He must've felt me staring at him, because he looked up and raised an eyebrow in question. I shook my head and went back to work. He gave the fellows a few more instructions and crossed the yard to me.

"Did you need something?" he asked.

"How do you do it?"

He picked up his paintbrush, loaded it with stripper, and slathered a section of the door. "Do what?"

"Keep everything going at once and organized."

He shrugged. "It's not so hard. Visualize the end, and start at the beginning."

"You are a genius."

He grinned. "Never been called that before"

"I'm adding it to your resume"

"Thank you"

"No thanks necessary. The truth is the truth whether you serve it up plain or top it with chocolate frosting. It's still the truth."

"So now you're a philosopher as well as a stripper."

I laughed aloud. "The first I might be. The second would be a physical impossibility."

"Why? You're doing a fine job," he said.

"Think, Billy Lee! You just called me a stripper."

He blushed. "Why would that be a physical impossibility?"

"I'm over the hill. Strippers are young and built well."

"You are stripping and doing a fine job of it," he teased.

"Oh, hush. I can't win a fight with you. So, what's next?" I'd gotten the hang of paint removal and hadn't dropped any of the lethal stuff on me in a couple of days until that moment. I dropped a glob onto my bare left foot, which I hurriedly wiped away. And I did not whine!

Billy Lee smiled and changed the subject. "Alford should have the bedroom and landing floors sanded by noon. So after we get these doors ready, we'll stain woodwork in those areas. We wait until the plumbers, electricians, and air-conditioning men are finished to apply the sanding sealer and varnish. We can go ahead and work on some more doors if we finish before they do"

"Speaking of varnish, I've changed my mind. I want the floors so shiny you can see yourself in them but not the woodwork. I want that to look softer. Does that make sense?" I said.

Billy Lee nodded. "Yes, it does. You're making a wise decision. Satin finish will give it a classy look. High gloss could look cheap"

My temper flared. He would have let me ruin all our hard work without saying a thing? What was the matter with the man? Did all genius-level people have trouble speaking their minds? "Why didn't you tell me that?"

"Are you going to put the same furniture back in that room when it's all ready?"

I put the brush down and popped my hands onto my hips. "No, but don't change the subject. I want to talk about varnish."

"Are you upset?"

"Why didn't you say that high gloss would look cheap? You would have just let me make a big mess after I'd worked hours and hours on stripping the old paint off? I'm not working on this house to have it look cheap. I want it to be warm and beautiful."

He folded his arms across his chest and set his jaw. "You're mad at me because I was going to let you do what you wanted with your own house? It's your house. You didn't ask my advice, so I didn't give it. When you did ask, I was honest. So don't be mad at me because you almost made a bad decision."

"You should have told me high gloss would look ugly. We made a deal to be honest, and if you are my friend, then we have to be honest. I don't care about being nice. Look where that got me before"

He gritted his teeth. "Don't compare me to Drew. I never would have treated you that way. If you want me to tell you what I think, all you have to do is ask, and I'll be honest every time, but I've learned the hard way not to put my two cents in where they are not wanted," he said.

"From now on I want your two cents. If I don't like them, I'll tell you, and we'll discuss it."

He nodded.

"Tell me what you think, and be honest"

"High gloss on the floor and satin on the rest," he said.

"And you'll tell me what's best from now on?" I asked.

"No."

I jerked my head around to find him grinning. "Then we just had a big fight for nothing?"

"You call that a fight? I call it a minor disagreement."

"Why? I was blunt and not nice. It was a fight," I argued.

"A fight is when we don't talk to each other for a whole hour."

"Why won't you tell me what's best?"

"Because you can make decisions for yourself even if they're wrong. Mistakes can be corrected. Life is too short to have everyone else tell you how to live. Make a few mistakes, and learn from them. At least they'll be real, and you'll be living, not just existing."

"Are we talking about varnish or life in general?"

"Life as a whole," he answered.

"Who died and made you God?"

"Gert," he said.

A giggle started in the bottom of my heart and rose to escape out of my mouth in a guffaw. I could never stay mad at Billy Lee for a whole hour, so how could we ever have a real fight?

He grinned but didn't laugh. "Now, tell me what kind of furniture you want for your new bedroom."

"Gert was pretty high up on the ladder, wasn't she?"

That's when he chuckled. "One more step and she'd have been right up there with Saint Peter and the angels."

I laughed hard enough that the men working on the central air unit looked my way. I didn't even care. It had been years since I'd found anything so funny. Poor Trudy, bless her heart!

"What's so funny?" he asked.

"Saint Peter has his hands full with Gert, don't you imagine?"

"Probably so, but then, maybe she's got her hands full with Saint Peter. You going to answer me about that furniture?"

I wiped my eyes on the corner of my shirtsleeve. "I want a sleigh bed, queen-size. A dresser with a big mirror to match and a chest of drawers. Two nightstands, one for each side of the bed, and a thingamajig to put quilts inside."

He cocked his head to one side. "Quilts?"

"I've always loved quilts, so I'm decorating with them. I'll hit the antiques fairs and begin a collection, so I'll need a shelf thing to keep them in and one of those things that hangs on a wall to display one at a time and maybe even a quilt rack that holds six or eight to sit on the floor in the living room."

He nodded.

"Maybe next week we'll go find some of that kind of furniture. Or is it infringing on our friendship too much for you to go furniture shopping with me?" I asked.

He kept working. "Nothing can ever infringe on our friendship. It's solid."

"Are you sure about that? I'm not Gert" So our friendship was solid. I liked that idea.

"No, she died and made me God, remember? Come on, Trudy, if we're going to be friends, you've got to remember your place."

That brought on a whole new set of delicious giggles. I vowed to find something to laugh about every day for the rest of my life. I finally got my amusement under control, but a smile stayed with me most of the afternoon when I thought about Gert making a misstep and Saint Peter giving her soul to the devil. Bless Lucifer's little red heart, he'd have to keep Gert tied to his forked tail and make sure Lonnie was exiled to the back forty if he wanted to keep any kind of order in his fiery abode.