A Nice Quiet Life Chapter 6

Chapter 6

This is Ciane’s renovacy.
The link to the story and the download is here:
https://2sim3.wordpress.com/other/container/ I thought little Miss Don’t-Do-That had been pretty like, rude man, about my pad. Maybe she kind of had a point though. Perhaps I should try and make it look a bit more conventional. Now I’d seen inside her place, I could see why this might have been a bit of a shock. If my family could see me now, they’d have like, fifty fits, never mind one. Fifty each, probably. But I might find treasure. Hey man, it’s buried everywhere. I got home bushed. Dreamt of rain falling softly – and woke up to this! Better deal with it, or little Miss Don’t Do That really will have something to complain about. And it hasn’t done much for my Tree Of Life. Could be a Sign, that like, man, I really do have to change my groove. Could be time for a trip to the builders’ yard. Yup, that flood has just about done for all my works of art. I’m going to have to do something – and, man, I found some good stuff at the junk yard yesterday. Time to transform my palace. And whaddaya know? I got invited downstairs for a meal! Put my best clothes on, in honour of the occasion. Hey, man, she actually said sorry. And meant it. I’d have seen that burglar off anyway – no-one’s going to pick on others while I’m around and can stop it. The food was pretty cool too – all home-grown and organic. And we talked like real people. I washed up, she tidied up. I can tell when neat matters to people. But, like, I never saw the need to live dirty anyway. Being smelly is just so not cool. I went to the gym for a swim after a day of nailing down floorboards – tomorrow I’m staining them. After I’ve painted the walls. A real cool blue everywhere. And anyway, there she was, playing chess against a real person instead of her computer. Franco’s no mean player either, and she was doing good against him. “So how did you learn to do all this building stuff?”
I’d been invited to breakfast – I’d had to sleep out in the tent overnight while the paint and stain stopped smelling so much, but she’d been cool with that. And then offered me breakfast, seeing as I couldn’t really light a fire and cook it. No Camping, remember? But she’d said she wouldn’t tell about that one night outside.
She was talking to me like I was a real person. Fair enough – I could, like, open up a bit about myself. “I worked on a building site. For, like, four years. Learnt a lot. Grew some muscles too…now I use the gym, but back then it was , like, real weights I was lifting.” I wasn’t going to tell her too much about why I was working the sites, didn’t want to bore the lady, but a little wouldn’t hurt.
“So, like, what did you do after school?” “College. Accountancy.” She kinda drooped, like a flower with no water. Didn’t look like college-accountancy had done her any good. I waited to see if she, like, wanted to spill a few more beans into my listening ear, but she stopped there. So I changed the subject.
“When I’ve got my place finished, you want to come see it?” A bit more scavenging, and I reckoned I’d find what I needed to finish furnishing my little palace. “So what do you think, then?” I was, like, a bit worried. I mean, to me it looked really cool, all colour and life, but this lady had her own style too. “It’s amazing. Such a transformation.” She could see that my furniture was a bit, like, second-hand, but she was too kind to comment on that. This lady had manners as well as style – this visit, anyway.
“I love what you’ve done.” She smiled at me. “I like the window box too.”
“Hey, lady, I hoped you would. I put that there specially to like, please you, lighten your day a bit.” I think she blushed! Summer, and I laid some slabs in the shade (moved my garden plants too: they were so, like, not cool with the shade), and added a painting that looked – to me – like that little lady’s true personality. Found a chess table and a couple of old chairs and we’d sit in the shade and she started to teach me how to play chess. Autumn was warm too, so we carried on. She was like, way better than me! Sometimes almost like a machine; but then I’d look at my painting and think: I’m sure that beautiful, romantic lady is inside you somewhere. I invited her up for breakfast – just to prove that I could do it! – and her too-sharp eyes spotted my certificates.
“You did an art degree? And got a first? And you play guitar to that level?”
“Well, yes, ma’am, I do.”
“Your family must have been so impressed.”
“Well, no ma’am, they weren’t.”
“So – if you can do that, this well, why the building site work?”
I was going to have to come clean.
“Lady, there was no way they wanted me to do art. And no way they were going to fund it. Construction’s well-paid, if you live cheap – and seasonal. That’s how I put myself through university.”
That pretty face of hers changed – lost that little mischievous sparkle. “Oh, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have…”
“Hey, lady, I didn’t mind you asking. Like, you can say what you want to me. I grew a thick skin a long time ago.” By the time winter came, we were like, friends, y’know? If we hadn’t seen each other around for a couple of days, we’d check up on each other. Lady came upstairs to see me ‘cause she hadn’t heard my Briar Rose singing.
“Now I’ve got a place instead of a tent, I can paint in the winter. I can always sell my work. Someone’s always needing a bit of colour in their lives somewhere.”
Told you we felt at home with each other. She picked up my dirty plate – hey man, my muse was calling me, the plate can wait – and washed it up for me. And commented on my new windows – well, the old ones didn’t exactly keep out the cold. Then she sat and chatted for a bit, while I painted, talked about how she’d loved books rather than art, writing rather than painting. But she wasn’t, like, putting me down you know. I said she should write again – it’s winter, can’t go out, so go into your own world instead. Did I miss my tent? she asked. No, I said, though the cat lady had been fun to be round in a crazy kind of way. But I liked where I was now, and my new neighbour. And then I moved on to talking about painting in the spring, but the outside of the container this time: what colour did she think would look good? (Probably grey, I thought to myself). Well, I was wrong about the grey! Still don’t know why she like, creased up with laughter when I said did she want to look at some paint samples, but hey, she was laughing. And beautiful with it. That lady chose blue – and I cleared up the last of the railway from outside my palace. Even put a new door on.
This was working okay, this shared space. We even started talking through what to do with the garden next, now that it was spring. And then we came back from town together one day and we found that a third – and very ugly – container had appeared.
“Hey, Blue, I’m sorry about this. Mayor’s orders. We did move your plants rather than just ripping them out…”
I knew these guys. They were okay. But what was all this about? That little lady didn’t look too happy either, and I couldn’t blame her.