After Hours. Karen Kendall

      SINCE THEY WORKED at the spa all day Saturday, Sunday was relaxation day, and Monday usually got taken up by errands and housework.

      Marly was working too much to pay attention to her dating life, so she and Peg spent a lot of time together, this Sunday being no exception.

      Peggy had sold everything she owned in a whirlwind garage sale before she’d driven to Miami from Connecticut. As part of her self-improvement program, she’d even sold her television, intending to read in her spare time instead of being sucked into sitcoms. Now she missed the TV’s comforting presence, and she had an idea.

      “You want me to paint a television on your living-room wall?” Marly said incredulously.

      “Yup. C’mon, you could do it in an hour with one hand tied behind your back.”

      “Yeah, but it’s a nutty thing to do.”

      “It’ll make the room seem more homey.” Anything would make the sterile white box of an apartment seem more homey, even a fire extinguisher and a can of bug spray. It was awful. White tile. Beige carpet. White walls. White ceiling. White vertical blinds. She was living in a freakin’ hospital. Every morning, she half expected to wake up in surgery.

      “Uh, Peg?” said Marly. “The TV will have only one, unchanging image.”

      “I know! It’s motion picture subversion. How cool is that?”

      “Huh?” Marly started to laugh.

      “Simplifying the constant barrage of images into one. But it’ll be hard to choose which one I want.”

      “What’s gonna be hard is convincing your landlord to give you back your deposit money.”

      Peggy waved that mundane thought away. “I’ll just roll the walls white again before I leave. Can you do the TV today?”

      “Sure, Miss Crazy. Bring me a pencil and think about what colors you want. Should I put it on that big wall over the couch?”

      “Perfect. And I have some tempera poster paint. Will that work?”

      Marly nodded, resigned to the project. She stood on the couch and lightly outlined a huge television screen on the wall, using the side of a framed art poster as a straightedge. “So, is this a plasma TV, Peg?”

      “Oh, definitely. Only top-of-the-line equipment for me. Don’t you agree?”

      “Uh-huh. Get me some paint and some paper cups to mix colors in, okay?” Marly worked quickly, somehow making the sketch look three-dimensional.

      They threw a sheet over the couch, and within half an hour Marley was painting in the frame and asking Peg, who was daydreaming about the possibilities of Troy Barrington’s backside, what image she wanted on the screen.

      Without even thinking about it she said, “A football player’s backside in uniform. He’s bent over, gripping the ball and ready to hike.”

      Marly set down her brush. “Peggy. You really want to look at a butt every time you walk into your living room?”

      “Yup. If it’s a nice male one in spandex, I sure do!”

      “Have you been sniffing too many aromatherapy candles, honey?”

      “Probably. Hey, when you’re done let’s have a glass of wine and give each other pedicures. I think your laundry’s just about done.” Peg went to check on it, transferred the wet load to the dryer and got her cheap little foot spa out of the cabinet over the washer.

      She brought it into the main room and set it down on a clean towel. Then she filled a pitcher with warm water from the kitchen sink and poured it into the basin. She added bath salts and brought out other supplies.

      Marly was deep in concentration now, sketching the seat of the player’s pants, his socks, cleats and hands on the football. Peggy was impressed that she didn’t have to work from a photograph to get the details, proportions and angles right.

      “Why didn’t you go to art school, Marly?” she asked.

      “I did.”

      “But you do hair.”

      “You know the story about why I didn’t graduate. My dad got sick. Besides, I love what I do for women every day. I get to be creative, I make them feel better, it pays well and I’m never between jobs for longer than a couple of hours. What more could I ask for?”

      Peggy nodded.

      “And I’m able to do my art on the side.” Marly painted in the football, somehow giving it texture and dimension, too. The stitching appeared almost real.

      As Peg looked at it, the familiar wash of conflicting emotions about football rolled through her. It represented both success and failure for her, strength and weakness, power and victimization.

      A guy like Troy Barrington—great, there she went, thinking about him again—had been a natural to play on a high school team, then a college one and finally go pro. He’d been encouraged all the way.

      But her experience had been different. Suddenly, when she’d gone out for the high school team, she was resented. She’d made it because she was so good, but all the guys had looked at her funny. She’d cost one of their friends a place on the team. She had long hair and breasts and odd plumbing. She was just different with a capital D.

      Instead of the camaraderie that someone like Troy had with the team, she’d battled sexually aggressive glances and felt bad because she couldn’t share the same locker room, causing no end of logistical problems.

      But she’d stuck it out. She’d won everyone’s respect, however grudging. She could kick a decent field goal, run like the wind and would tackle anything that moved. The problem was, admittedly, that her body weight didn’t stack up to a six-foot, two-hundred-pound male’s.

      Still, by the end of her senior year, she’d been practically the team mascot, carried on their shoulders when they won the district championship with her field goal.

      Peggy would always proudly carry that moment in her heart, no matter what had happened later when she’d fought her way onto her college team. Nobody could take the district win away from her, not even her father’s absence from the stands at the crucial moment.

      Impulse struck again. “Marly, you’re going to kill me, but I promise you a deep-tissue massage if you’ll change the image on the screen.”

      “You’re right, I am going to kill you.” Marly straightened and glared at Peg.

      “Please can you paint over the man butt and put a kick-ass woman there, instead? She’s triumphant. She just kicked a field goal that won a big game.”

      “Why do I have a feeling that this kick-ass woman should have long red hair?” Resigned, Marly was already whiting out the other picture. “Get me a hair dryer, will you? It’ll speed us up. I’m not staying here all night.”

      “Even if I make whiskey sours?”

      “Okay, I’m staying all night. But you have to give me dinner, too.”

      “Deal. You know I wouldn’t ask you to do this if you weren’t so fast and so good.”

      “Yes, you would.” Marly aimed the hairdryer at the wet paint, since trying to white out the wet image had just made a nasty smear on the wall. “So, um, Peg? How’s that impulse-control thing going? I can see you’re making