With nothing else to consider Errol thought about himself. In his adolescence he used to watch other people for signs of recognition, and then scale their reaction to gage their opinion of him. Eventually he decided that the process skewed the findings to the negative. He encountered more furled brows than smiles, even from friends, and though he knew better it made him suspicious.
In his first apartment Errol extrapolated this into the problem of the horizontal blinds. In his former residences, with roommates during and since college, he liked blinds because they afforded him the power to adjust his privacy by degrees. In the morning he would twist the plastic rod to position the slats perfectly parallel, and the new light tinted his white walls a lemony yellow. Around 10 the yellow gave way to the white light of day, which he heeded to leave his home for the pursuit of its purpose. He liked the light of afternoon, and the 3o’clock orange, best, but he usually twisted the octagon rod counter-clockwise to decline the blinds towards the floor so he could turn on a light to see better and not share the advantage with everyone else.
Once when lying in bed he saw a cat watching him from his neighbor’s window. He had his slats closed downwards, and though he twisted the rod counterclockwise until it stopped, he could still see the cat through the gaps.
The next day he looked up through his windows and adjusted those facing his neighbors to the incline position. After performing this exercise he noticed that his bathroom seemed brighter now with the slats turned upwards. He grasped one plastic slat in his fingers and turned it over to check how the top color compared to the bottom. He found himself gripping a layer of fresh dust cushioning underlying grime cemented from years of shower condensation. He rubbed his fingers together under the faucet but found it necessary to grab the soap from the shower to cut through the resinous layer. Errol retreated in disgust, and returned with his multipurpose cleaner and a sponge. He repositioned the slats downward and sprayed the entire surface. Then he slid the sponge over it, leaving crumbs in its wake, crumbs of dust, the grease of which smeared into streaks. He applied another layer of multi-purpose cleaner and let it soak while he fetched a roll of paper towels from the adjacent kitchen. He returned and flipped down the lid on the toilet to prop his supplies on. Removing one square of towel and taking the treated slat between his thumb and finger holding it taut, he wiped the surface clean with the towel and observed the result.
After tediously detailing each window that day, the dust had resettled in time and Errol never again attempted the project that required more effort than the annoyance it presented. Sometimes he slapped the blinds with a dusting towel while cleaning other surfaces, but otherwise he let it fester. Yet the quandary resurfaced years later, during an interview for a sales position at an “Interior Accents” company. Located twenty miles south of the city, couched in the enormous chain store district that clustered around the arteries as far out of town as the suburbs that supported them sprawled the populous, the company’s headquarters occupied one of the many office strips interspersed between twin beacons of mattress stores and hardware multiplexes laid out each with their own parking niches to avoid the sea of asphalt/ strip mall configuration which Errol found easier to navigate. His potential employers occupied the southern end of such an error in planning, backed up to the interstate buffer beside a party/event rental warehouse displaying clown suits and casino tables in their windows. Vertical blinds obliterated the facade of the ‘Accent’ store.
The company, whose name eluded him later in life, sold carpeting, flooring, window treatments, fixtures and lighting solutions under the auspices of an interior design consultation company. Their promotional material featured spreads of finished interiors interspersed with depictions of consultants demonstrating their recommendations to smiling homeowners. Errol worked for Home Depot at the time, and though the company had recognized his potential and promoted him up from a cashier to supervise the tile and flooring department, he now hoped to transition into estimating more complex bathroom and kitchen renovations.
The lobby confirmed Errol’s disappointment in the blinds. He crossed the beige carpet and signed into a faux leather bound visitor’s book sitting on a faux marble reception desk as the pudgy receptionist informed him that the name of the person who responded to his resume was only the administrative assistant, and Errol was to speak with the human resources manager, whose prior meeting should conclude shortly. She invited him to take a seat at one of the two overstuffed chairs under her eyes but Errol preferred to stroll into the adjacent showroom to take in their wares.
He entered an empty space resembling a convention center trade show with stalls hanging samples behind near life-size dioramas: A study in beige of carpet samples on one display, a rainbow of faux marble/granite/misc stone tiles, both counter and floor varieties, spiders of track lighting and, in the corner, a dizzying prison of blinds. Backing himself out he crashed into a younger man, also with a few pounds to spare, who offered Errol his hand and welcome without a smile. Unenthusiastically he gestured towards their products offering a brief explanation that Errol had already inferenced, but forgave because, with the sales aspect removed, his rhetoric lacked value. Both satisfied once the schpeil was done, he ushered Errol across the reception area and down a hall bordered with similarly designed offices that opened into a vast high-ceilinged room of cubicles. He led Errol into one, which differed from the other u-shaped cubicles with the addition of a fourth segment with a door cut out of it. It held two tables and three chairs, the third of which was filled by a slight blonde with a pinched face and the haughty disposition of the only passably attractive person in the company. She twisted her wedding ring as if to emphasize it. By the time the door closed to confine them Errol had already decided against taking the job, and to satisfy his curiosity instead.
The kid, whose age Errol estimated at 25 had an improbable ethic combination of a name, like Dimitri Rodriguez, or Juan Tczeilopolous. Errol took nostalgic recognition of himself at that age; proud at having surmounted a position in a company he shamed to admit employment by. Rodriguez described the company structure using the brochure words, and then demanded Errol prove his qualifications with a barrage of antagonistic questions. “How would you approach a customer leaning towards alternatives outside our product line?”
Errol’s rank had swelled in the company of these kids in this roofless room, he answered his interviewer’s challenge with casual confidence “I would hope to entice them with our superior alternatives,” he closed each question by ripping a hole in the plywood foundations of their sham. After fielding a few such flippant answers Mr. Rodriguez grew visibly irked (yet the girl started to smile) and attempted to cut the interview short, asking in closing if Errol had any questions for him.
“Yes,” Errol said, “How do you recommend to clean those horizontal blinds? I have them at home and it’s a pain to dust them all the time, and if you don’t it just accumulates into grime, and how do you get it off the slats while keeping those ropes from staining because you can clean the slats with enough effort but then you end up with black ropes?”
The kid jotted something on the corner of Errol’s resume, ripped it off and tossed it in his lap. “You soak it in this solution,” he said, standing. “Is that all?”
“Where would I find this product?” Errol asked, “I’ve looked all over for something…”
“We sell it, or the manufacturer…”
“Is that where they hide it? One more question, if someone calls in looking for some of this, they would reach me, right? Or another salesperson, and my job, as a salesperson would be to recommend they just do away with the old set and buy some new ones, right?”
The second residence, of Errol’s own, completely lacked window treatments, and for the first few months of winter he enjoyed the light, though the sight of his flanking neighbor’s homes provided little in way of view, but for a view he could walk directly to the beach, something he always wanted to be able to do. The house existed in a block of pre-fab bungalows clustered on an unpaved lot. Vacation homes mostly, to families of modest means who sought a place to crash with their kids after a day at the beach or on the boat moored at the canal that bordered it. The year round residents included some retirees, some far too young to be newlyweds, and Errol. Some adorned the trailer-shaped homes with rock and shell gardens, some hung buoys and fishing nets on the fences that separated the rears, most painted and hung curtains, some chose blinds. Considering the proximity of each residence to each other, about enough space in which to park two cars and open fully their doors to unload coolers and fishing rods, some sort of screen was necessary. The young couples sometimes hung tapestries. One creative crew across the way, who belonged to a band as far as the loading and unloading of their trunks could evidence, had Japanese screens in front of the windows. Errol knew everyone’s preference because when he walked Rawls and Dutch he surveyed other homes hoping for inspiration in that wing of his interest drained of ideas over the years. He needed to restock his reservoirs, so he waited over the winter.
The house Errol and his wife had shared for nearly 20 years started out larger than this but not that much more adorned. Errol restructured the walls and refloored, even rewired the place. He shifted the staircase from the center of the home off to the side and then wound it around to empty into the center of the second floor, which he carpeted. Everyone loved the open plan. His wife fashioned her share, choosing the furniture and drapes, putting things in vases and instructing the gardeners. Errol built things to please her, filled the kitchen with the latest state-of-the art trappings, retiled the shower to add a seat, nudging the joke that her showers took time enough that she might get tired. He paid for it with the promotion from sales to supervisor in the cabinet company who hired him shortly after the blinds interview. He eventually left to take a more comprehensive sales position with some kitchen/bath contractors, which led to the estimating position in the custom-home contractor which bought them out and which, along with her hotel administration salary, paid for the skylights and jet tubs.
But after twenty years Errol found his childless marriage broken with a yearning for outside company, of the four-legged variety, and the argument about a dog infiltrated all their differences, until they decided the house was worth more then their marriage, and they split the difference of the sale. They both left the state. Errol to take a sales supervisor’s position at a coastal development company and her to build the Idaho ski lodge industry. He wished her well at departure, but now, cooking chicken in the little electric oven and watching the band members loading their sedans across the street through his unadorned front window, he damned her use of drapes. He damned her in name only, his divorcee indulgence, considering drapes womanish after all, and not her fault. Anyone of the sex could and would hang fabric from above their windows so that if flares out in a frilly way, he couldn’t blame his wife for removing the option for his sex. He questioned the possibility that technological advances had created anti-static blinds that somehow repel dust nowadays. He considered the vertical variety as an option but the smugness of Rodriguez returned to memory. Errol was thirty when he treated Rodriguez like some misguided kid, but now that they occupied their fifties together Rodriguez had transformed into the antagonist in Errol’s analogies to the memory. He envisioned him owning the company that had by now probably changed its name to ‘Accents’ in order to elude consumer associations from the chintzy products they now advertise differently. No Errol could not buy blinds.
He carved off the legs, wings and thighs of the bird and tossed them with the buttered hot sauce. He gave the carcass meat to the dogs. He never ate in the dinette, where neighbors had both a back and side view of him eating alone. He took his plate to the couch and flipped on the television. Then he turned off the kitchen overhead switch and sat in the glow of the news from the nearest city fifty miles away. A woman was missing, not a young woman as is usual, instead a working mother of two, upper 30’s, lost somewhere on the road between visiting her sister on the coast, her car found in the pine barrens, no sign of struggle.
Errol thought if he found a woman, she could hang the drapes, but until then, what use had he for privacy? The scene around here was only bound to pick up entertainment value as summer neared. In the meantime he could rip up the beige carpet and install real floors, tear down the island that confined the kitchen, in fact, he realized regarding the empty storage space hanging over the dining area, he could do away with that entirely, elevate and tile the whole kitchen and dining floor, wrench the island structure wide open, truncate it and construct low shelving underneath the windows in which to store the stuff now in the island cabinets. In the larger space he could fit a bigger table scooted more over towards the kitchen side. Now the bedrooms were in a sorry state; they closed with pocket doors. Errol would demolish the wall between the two, designate one side as the sleeping area and use the other as an office, and a place for the dog beds, and then tie it somehow with the bathroom off the kitchen, which he could accent with some of the comforts Bonny liked and which Errol had gotten used to, like the jet tubs, and the skylights.