“Don’t pay her no mind,” said Isaiah, getting up. “Mr. Santangelo, he calls her a romantic.”

Davonn poked his head in. “You paintin’ or what? This ain’t Shakespeare.”

For the ceiling, there were fleecy rollers on sticks. Venita and Macey had not the slightest idea how to paint the ceiling and they were both horrified by the possibility of getting paint in their hair. They poked ineffectively as far away from themselves as possible. All they did was smear the ceiling.

“This,” said Macey, “is pathetic. We have to put something over our hair and do this right. Shower caps would be perfect, but I didn’t know enough to bring any.” She choked suddenly on the paint smell and began wheezing and coughing.

Venita rescued Macey’s paint pole so nothing would spatter in their hair during a coughing spasm. Then she went down the hall, opened a side door and propped it by wedging rags beneath it. Fresh air whipped around the corner, cool and essential.

When she came back, Macey said, “I’m like a six-year-old myself. I keep thinking about snack time. Isn’t it almost here?”

Venita grinned. “It’s church torture, making you wait for Dorothy Edna’s cinnamon-icing sticky buns.”

The fresh air sailed over a pile of empty paint cans. Past a garbage can packed with paint-soaked rags. Around stacks of newspaper. Around a slender oval container of turpentine … as flammable a liquid as ever gladdened the heart of an arsonist.

Venita raised her head oddly.

Macey looked at Venita and found herself imitating the movement of Venita’s chin, and so the faint smell of smoke entered Macey’s nostrils, too, and penetrated her brain, and she and Venita stared at each other.

Each girl set her brush down gently, to prevent dripping.

Each girl straightened and went to the door as if caution would prevent the smoke from being real.

They stepped into the narrow hall.

Its first coat of white was still tacky, gleaming like windows in the sun.

To their left were the painters in the last five rooms. Their chatter and the squishy ploof of their paint rollers, the slappy back-and-forth of their brushes, could be heard. A radio in one room was on a rock station; the radio in another room was tuned to a gospel station; and distantly, a third radio was playing an ad for car radios, which were a good deal at Car Max.

To their right was a gray puff.

It was no more than a cigarette being exhaled.

Venita glared at it and put her hands on her hips. She was the image of a schoolteacher, gonna march down there and tell off that jerk smoking around paint cans! Where was his brain?