Body Painter

By Malcolm Carmichael

Milly sprawled on the brown leather sofa watching a Law & Order rerun. She stretched her feet beyond the edge of her long, fleece robe and wiggled her toes, buffed turquoise earlier that morning. Her husband Howard appeared in the doorway of the pine-paneled den, buck naked except for blue Tommy Bahama flip-flops.

She glanced at him. “No clothes?”

“It’s Friday night, remember?”

“Oh.” She sighed. “I’m wrapped up in this re-run marathon.”

“Well, I’m wrapped up in a rerun, too. The ‘Friday-Night-Use-It-Or-Lose-It’ rerun.”

“Did you take your pill?”

“You didn’t notice?” He shook his semi-flaccid penis.

“Well, I don’t have my reading glasses on.”

Milly stopped the show. “Look, there are only seven minutes left. Some underworld thugs shot the assistant DA, the sexy blonde with pink highlights. She’s in critical condition.”

“I guess my condition’s not critical enough.” He stalked down the hall, his flip-flops quacking.

After the episode ended, she turned off the television. The assistant DA survived and disappeared into witness protection. Milly briefly relished her recurring fantasy of disappearing, of becoming someone else, embracing a different, sluttier road of life with midnight-blue hair, pot smoking friends, and psychedelic tattoos.

She switched off the lights and smacked into the ebony chest by the door, overturning her daughters’ bridal pictures from their first marriages. Milly still fumed over the irreverent, slutty lives they’d led. Only they didn’t disappear. They each returned home for long months after the divorces, tugging their semi-savage toddlers to terrorize the house. She and Howard soon imposed a daily kids’ quiet hour so they could hide and smoke Marlboros together in the red cedar tool shed. She grew light-headed inside with the scents of nicotine, motor oil, rubber cement, hickory handles of rakes and shovels, and his sweating body so hot and close to hers.

~

Milly’s favorite game to play with her daughters’ kids was hide and seek. Even though they often cheated, they were never able to find Milly when it was her turn.

“Tell us where you go,” they begged. “You’ve got to.”

“Then it wouldn’t be a mystery game,” she said. “Games, like life, shouldn’t be too short or too easy. Go have another turn.”

Milly helped her grandchildren decorate their bodies with Moon Fire black-light body paint on special hot summer nights. She used sea sponges and thick brushes to paint their faces, arms, legs, and tummies with creatures and tribal symbols. The camouflaged clan then huddled around the Halloween black light, so their skin shone and flashed in the backyard darkness. They screamed, danced, and ran through the sprinkler water until most of the paint washed off.

Afterwards, Milly rounded up the sweating grandchildren to hear Howard’s tales of the Broccoli Brothers, Willie Wilde Pig, and Cowboy Cuke; stories he’d once told their mothers as part of the family’s oral tradition.

Milly sat among the kids on the sofa and added background sounds of whistling wind, hissing water, and clicking cicadas.

They sat transfixed by her sounds and Howard’s raw shriek, moan, and rumble voices, licking their lips with Grapico purple tongues. When the last story ended, they were rubbing their eyes, and traces of their body paint speckled the sofa.

~

Milly flipped a lamp on, opened the drawer containing the grandchildren’s art supplies, and pulled out the gallon-sized freezer bag holding six jars of body paint. Two cats’ eye marbles and a Zippo cigarette lighter hidden under the bag rolled onto the floor. She checked each jar of paint by holding it up to the light. The blue, yellow, and orange jars were all half full. The red, violet, and green jars, her grandchildren’s favorites, were each less than a third. She kept the lighter deep in her robe pocket and left the favorites in the drawer along with the marbles.

Milly carried the remaining paint jars to the bedroom where Howard slept on their bed. She removed her clothes and painted her body in bold strokes with blue, yellow, and orange triangles, stars, suns, moons, and lightning bolts. She used her fingers to add blue streaks to her short, gray bob. While the paint dried, she plugged in the black light and aimed it toward their bed.

“I know it’s Friday night,” she whispered in her husband’s ear, opening her arms and parting her legs.

Howard rolled over and squinted. “Is that you? Come closer and let me look.” He ran his fingers over her warm flesh, pausing at the yellow lightning bolt blazing down her belly. He kissed her. “Paint me.”

Milly covered his body with half moons, eyes, crosses, peace symbols, and fireball comets. They glowed in the dark, sang, and slow danced while she stroked him until he was hard. She cried when they came, and their sweat smeared the paint on their skin. They slept the rest of the night, flanks touching, in multicolored sheets.