When the cashier prematurely and automatically, without a twinge of uncertainty, gave her a senior discount, Brenda felt compelled to paint every room in her house Chinese red. She went to Lowe's, sorted through palette samples. Chinese red turned out not to be so simple. She compared tints and hues, finally deciding on a shade that reminded her of a clingy swingy dress she'd worn to see Baryshnikov dance Romeo at Lincoln Center decades ago when her hair had pigment and her skin knew how to hold itself in place. 
     Not having painted anything in a while, Brenda asked the twelve year old "design consultant" named Binky what else she would need. He helped her gather painter's tape, stir sticks, rollers, brushes, plastic, all of which Brenda carted home along with eight gallons of Peking Passion. She wondered what Stefan would think. They'd only been lovers for three months, were still at the stage of undressing by candlelight, of watching each other sleep. He had not yet witnessed female hormones — or the lack thereof — run amok.
     Brenda began with her bedroom. She flipped on Ravel's Bolero, shoved furniture, draped, taped, then rolled overlapping v's along the wall behind the bed, burying forever all traces of Perfect Pearl. Feeling the echo of horns and drums rumble in her belly, Brenda dipped a brush, wrote WILD WOMAN in letters two-feet high on the adjacent wall. Heavy spatters of crimson sprayed her cheeks, her hair, an impressionistic blob spreading across her old Kirov Ballet t-shirt. The music opened, wound back on itself, ascended. She dipped again, wrote HOT TOMALE added HOOCHIE MAMA ROJA. She grabbed the old paint-speckled towel from the corner, slid it around her blue-jeaned hips, swished it from side to side.  Cajoled by a swell of strings climbing toward crescendo, her body searched for a developpé, an arabesque, an entrechat-six it could not find. Bolero thrashed and pounded to climax. Brenda, trembling, collapsed to the floor. So much red was unsettling, like playing with more fire than she remembered how to handle.