The Wallpaper

Terry was measuring off the first strip of wallpaper when he heard the doorbell. He dashed down the stairs to answer. Glancing through the diamond porthole in the door he saw his friend Gavin standing on the step.

“Hi Gav. Sorry you had to wait but I was upstairs. Come on in.”

“Thanks. Just thought I’d see what you’re up to this morning.” Gavin glanced around. “Sasha not home?”

“Nah. We’re getting the nursery ready, got the wallpaper yesterday, so she went shopping for some accessories. Don’t know why the baby needs accessories, but you know how women are. I said I’d make a start at hanging the wallpaper. You maybe can help me– I’ve never done this before.”

“Oh, I don’t know… How fussy is she?”

“I think it should be easy enough to hang. All balloons. Come on up.” Terry led the way to the nursery.

Gavin looked at the wallpaper strip partly unrolled on the floor. “No kidding, all balloons! Are you sure you’re going to be happy with that when it’s on the wall? It’d make me dizzy.”

“Sasha thinks it’s perfect, so who am I to argue? My job is just to slap it on.”

Gavin eyed the repeating shapes with a frown. “Might be tricky to get it cut right.”

“No sweat. Just have to match these half-balloons at the edges.”

He knelt on the floor and rolled out a second strip next to the first, lined up the balloon and was ready to cut when Gavin said, “Wait a minute!”

Terry looked up. “Problem?”

“If you put those strips together that way every side balloon will be mismatched. See here, this balloon will be half red and half blue. I think the idea is to match the colors, not just the balloons. Blue with blue; red with red. Like this.” He took the roll from Terry and demonstrated.

Terry eyed the two strips. “What a waste of paper! This kiddie design stuff costs big time – and I’m sure Junior won’t care. But yeah. Sasha might not be too happy if they don’t match. Good thing you came along.”

With Gavin’s help Terry got the papering done quickly, then the two of them stood back to survey the overall effect. Gavin winced at the brightness of all those balloons.

Terry shrugged. “Wouldn’t have been my pick. But this is what she wanted and I won’t be spending much time in here. Come on, let’s grab a coffee.”

As soon as Sasha returned from her shopping trip Terry led her upstairs. “The job’s all done, sweetheart. Hope you like it.”

Gavin trailed after them, curious to see her reaction.

Sasha walked into the nursery and looked around. They observed that her face didn’t light up with joy as she studied the wallpaper.

“Something wrong,” Terry asked.

“I…uh.. I guess… I never thought… I mean, it looked great in the sample book but I didn’t get the picture of how a whole room would look with this on all four walls. It’s really pretty, but…uh…”

“A bit overwhelming,” Gavin suggested.

“Yeah. A bit.” Maybe we could paint two of the walls something plain.”

Terry huffed. “You mean paint over this new, expensive wallpaper?”

“Or take some of it down? Maybe we could reglue it and hang it… Maybe in the office?”

“No way!”

Gavin decided this would be a good time for him to disappear.

🙂

The Ragtag Daily Prompt this morning that inspired my little tale is REPEATING SHAPES
The image I’ve used is from Pixabay, created by AnnaliseArt