Free Nantucket Sawbuck by Steven Axelrod Page B

quiet from November to May: just the slaves driving from the barracks to the job-sites, making everything perfect for the perfectionist housewives who had nothing to do but redecorate. She knew the word “slaves” was highly charged. She had gotten into arguments about it. Plasterers and housepainters had gotten furious with her at the Box or the Muse when she described them that way. They felt free. She understood that, but it was an illusion. They made just enough money to pay for the necessities of their lives. It was a lot of money, but Nantucket’s economy was precisely calibrated to leave them with nothing at the end of the month. No health insurance, no savings, no prospects—just a rented room, a leased truck, and an ever-increasing debt load.
    Tanya didn’t have any debt. She didn’t have any credit cards. She didn’t have a credit rating. She owned her battered old pickup outright, stayed with friends or took house-sitting jobs and tried her best to stay under the government radar. She had never been arrested or fingerprinted. She didn’t own a computer, and had never been on the Internet. No “cookies” defined her tastes and predilections for the benefit of large corporations. She paid cash at Stop & Shop; she didn’t have a Stop & Shop card. She wasn’t on their database. People thought she was paranoid. That was fine with her.
    She was standing in front of a wooden stepladder, not painting the window sash set up on two nails driven into the ladder’s legs to make a crude easel. Her mind was wandering. Slaves. Yes, she had re-entered the slave economy, but there was no other way to do what needed to be done. She needed access, and housepainters got it. They were supposed to be inside people’s houses when no one was home; trespassing was part of their job description.
    So she had driven by the Lomax job site on Eel Point road last June, hoping to find out who the painting contractor was. It had all happened faster than she expected. She’d met Mike Henderson that afternoon and he had hired her on the spot. He was short-handed and she was experienced. He was attractive and she was beautiful—that had something to do with it. The difference between them was, she knew the effect her looks had on people, and he had no idea about his own. She could tell he saw himself as an awkward lug in need of a shower, with a big head and a small bald spot, shy despite his size, hen-pecked and stinking of thinner. But she loved his looks instantly. She loved the lack of vanity in his disarrayed hair and paint-spattered Nantucket Whalers sweatshirt. She loved the natural authority with which he ran his crew, showing a new kid how to smooth the paint with the flat of the brush, doing it gently, saying “Here’s a little trick—it’ll make your life easier,” helping another kid who had spilled some paint onto a drop cloth on the new deck. The kid had no idea how fast the paint would penetrate that thin cotton, but Mike did. He bundled it up and was rubbing the cedar planks with dirt a few seconds later. Tanya had grabbed a handful of garden soil and joined him. He grinned up at her.
    â€œPainting is the perfect job if you never grew up,” he said. “Where else can you clean things with dirt?”
    The main thing was, he didn’t yell.
    Tanya was used to men who yelled. Her sister Anna had been, too. Maybe that was why Anna got involved with Lomax in the first place.
    She knew Mike was attracted to her, but she soon found out that he was married and she kept the flirting low-key. She didn’t want any complications or distractions; she didn’t want to get sidetracked. She had a job to do and she was making progress. She was getting to know the two brothers, Danny and Eric, flirting with them, playing them off against each other, chipping at them for information, digging and brushing off each find like an archaeologist