards, whistling under his breath.

Two other neighbors were arguing about the trim.

"I didn't ask for any of this," I said.

"No one did," said the stroller woman. "We just took a vote."

"When?"

"In the elevator."

She dipped the roller and went on rolling.

The crib had never come back into the room. The white paint was the last thing in it that was his.

By noon the second coat was dry.

"Now the desk," the man from 1802 said.

They had found it in the basement, wrapped in a moving blanket, where Grady's movers had left it for the building to throw away.

Keaton and the man from 1802 carried it up in the freight elevator.

Four neighbors guided it down the corridor, calling out turns.

"Left. Left. Your other left."

"My other left is a wall."

"Then lift."

At the study door the desk stuck.

The man from 1802 took off his watch, as if that would help.

Keaton tilted the desk onto its side, and it slid through with a quarter inch to spare.

Everyone cheered.

They set it under the window.

It was my father's old oak desk.

I'd had it since I was twenty-three. I'd done my first taxes on it.

I put my hand on the scarred top.

Someone had left a mug of pens there, and a card.

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