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Their first day in the new house, it's too small and too large all at once. Tiny, compared to the Caulder house--"Well, we'll be living like the middle class," Rita declares cheerfully as Larry turns the key in the front door--but empty. The floors echo with their footsteps as they walk through it again, stripped of all the character it had had when they'd been given the grand tour by a realtor five days ago. The whole process was a whirlwind, adult children looking to rent out their dead mother's house as soon as possible; they wanted the deposit, a few days to have a company haul her crocheted doilies and plastic-covered furniture to the curb, and another day to have the place cleaned.
"We'll need lamps," Rita tells him, and Larry nods, caught up in imagining plants on stands, on end tables, on window sills. "I do love the lighting a lamp gives. Soft and golden, flattering in all weather. I'm sure we can find a decent antique shop somewhere around here. Small towns are stuffed to the brim with those, aren't they?"
Larry shrugs, peering through the venetian blinds in the dining room. "More like a thrift shop. Our bank accounts aren't exactly overflowing with riches."
"Same difference." She's already going on to the kitchen, opening cupboard doors and poking her head inside, as though she expects to find leftover cornflakes in them. "The point is, we're going to find things that look like they belong in a house. I don't want any of those..." When he glances her way, she's gesturing with one hand, looking for the perfect description. "Those little Swedish tables that look like they were designed by people who wish they lived in a psychoanalyst's waiting room."
"Since when do you know what a psychoanalyst's waiting room looks like?" he asks, leaning against the doorjamb.
"I've seen Woody Allen movies. I know. We're going to need to divide up the cabinets." She's moved on to looking inside the fridge, opening all the crisper drawers. "There's an odd number."
Larry leaves her to the work of verifying they've been given the empty room they were promised, wandering out the kitchen door. "You can have the extra one if I can have the porch."
The fridge door shuts, and Rita's heels click on the linoleum, and then the nubby painted cement of the screened-in porch. For a moment or two, she stands there beside him, and without looking down, he knows she's looking at him. His attention's on the horizon--or where it'd be, anyway, if a copse of trees wasn't blocking it from view. "The porch was always yours, Larry. If you don't buy out an entire nursery to fill it up, I'll be very disappointed."
Under the bandages, he smiles, his head tilting slightly. And from the next yard over, an old man sitting in a plastic chair looks up. Larry doesn't notice him beyond registering that he's there, certainly doesn't recognize that he's squinting in their direction, until he yells, "Hey! Invisible Man! Ginger! Eat shit."
❧
By the time night falls, they've moved all their things from the Super 9 room they've been staying in, debated the merits of getting a dog, and bought groceries. Rita hasn't been convinced of the value a cocker spaniel would add, and Larry's steadfastly refused to consider applying for work as a security guard.
"I know it's not glamorous," Rita sighs, over a steaming teacupful of coffee, heavily fortified with whiskey, "but it's honest work. Easy. And if you're there at night, there's no one around most of the time."
Larry's taking his whiskey in highball form, primarily because he's not in the mood for cold coffee and can't stick a plastic straw into one of Rita's scalding cups. She's already given him shit---the mildest of shit, if he's honest, just enough that it feels like home--for the neon orange crazy straw in his glass. They've relaxed into the usual old understanding that lives between them as they sit on blankets on the bare floor of the living room. It's halfway between an indoor picnic and a slumber party, especially once Rita's slathered her face in a mint-green face cream that smells disconcertingly like strawberries. He swizzles his straw a few times, listening to the ice cubes clink against the glass.
"Wouldn't see a lot of each other, if I'm doing night work," he says, like that's the main complaint he has with the idea. Like the problem is the possibility of loneliness, as if he wouldn't know how to keep himself busy across endless empty afternoons. Of course he knows how to do that--he's been doing it for decades. And they both know it.
Rita rolls her eyes. "Of course we will. We'll have weekends, for one thing, and mornings when you're coming home and I'm leaving, and if something really dire comes up, you can call in sick. You're covered in bandages, it's not like they won't believe you."
"I'm aware."
"So..." she says, drawing the word out and waving a hand along an invisible track. It's an invitation to explain himself, one he's not actually in the mood to take--but she'll be on him if he doesn't. Sometime in the last year, she's become...not motherly, exactly. He suspects she'd hate being anyone's mother. But her tendencies toward nosiness have taken on a slightly different air. She looks at broken things and thinks about fixing them, these days, even if she doesn't have the first idea how to do it.
Part of him dearly wishes she'd turn all that attention on herself. But maybe she is, someplace he doesn't see. Rita's always been closed-mouthed about certain angles of her past, things he'd never know to miss if he hadn't heard all the Hollywood stories she's bursting to tell at least five times each; he knows the empty spaces in between them only because he knows her, and has for half a century. He's never asked what belongs in those dusty corners in her memories, for the same reason she never demanded stories about John. They've lived a friendship of unspoken understandings, full of secrets neither's ever felt the need to drag into the light.
"I'll think about it," Larry mutters, and sucks in a mouthful of whiskey and ginger ale. In hopes of cutting off further ideas--she's also floated the possibility of custodian, gas station attendant, and late-night stocker at the grocery store--he turns the conversation back on her. "Until then, I can help you grade papers."
This is distraction enough to move on from the question of what will Larry do with his time, it seems, Rita smiling from behind her china cup. "It's a drama class, Larry. They don't write papers."
"Don't be so sure. You have to grade them on something."
"That's what monologues are for." She says this as if it's obvious, and for her, maybe it is. Larry watches her in the dim light of a lamp they'd bought that day, sitting there on her blanket with the most satisfied grin he's seen from her in weeks. Her bare toes curl for a moment. "I've got all the notes from the last drama teacher, and it's all grading on the performance, maybe one review of a performance. They're there to work on their art--it's going to be very focused on the acting."
"Are you nervous?" He's genuinely curious. Rita's never been one to flee the spotlight, but he knows from experience that standing up in front of a group of unruly kids is a hell of a different experience from getting adults' attention and keeping it.
"What's there to be nervous about? They're teenagers. Their whole lives are acne and college applications." She leans forward, grabbing a piece of chocolate from a box they'd bought on a whim, along with the whiskey. (We have to celebrate our independence, she'd said, and he hadn't disagreed. A quarter of the contents are already zipped up in a plastic bag for him to eat privately later.) "If a couple of high-school freshmen can get under my skin, I deserve whatever torments they come up with."
"Put a tack on my tenth-grade English teacher's chair once. Think they still do that one?"
"I'll check every chair I sit in," she tells him, so serious that he can't tell if she's making a joke. (He's not sure if she's certain, either--it's not like she went to school.) "Because I'm going to make this work. We're going to make this work, Larry. And that's why--"
"I need a job," he finishes wearily. "It's a little easier said than done, you know. I'm a little more noticeable than you when I walk into an interview."
"They have to give you a job if you're qualified, never mind what you look like. There are laws about that now." There's something impatient in her expression, some look he can't quite put a name to. The best he has is worried, and that doesn't seem right. "And you know perfectly well that I might not blend in forever. But that's a risk I'm going to take, if it means I get to try being Ms. Cramp, drama teacher extraordinaire."
"You will be." Whether it's true or not doesn't matter--though he hopes it will be, for her sake. Rita Farr (well, Gertrude Cramp, at least as far as the outside world is concerned), fearless trailblazer, is a new development, one he's proud of her for making. They haven't sat in the dark together and watched one of her movies in nearly half a year. But it still feels fragile, like a hard wind might send her running back to the safety of shadows and light on a projector screen.
She's right about one thing, he thinks. If they're going to live out here, in this house, they're going to have to try. And not just because the rent's going to be due in a few weeks.
"--worry for another day." Only halfway through the sentence does he realize Rita answered him. "Tomorrow, we're furniture shopping."
"You weren't planning on sleeping on the floor permanently?" he asks, reaching for the whiskey bottle. It means I'm willing to drop it if you are.
Rita sighs dramatically, an agreement that doesn't require anything besides a roll of her eyes to mean I am, too. "They say it's good for your back, but you watch--"
And--for that night, at least--trying to build a life outside the mansion feels within reach.