The Kitchen Renovation Crew Stayed Three Weeks Longer Than the Quote novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: Eggshell

"I'm late for school," I told Mikko on the porch.

"Then go," he said. "I'll hold down the house."

By the time I got home at four, he had painted the dining room, the hall, and himself.

He stood on a ladder in the kitchen doorway with a roller, in a T-shirt and cut-off sweatpants.

Eggshell white ran down both forearms to the elbow.

It was in his curls, too, and across one cheekbone, and a drop of it clung to his eyelashes.

"Brit!" he said, and waved the roller, and a spray of white hit the drop cloth. "You're home. Don't come in. I'm wet."

"You're wet everywhere."

"I'm an artist," he said.

"You're painted white, Mikko. Even your eyelashes."

He laughed so hard that the ladder shook.

He came down it in one jump, set the roller across the paint tray, and held up his hands.

The paint under his fingernails was three different colors.

I saw there was more of it on his neck.

"Okay, real question," Mikko said. "Is there any way I could use your shower?"

"Why?" I said.

"I can't go home like this," he said. "My roommate's got a girlfriend over. She'll think I got attacked by a cloud."

"It's the only one that works."

"Then it's the best one."

I should have said yes and gone to pour a glass of wine.

I said, "Upstairs. The hot side sticks. Towels are in the closet."

"You're a saint."

"I'm a woman with a bad pipe," I said.

I heard him take the stairs two at a time, and the bathroom door bang, and the shower start.

Then he began to sing.

He sang badly, and with total commitment, some song from the radio with a chorus that said baby over and over.

I stood at the bottom of the stairs with my bag still on my shoulder and listened.

It was the first time in the house that anyone had sung since September.

I put the bag down.

I went up the stairs, one at a time, and I stopped outside the bathroom door.

It stood open a few inches, and steam rolled out of it.

"Brit?" Mikko called, over the water. "Is that you? Because I have a problem."

"What kind of problem?"

"It's in my hair. It's in my hair and it's down my back and I can't reach."

I pushed the door open with one finger.

Through the fogged glass I saw a long pale shape, broad in the shoulder and narrow in the waist, with white running off it in streams.

A head of wet blond curls that had gone flat and dark.

"I'm not coming in there," I said.

"I'm not asking you to," he said, in a voice that was really asking.

"I'm asking you to scrub my back. I'll keep my eyes closed. I'm a gentleman."

I took off my blouse.

I did it standing on the bath mat, with my back to the glass.

I took off my skirt and my bra and my underwear, folded each one on the closet shelf, and then I opened the shower door.

Mikko had his eyes shut, as promised, and his face turned up into the spray.

Then he heard the door and cracked one eye.

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