Fall 2007
Why Stefan had to rent a sander
and refinish the floor in Brenda's bedroom
When the cashier prematurely and automatically, without a twinge of
uncertainty, gave her a senior discount, Brenda felt compelled to paint
every room in her house Chinese red. She went to Lowe's and sorted
through
palette samples because Chinese red turned out not to be so simple. She
compared tints and hues, and finally decided on a shade that reminded
her of a clingy swingy dress she'd worn to see Baryshnikov dance Romeo
at Lincoln Center decades before when her hair had pigment and her skin
knew how to hold itself in place.
Not having painted anything in a while, Brenda asked the twelve year
old "design consultant" named Binky what else she would need. He helped
her gather painter's tape, stir sticks, rollers, brushes, plastic, all
of which she carted home with no less than eight gallons of Peking
Passion. She wondered what Stefan would think. They'd only been lovers
for three months and were still at the stage of undressing by
candlelight, and watching each other sleep. Stefan had not yet
witnessed female hormones—or the lack thereof—running amok.
Brenda began with her bedroom. She flipped on Ravel's Bolero, shoved
furniture, draped, taped, and rolled overlapping v's along the wall
behind the bed, burying forever all traces of Perfect Pearl. Feeling
the echo of horns and drums rumble in her belly, she dipped a brush,
wrote WILD WOMAN in letters two-feet high on the adjacent wall.
Heavy spatters of crimson sprayed her cheeks. Her hair became an
impressionistic blob spreading across her old Kirov Ballet
t-shirt. The music opened, wound back on itself, ascended. She
dipped again, wrote HOT TOMALE added HOOCHIE MAMA ROJA. She grabbed the
old paint-speckled towel from the corner, slid it around her
blue-jeaned hips, swished it from side to side. Cajoled by a
swell of strings climbing toward crescendo, her body searched for a
developpé, an arabesque, an entrechat-six it could not
find. Bolero thrashed and pounded to climax. Brenda, trembling,
collapsed to the floor. So much red was unsettling, like playing
with more fire than she remembered how to handle.
Rachelle Rogers is a writer and
poet. Fiction author of A Love Apart, she has received competitive
recognition in memoir, fiction and poetry, and was granted a 2002
Wildacres Artist Residency. Her work has appeared in several literary
journals including Passager, Sow's Ear Poetry Review, Calyx, The
Pedestal, and on the NC Arts Council's Poet of the Week site. She lives
in Asheville, NC. Please visit her website at:
www.rachellerogers.com.
Why Stephan Had To Rent A Sander And Refinish The Floors In Brenda's
Bedroom was written in the summer of 2006 during a writing retreat. I
think the inspiration for the story had something to do with being
about to turn 60! It was solely Brenda's idea, however, to play Ravel's
Bolero! I would have chosen Stan Getz/Charlie Byrd's Jazz Samba.
* Why Stephan Had To Rent A Sander And Refinish The Floors In Brenda's
Bedroom originally appeared in flashquake Fall 2006 issue.