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Princess’s eyes found her body in the mirror. She turned sideways and Beckett stepped in front of her to block her view.
Stop trying to—Beckett began, couldn’t find the word at first—renovate yourself.
* * *
Beckett’s first client at the rebooted Beyond Repair company was a woman from Princess’s gym, Stephanie, who was getting married the following August, more than a year away, and had already sent Princess an invitation. She wanted to paint her living room orange. She saw it on Pinterest.
Don’t discourage her, Princess said. It’s her vision, not yours.
I can’t let her ruin her life, Beckett said. Her house is too small for orange. And her furniture is not the furniture on Pinterest. It’ll look like Halloween in there.
Every time you want to say something negative, Princess advised him, smile instead and say, That’s interesting.
That worked until the woman said she wanted to paint the baseboards, the trim, the door, and the ceiling orange as well. Standing in his new green shirt and tan chinos, holding his notebook, Beckett suggested that they try such a bold colour in a smaller space, like her powder room, to see if she liked it. Then he fell into his old habit of overextension. To persuade her, he told her that he could get the powder room painted in one day, tomorrow, and if she didn’t like it, not only would he have stopped her from making a bigger mistake, but he’d repaint it the original Chantilly Lace (which always sounded like panties rather than a paint colour to Beckett). She agreed. He painted the powder room, as promised, even behind the toilet. He cheated and desaturated the orange for the ceiling and trim. Stephanie loved it. Every time she opened the door, she told him, it was like opening a light box. She felt like she was peeing in a golden sunset.
Fortunately, Stephanie was the kind of woman who had sharp turns of opinion. She might swap out the groom next August, who knew? She opted to paint the living room Maple Glaze, a brownish neutral. She couldn’t have two orange rooms, after all. Stephanie then recommended Beckett to an older woman who wanted someone to change the railings in her house so they wouldn’t be a danger to her grandchild. He gave her a quote and some advice, then she dumped him for someone else. That happened a lot, he remembered from his first time at the rodeo. He’d spend a lot of time commuting from Vancouver to Burnaby or Surrey and then the homeowner would go with some cheaper or more charming guy. Who knew why people chose people? Some homeowners trusted a paunch, others an older man, others a man not eager to take the job, a chatty contractor, a taciturn one, a coffee drinker, an energy drinker, a drinker drinker.
There was a lull after Stephanie and soon it was more than a lull. Beckett was unemployed again.
* * *
He posted an ad on Kijiji. Princess told him to use the word handyman and he gaped at her. He pressed his hand to his chest, her gesture.
Oh, Gus, baby, I know, she said. Just try it. Post two ads, and add handyman to one of them, and compare the hits.
As the results came in, Beckett insisted that the experiment was flawed.
Princess created an Instagram account for Beyond Repair. More than ten years ago, when Beckett first tried to launch an empire of one, Instagram was not a serious place for business. These days, apparently, it was. Princess encouraged him to take quick, high-impact jobs so he could generate before-and-after pics. He did a feature wall. She posted it. That led to a few other wall jobs, including a TV inset in a high-gloss louvred wall.
Between Kijiji, Instagram, and Marketplace, Princess’s luxury filters and Beckett’s rock-bottom prices, the work came in steadily. As was the case ten years ago, Beckett reaffirmed that most people should not be allowed to touch their houses. He would confiscate their houses if he could.
The women thought they were interior designers, either demanding the latest trend like he was a slack-jawed lackey or rejecting it because their tastes were stuck in the days of plastic furniture slipcovers. The men thought tools and repair were in their DNA. Most of them could use a drill but were stumped by materials that didn’t come with pre-drilled holes. He ripped up poorly installed laminate, scarfed baseboards, patched holes where TV mounts had come crashing down, reinstalled toilets and fixed water damage to the ceiling below. Some work, like anchoring tall cabinets to studs, could not be photographed. Annoying work. Work rooted in incompetence. But it paid the mortgage, which thanks to Princess was now set to accelerated weekly payments to save them money in the long run. She urged Beckett to lock in a rate but he was sure that rates would—had to—fall any day now.
He’d gotten into construction because he wanted to do something with his hands and to make money and earn a respectable life, since he was not what his father would call educated. Now his purposes had expanded. He was going to take people’s ugly houses and make them so beautiful their eyes would melt and drip down their faces. Nobody should ever have to live with drafty windows, carpet in bathrooms, holes in the wall, rickety banisters, or, ideally, with popcorn ceilings, shaker cabinets, laminate countertops—the list was extensive. He gave his clients therapeutic colours and reliable flooring and massage jets. He was changing their lives. Easy—he was changing their houses. But the satisfaction on their faces was like (udon noodle) like watching someone enjoy a meal (udon noodle) he prepared.
That’s how he felt on the best of days.
When the bad days piled up, it didn’t take much for him to montage the failures of his life and get discouraged. A woman in Coquitlam hired him to hang a full-length mirror in her front hall then haggled his rate down until he got frustrated and left without payment. On the drive home, low on gas and listening to Nat King Cole, he quit.
You can’t quit yourself, Princess said as he lugged his tool bag into the house. You’re your boss.
Well, I fire myself then.
What happened?
Nothing. I don’t want to be a handyman. It’s embarrassing. I used to build houses.
You have to start somewhere.
I’ve started. I’ve started many times. I can’t keep starting, Beckett said. It’s—he didn’t want to say embarrassing again—wrong, Princess, showing up all eager and smiling and then having someone toss a few bills at me.
So what? You’ll go back to working for some connard like the Mouth?
It wasn’t so bad.
Beckett. She grabbed his shoulders. Listen to yourself.
I’ll just call and see if he has any work for me.
Absolutely not, Beckett.
I’m done whoring myself out to people in Richmond to install towel racks and mirrors and mount TVs.
Just commit to yourself.
Beckett knew she was asking him for something lofty and yogaish—persistence, self-fulfillment, we-shall-overcome values. But they needed money if they were going to keep buying farmers’-market grapes and blocks of parmesan.
Princess continued: Trust me. I didn’t marry you for your money. I wasn’t looking for a man in finance, trust fund, 6’5”, blue eyes.
That’s too bad, because I totally married you for your body, Beckett said, regretted it, then grew serious. And if we lose the house while I’m levitating and manifesting my dreams and all that?
When Beckett was a child, his father kept empty cartons and packages in the fridge so that it would appear full. Once he caught his mother pouring skim milk into a red whole-milk carton and adding water.
Fine, we lose the house. Princess held his eye. You’ll build us a better one.
Beckett snorted, but he was pleased.
There’s my Snuffleupagus, Princess said.
* * *
One morning as he was coming down the stairs, Beckett heard Princess talking on the phone. He’s pretty big, he heard her say. The day was looking up. But almost immediately, it became clear that she was talking about his general frame or maybe not about him at all.
She said, I mean, like, dense. If I was a man with good muscle density, I’d just be lifting random stuff all the time.
She had said this to Beckett when they were dating, called him prehistoric. She was going through her material.
He’s not even pregnant and it’s like he’s carrying around a whole other person all the time, she said. I think all that weight-bearing is why they have better bone density than us.
When Beckett turned the corner, Princess was in a sarong. She had wrapped that sarong around his waist once and he felt very powerful, like a Polynesian warrior. He knew she really longed to wear African clothes but couldn’t for fear of being called out for cultural appropriation. She thought that African clothes, no matter the region, were superior to clothes from all other cultures, except maybe Indian. Was it the clothes or the body she wanted? She wanted to be slowed down by a Kezaesque train, to waggle through a market with the word juicy splashed across her back end, to squeeze her tiny iPhone into the back pocket and be called an Awoulaba.
When she ended the call, her eyes softened into her dreamworld and the day mumbled on as it had during Beckett’s initial unemployment phase.
But at night, when they were watching their premium cable package, Princess looked down at her chest and squeezed her breasts together, trapping her gold @Princess necklace.
What if I went bigger? she said.
* * *
Beckett had been home for over a week, partially by choice, puttering and running, snacking and humming Family Feud. His hands felt empty. His pockets too. Tariffs were in the air, the Bank of Canada had raised rates again, and they, he technically, still had a variable mortgage. His truck payments were fixed, fortunately. He found himself in the produce aisle, looking around to see if anyone else was outraged at the inflated price of bananas.
At home, he tapped a real estate flyer on the counter. What do you think about renting out a room part-time?
The idea took Princess by surprise because she was the type to want people over, not him. Beckett himself wasn’t sure whether he was revolting against traditional employment or succumbing to the latest permutation of feudalism. That last part was something his anarchist father would say.
If things go well, he forecasted, we could buy an investment property with the profits.
Princess looked rightly skeptical, and he amended the prediction.
We could pay down the mortgage faster.
There was no way he would have been able to buy his house in the present market. He couldn’t even afford it in the past market, pre-Princess. Then his mother died, and named him, not her husband, the executor of her will. She also left an insurance policy in US currency to which he was sole beneficiary. He didn’t share the money. The rest of his family didn’t talk to him anymore. They were, as Princess liked to put it, estranged. Beckett reasoned that he was her only son. Two of his half-brothers were out of the house by the time he finished elementary school, yet they thought they should get some, as did his father, whom Beckett had always considered his half-father. When he was growing up, his mother equated manhood with home ownership. His father equated manhood with vehicles: if you had a truck, you had a job. Now he had both, a detached house in Vancouver and Becky, a black Ford F-150, his dream truck.
We’re already paying down the mortgage faster, Princess said. And tenants? Do you want to deal with tenants?
He scrunched up his face.
Princess had beaten him at his game. She leaned out the front door with a little twirl and retrieved the mail without stepping on the porch. She sometimes turned regular movements into acrobatics. Microworkouts.
Beckett recovered. You can manage the rental money, he said.
She considered before replying. I don’t need another thing to worry about, Beckett.
She was implying a different worry.
I don’t want people around all the time, she went on, channelling Beckett as he was channelling her.
Not all the time. I was thinking more like an Airbnb.
Don’t make me hang out with a bunch of strangers, she quoted him.
His eyes smiled. We only rent when we feel up to it. Think about it, we’re in Vancouver, between the mountains and the ocean. Big trees, hikes, fancy buildings, Teslas and Porsches everywhere, luxury shopping.
I don’t know, she said.
Whales, he added to the list.
Oh, whales, of course. Where do I sign? Princess said.
Beckett said, You can screen who we accept. It’s just something—he almost slipped and said to keep you busy, which was still better than to keep you from looking in the mirror all day—something to host some cool people, have some good dinners. It’s not just about the money.
At the possibility of entertaining, Princess reverted to being herself and received the idea eagerly. Their social life had felt impoverished since the Woods. They needed to have people around, laughter, clinking glasses, ice, braised meat. She could spend her excess energy on that.
That night Princess found a different platform, Locale, something between the communal warmth of couch surfing and the capitalist cool of Airbnb. Money in exchange for a place and meals. She ran calculations after Beckett went to bed and dreamt loud dreams of machinery and men shouting at him. In the morning, she showed him the nightly rental rate for rooms in Vancouver. They could cover their mortgage if they only rented space out twelve nights a month. If they were out of town, they could rent the whole house and that would set them up nicely for months. She proposed improvements to the attic bedroom upstairs to turn it into a suite. Beckett knew she was proposing a project to keep him occupied.
Nevertheless, he installed dimmers, an electric fireplace, and painted—work that kept him very tired, too tired, for a few evenings and a full weekend. Princess bought a microwave, a wine fridge, a coffeemaker. They put all the materials on a credit card. Within days of uploading photographs, they had their first request, from an international student who would arrive a day early for her homestay elsewhere in the city. Beckett and Princess chestbumped like when they were dating, before the augmentation.
Princess changed the sheets and placed a souvenir of a totem pole on the nightstand. Beckett cooked a mushroom stir-fry as a welcome dinner. Although the guest was polite, her limited English meant that she had no choice but to listen to Princess talk all evening. Also, it was clear that she had disordered eating. Princess discovered two jars of baby food in the recycling bin and tried to offhandedly talk about proper nutrition.
In bed, Beckett told Princess that she shouldn’t provide people with unsolicited comments about their weight or shape, even if affirming. In elementary school in Maine, he had told a girl that she looked like a cow. He meant it as a compliment. She had the slow gentle manner of cows and the beautiful balance of her heavy body on her little legs. Objectively. She took offence and yet he didn’t see how anyone would be offended to be compared to an animal. Cows weren’t fat. They were supposed to be that size, as was she.
Princess shrugged it off. She hadn’t offered the girl a Principlasty, at least. Before he fell asleep, Princess reached for Beckett—she was wound up after the socializing—but he didn’t want their guest to hear them having sex.
She can’t hear us from up there.
She can, he said.
Princess kicked off the blankets. I’ll go up there and you tell me if you hear anything.
Don’t disturb her. She’ll leave a bad review. You already criticized her diet.
Then I’ll ask her in the morning.
Don’t do that, Beckett said. Who’s going to admit that they heard their hosts—
You can’t even say the word.
Copulating, he said.
Princess laughed a big, satisfied laugh and rolled on her back.
Having intercourse, he said, still exaggerating his prudishness. Rolling in the hay? Knocking boots? Making whoopee? Boinking? Filling the gas tank.
She nudged him to stop.
We can have all the sex you want after she leaves, he said.
He could feel Princess’s eyes X-raying the ceiling for a few minutes. When she shut them, all the light seemed to go out of the room. Possibly, there’d be twelve days each month when he could get a full night’s rest. He suspected that she was trying to work them up to Wood-Keza-level frequency and freakiness, and he kept swatting. More sex wasn’t good sex. She knew that too.
In the morning when Beckett entered the kitchen, only a couple of minutes after Princess, she and the international student were deep in pleasantries. Princess had asked her about the noise level up there, whether it was quiet. The girl said that it was fine. Princess asked again, for Beckett’s benefit. The international student picked up on the insistence and said that she slept like a baby log. When she left that morning, she gave Princess a small package of tea, presented with both hands. She left a good review in which she mentioned the quietness of the house, as if they were prodding her in that direction.
Beckett was aware that he promised bucketloads of sex after the guest left but that night his throat was sore. He was likely coming down with a cold in July or worse. Princess touched his forehead. The next morning, the sore throat was gone.
Princess was eager to have more guests.
Yeah, but let’s not inflict our stories on them, Beckett said. Let them talk.
You’re inflicting. I’m regaling.
Next came a strapping Black British man who stayed with them for two days. Princess didn’t just ignore Beckett’s advice; she went deep into the begats.
Her parents were conflicted missionaries who worked at a Methodist clinic in Côte d’Ivoire. In Yamoussoukro, she spoke French at school, some Baoulé on the playground, and English and French at home. There was no posh international school. Her parents said if the Ivorian schools were good enough for the Black children then they were good enough for her, their only child
