The paint was white. But there were so many whites. He looked at the shapes on the piece of paper. What had he been told about how to say this word? He closed his eyes. Beena. Beena. Something-beena. He looked around the store, trying to sense, among all the many men he could see, which was a kind one. A man in a white shirt and white pants looked at him looking at him and turned, fast and sharp; it was not him. A small Mexican; his eyes were too dull. Another small Mexican; he spoke no English. Aziz could sense that because of the way he held his hands and by his hat, the way it was on his head. But wait, maybe he did speak English. He tried to get a better look at his eyes.

“Sir, may I help you?” It was a man in pressed pants, gold in color.

“I . . . I . . . need white, but—” Aziz started. He looked closely, without looking as if he was looking closely. He saw a young man with a ravaged complexion, so red and unsettled, it seemed impossible that he walked around with it, right there, on his face. Yet this bad face seemed nothing to this young man. His grass-colored shirt was stiff with clean. He was this way that Americans had, of being soft but hard; nothing difficult, nothing easy; nothing good, nothing bad. It was a way of being that Aziz had no words for yet. He knew one thing: It was not possible to predict which way it would go. Sometimes, talking to a person in such a state, they turned real, looked inside you closely, let you know something everyone knew but no one was saying. Other times, they snapped and hated. Most of the time, he was noticing, they just kept on with that thing that was not readable or nameable. But it was not safe to assume it would always be that way. Once, someone had laughed at him. Once, someone had hit him. He assumed there were many other things that could happen. There was only one thing to do, and that was to say what you could say.

“It is beena white,” Aziz tried.

“Damn interior desecraters, so many damn-ass colors for a simple thing called white. Give me a look-see,” the young man said. He craned over to read the paper in Aziz’s hands.

“Verbena white. Jesus fucking Christ. Okay. How many?”

“Four gallon.”

“Here we go.”