Miles Who Painted One Wall Pink


Miles’ landlord owned one of the oldest buildings in the neighborhood. Everything was freshly painted over, but nothing had been updated. Not for several years. When the water from the tap came out brown, he looked embarrassed. He shut it off and said that it would go away. There was a draft. The floorboards creaked. Miles said that it was fine. He meant that it was what he could afford.
His friend KJ helped him move. She never lied, so Miles was not surprised when he opened the door, and she said that it was a shit apartment. Regardless, she was an efficient mover. What took Miles a day to pack, she unpacked in a matter of hours. It was gray and tiresome work, but she did it without complaining. She got the bed in the bedroom, the desk in the office, the couch in the living room, and the boxes in the kitchen. Miles began unpacking the kitchen when KJ stopped him. She pointed at a spot near the window. Miles jumped when it moved. She said, “You have roaches. Call an exterminator. They’ll get into your stuff if you don’t kill them first. Then there’s no getting rid of them.” Miles stopped what he was doing.
“KJ, am I fucked?” he asked.
“Yes, but you’re taking it like a champ,” she answered.
They ate out that night.
Back in the apartment, Miles made his bed in the dark. The sheet-smell overcame the old-smell of his new apartment. Miles breathed it in and crawled into bed. When he opened his eyes again, the room was still dark. He was disoriented. It was his bedroom. His new bedroom, and it was still unfamiliar. The cars that passed on the street below threw headlights through the window. They made it so that the walls looked like they were breathing. The headlights caught a shadow in the back corner near the closet. It looked vaguely human. It was about six feet tall and had arms and legs, and it was pitch black. It was darker than the rest of the room. Miles propped himself up on one elbow and asked, “Who are you?” The shadow figure walked out of the bedroom along the wall. Miles followed it.
He watched it slip into his office. In the office, it crept along a wall to a door that he did not remember being there. He followed it into a room he did not remember either. He followed the shadow through other rooms. Some rooms that were bathrooms. Some rooms that were waiting rooms. Some rooms that were ballrooms. He followed the shadow and thought, “I don’t remember my apartment being this big.” When he woke up in the morning, he had a fever.
Miles sweated through his bedsheets, so he moved to the couch. The fever made him weak. His limbs felt heavier than he remembered them being, and the air in the apartment felt thick. Miles’ lungs heaved it in and out as he moved from the bed to the living room, where he collapsed a few feet away from the couch. Beads of sweat and drool pooled around his cheek on the hardwood floor. The couch seemed far away. He closed his eyes and opened them. The floor looked like it was rippling like water. Miles grunted and made himself get up again. In several faltering steps, he reached the couch. He fell down on it, rolled, and vomited over the edge. He spent several days like that.
When Miles was well enough, he saw a doctor. The door on the office at the clinic had a mirror on it. His reflection was gaunt and pale. While he had been sick, his cheeks and eyes sunk into the rest of his face. His hair was slick with sweat and oil. Miles had a slight tremor now. He no longer felt hot or cold, but he shook. When the doctor returned, she said that Miles’ tests came back negative for the most serious illnesses he could have had. She diagnosed him with influenza. A serious flu, but just that. She said that it seemed like the worst was over and wanted Miles to eat something hearty and drink plenty of water. Miles hugged his skinny arms to his body. The doctor looked at him sympathetically and patted him firmly on the back.
Miles cleaned up at home. He took a long shower, happy that the water was as hot as he wanted it to be for as long as he needed it. He toweled himself dry and wiped the steam from the mirror in the bathroom. He looked better at home than he looked at his doctor’s office. He reasoned that it was the fluorescent lights that made him look like death. On his doctor’s advice, he made the biggest meal that he had in the apartment – a frozen pizza. He at it all in one sitting. When he finished, he left the apartment to get some fresh air.
Miles dressed and walked to the neighborhood bar. It was a slow night. He was one of a few there. He felt less like drinking than he felt like being out, so he ordered a soda and bitters and leaned back in his seat. A woman sat down next to him. She had long brown hair and green eyes, and she smiled sweetly and said, “I haven’t seen you around here before.” Miles bought her a drink.
She had been in the neighborhood for years. She served on the neighborhood association and loved her neighbors. Miles carefully watched her drink. When she finished, he invited her back to his apartment. She knew the building but had never been, so they left together. She kissed him first. He closed the door and turned around, and there she was. They fell down on the couch together. They pulled the clothes off of each other. Miles leaned into her but stopped abruptly. Something got in his eyes. He cursed and rubbed it, and as he rubbed it, more detritus fell from the ceiling. He looked up. A crack was widening. Specks of paint and foam insulation came falling through. The walls groaned and snapped, and materials from inside pushed outwards. The lights flickered. When the room started rocking, the woman whom Miles brought home stumbled to the door and ran.
The next day Miles got coffee with KJ. He tried to explain what happened the night before. “It’s like the walls came off of the ceiling, and then the ceiling started opening,” he said. “The ceiling was really opening. There’s something wrong with this apartment.” KJ asked what he was worried about. “I don’t know,” Miles shook his head. “I don’t know what to worry about. I don’t know what’s going on.” KJ had never seen him so upset.
“Do you remember that time you broke our ankle on the trampoline?” she reminded him.
“So what?”
“You got over that too is all,” she looked down at her coffee mug.
“I need a better job. I need money,” Miles replied. “I need a better place to stay.” He put his head in his hand. As she watched, KJ thought she saw a shadow pass over Miles. His features darkened and deepened so that the contrast increased between his cheeks and his cheekbones and his fingers and his knuckles and his eyes and his body.
“I’ll come home with you,” she put a hand on his forearm. “We’ll look at it, and we can figure out what has to be fixed. If your landlord won’t do it, we’ll do it ourselves.”
“You think it’s just falling apart?” he asked.
“It would be easier if it was,” she said. “But we’ll see.”
“Yeah,” Miles thought about it. “Okay. Let’s go,” he downed the last of his coffee and got up. KJ followed him. They left the coffee shop together. Miles’ apartment was just around the corner.
On the way, Miles looked frightened, so KJ held his hand. He smiled at her and kept walking. At his building, Miles let her go to unlock the front door. He fumbled his key ring but found the right one. He let her walk in ahead of him when he opened the door. They climbed the stairs to his floor together. At his door, Miles turned and said, “Actually, I need to clean it up a little. Do you mind waiting here for a second?” KJ said no, she did not mind. Miles nodded and unlocked the door and went in alone.
KJ heard him shuffling things around from the other side of the door. Miles dropped something, stopped, and picked it up. The sounds got quieter the deeper into the apartment he went until KJ did not hear him at all. She waited for a while. When too much time passed, she put a hand on the knob and pushed the door open. It opened onto a long, dark hallway. “Miles?” she called. He did not answer. She followed the hallway down. It was longer than it looked. It opened onto a big kitchen. She walked through the kitchen. It opened onto a sauna. She walked through the sauna. She walked through several similar rooms. As she went on, the rooms got darker. Eventually, she realized that she barely saw her hands in front of her. Finally, she came to a plain wooden door. She tried hard to see it in the dark. It was a door with a rough surface and heavy metal knob. She slowly opened it. “Miles?” she called again, but she did not see Miles on the other side. All she saw was a soft pink accent wall, and it was beating like a heart.