By Jen Eve Thorn

It fills me with disgust when people are late. Some people associate disgust with a vomit-adjacent hue of green. That’s wrong. Disgust is a yellow-gray. I know what you’re thinking, yellow and gray together are a shade of green. I say you are an imbecile. Imbeciles are also yellow. Bright quote-unquote “sunshine” yellow.

Ignoramus. Oblivious. Yellow. 

“She’s often late,” Rosemary says. “But we don’t say anything because, well—”

“Because,” Jordan interrupts, “White Dove, Chantilly Lace, Cloud White, White Heron, Swiss Coffee, Calm, and Gray Owl. Her shades are legendary.” 

And that calms me instantly. Calm like OC-22, the color Rebecca Fembacher named, along with all of the most sought-after interior shades on the neutrals bestseller list at Benjamin Moore. One wonders if it is the names or the visual appeal of the shades themselves which give them purchase on the list of famed interior water-based paints. 

I’ve been waiting to work with Rebecca Fembacher my whole life. Ever since I was a child in the paint aisle and first saw her work. Palladian Blue, Willow Creek, even a pale creamy yellow she coined Man on The Moon.

I must remain OC-22 Calm.

Do you remember the dazzling paint sample display at your home improvement store? Some of us—you know who you are—have wondered if we might be better suited to selecting color names because, my friends, “moxie” is not the name of a pale whisper of pink. What bright imbecile-yellow asshole would think it was? And so you pursue your dreams and they bring you here, to day one of your new job, naming shades of paint with Rebecca Fembacher, who is late.

Her screen opens. She looks disheveled. We’re working remotely because, global pandemic or not, the shades will not rename themselves. Pandemic demand for paint is high. Names must be updated with the times. Patriotic White isn’t selling. We’re relying on our walls to be both our interior and exterior world. We can’t save our elders from taking their last breath on respirators, but we can repaint our kitchens. We need something to do with our hands and, damn it, we’re terrible kneaders of sourdough.

Sourdough would be a great name for the neutral collection. Noted.

But Rebecca-Fucking-Fembacher looks like she’s just returned from a drive-through with a cup as large as her Caliente Red face, which fills the screen. She slurps loudly through her straw at the dregs in the bottom of her bucket of Coke. Only essential businesses are to remain open. Rebecca Fembacher is not in a silk blouse. Her walls are not Saybrook Sage. She’s not at all as I envisioned her.
So that must be why, before I can censor myself, I shout, “You’re late, you ungrateful cow.”

I clamp my hand over my mouth, too late. Jordan, in his little box on the screen, lets his gaping maw hang open. Rosemary’s eyes, framed in absurdly large tortoise-shell glasses, grow wide. But Rebecaca Fembacher says nothing. No apology. No gracious self-flagellation.

Yellow.

This too, I must let go. I reach out and slowly close my laptop, on this, my first and last day at Benjamin Moore Paints.