Wet paint.
I reached for my phone.
CHAPTER TEN — Red on Yellow
When I opened the front door, I saw the red paint first and recognized the shape of my car only afterward.
It was a strange sensation. I had spent years studying finishes until I could detect a flaw no wider than a human hair. Yet for a few seconds I could not understand a scene that filled my entire driveway.
A line of paint ran diagonally across the hood. Another traveled over the windshield. Thick splashes marked the driver’s door, the side intake, and the carbon-fiber trim. The mirror had been kicked hard enough that its housing sagged, and on the hood someone had written FRAUD in large, wet, angry letters.
I thought of the afternoon my father told me I didn’t need permission to enjoy what I’d earned. I thought of the little drawing Priya’s daughter had made, the sunshine shark on my refrigerator. Then Dylan laughed.
“That’s what happens when you flex on people,” he said.
Brooke was filming from the street. Her phone followed my face. I understood why: the point wasn’t simply to hurt the car. It was to capture what hurting the car did to me.
I walked down the steps. Dylan was standing beside the front fender, red paint spotting his shoes. He had an open can in his hand and a brush tucked beneath one arm. He tipped the can slightly, showing the red pooling near its rim.
“Careful,” I said. “Don’t spill any more.”
He laughed again. “Look at him. He’s worried about the paint.”
I photographed the scene from the porch, then from the edge of the driveway. I made sure each shot included recognizable landmarks, and I took one long uninterrupted video while walking slowly around the vehicle. I did not touch the can or the car. My hands wanted to do things my mind refused to allow.
Dylan leaned closer, trying to get me to look into his girlfriend’s camera.
“Tell everybody how much the rental company charges,” he said.
“Move away from the car.”
“Or what?”
“Or you can explain to the police why you were standing beside it with wet paint on your hands.”
His smile tightened. For a second he seemed to consider tipping the can onto my shoes. Then he noticed Vivienne approaching from her front lawn, and his confidence returned.
She came directly to me, not the car. She said I’d staged everything. She said it was an elaborate insurance scam. She asked why a man who “washed vehicles for a living” needed an expensive car, and she said those words loudly enough to travel the whole street.
“People like you don’t belong in a car like that here,” she added.
She didn’t raise her voice on the last sentence. She didn’t need to. It landed like something rehearsed.
I was aware of three upstairs curtains moving. A delivery van passed and slowed. The driver looked at the paint and then at the people standing around it. Nobody on the street spoke.
My phone was in my right hand. I had learned a long time ago that a fact preserved properly was stronger than a performance of anger.
“I heard you,” I said to Vivienne. “And I recorded you.”
Her gaze dropped to the screen. “Delete that.”
