Bebe and Kenny walked together down the hall. It was Bebe's favorite hall in the house. This was Wendy's treasure hall. It housed her Harvard diploma. The walls were painted in Wendy's favorite soft periwinkle. The glass artisan lamps Wendy had imported from Venice were lit at expertly spaced intervals, and the long woven carpet was thick and soft. Wendy's life-sized Monet reproduction hung by the bedroom door. Water lilies, Wendy liked to say, if you could only see them in your peripherals. On the other side of the hall was a portrait. Wendy and Bebe wore spring dresses and held each other, laughing, their hair loose.
Bebe loved this place in their house. Wendy had put so much meticulous detail into its design. The frames were all straight with their corners aligned with the floors and ceilings. The lighting had been designed professionally, so as to be bright and cool, but never obtrusive. And on a tiny, white shelf embedded into the wall, Wendy's African orchids bloomed—shell-pink faces too perfect to belong outdoors or anywhere else. Wendy loved orchids, the never-dying flowers, most of all. They seemed frozen in time, to her. Rarely was life so still.
Kenny's work boots left bits of dirt in the plush rug. He was tanned, from the high altitude labor he was doing on their roof; the contrast made his teeth look very white. An orange sweatshirt hung around his waist. His undershirt was stained yellow with sweat. And he smelled like a long day's labor—like pitch, and like sawdust.
Bebe liked the way the blue in the walls gentled Kenny's sharp angles. She had the strangest urge to push him up against Wendy's diploma and kiss the smirk off his mouth as he examined it. She wanted to give him the orchid to take home to his dirty trailer. She wondered if he liked the water lilies; absurdly, she hoped he did.
"This whole place," Kenny gestured around with one large, grimy hand, "Looks just like her."
Bebe simply nodded. "She imported the lamps," she explained.
"The rest of it's for you, obviously," Kenny grinned, scratching the back of his head. Bebe was caught in wanting to run a hand through his hair, unsure whether it would be coarse or fine to touch. What he said was true. The rest of the house was done in swooping white arches and deep maroon paint. The mahogany floors set off iron curlicue furniture and gold silk pillows. Cream carpets, rich wood banisters—Wendy designed it all, with Bebe as a reference, like a painter taking cues from a particularly precious model.
"For us," Bebe corrected—an easy lie. Kenny didn't believe her for a moment; he didn't even pretend. He snorted, tilting a photograph black and white still of flowers in a vase, so it hung crookedly, against all the others.
At the end, she will find the crooked photograph, and she will look at Bebe, penetratingly—as if she knows, and she will hold her breath for that question to follow. Her heart will pump shrapnel into her veins, and she will feel the cuts tearing her apart from the inside, and the look on Wendy's face will say, "You deserve the pieces."
But the question will never follow. Bebe will right the picture-frame, next time.
