Bugs on the fly paper and bottles on the floor, the overwhelming smell of sour alcohol dried into the floorboards, and there I was, ready-set to paint the walls like I had any idea what I was in for or even what I was doing there. There were two silver cats wandering the place, and one old woman with one dead husband. I was relunctant to talk to her, because I've played defense for an old sad woman before, and all it got me was crazy. Some things can't be fixed. Some wounds can't be healed. She broke her hip some weeks ago, was probably done for. You can't help death.
She wanted the walls painted but the place was a mess. She needed a live-in nurse and for all my altruism I couldn't stomach the stale-wine-smell or the thought of caring for her. It was too depressing. She gave me a twenty for my help, then needed to go to the bank because it was her last bill. I've got need of money too, sweetie. I couldn't tell her I didn't want it. I hated the suspicion that I was being manipulated.
My friend and I swept the floor, mopped it, sprayed the broken bed frame for bed bugs, threw out more trash than the job was worth, wrung the bleached clothes she had incontinently peed on, and washed her potty (which was in her bedroom). Then we zipped the mattress in the living room into a bed bug proof cover and transported it on to the bed frame. And none of it had a damn thing to do with painting.
She promised use of her apartment to us while she went over to visit her family in Conneticut. She lived in Greenwich Village. We thought it was a great deal.