Paulo’s house

From Candypedia
Paulo's house
First appearanceLove My Way, page 2
June 27, 2007
Related charactersPaulo, Lucy, Paulo’s dad, Rose Muir

Paulo’s house is a modest two-storey brick house in Roseville where Paulo lives with his father, Rodrigo. Paulo spends plenty of time in his bedroom and the kitchen, while girls regularly turn up at the front door to collect him for something.

Description

The house has a brick facade, a dark brown front door, a small lawn, and its own stretch of curb.[1][2] No street or landmark is ever given, but Lucy can reach it on foot,[3] and it sits on Molly’s cookie-selling route through the same neighborhood as Mike’s house and Daisy’s house.[4]

The front door opens straight into the living room, with a wooden-banister staircase right beside it.[5][6] Framed family photos line the stairway wall.[7] The living room holds a couch and a round coffee table, the seat where Rodrigo reads his newspaper, and a squat wooden liquor cabinet full of bottles.[8][1][9] An arched doorway connects it to the kitchen, which has a small window over the counter, a dishrack, some wilting windowsill plants, and a table with a blue bowl of apples on it.[10][11]

Paulo’s upstairs bedroom is a pretty spare room with green walls, a wooden single bed with a blue blanket, a nightstand with a digital alarm clock, a wastebasket, and a double-doored closet.[12][13] Paulo’s proudest possession is his Super NES.[14] The bathroom has a sink, a mirror, and a shelf of bottles.[15]

The whole place is drawn a bit worn, with cracks running through the walls and a spider webbing one doorway corner.[12][5] The household phone is a cordless landline, and Rodrigo carries it upstairs for Paulo when Jasmine calls and again when Mike calls.[16][17] He often works late, leaving Paulo with the run of the house.[18][17]

History

Paulo’s birthday breakfast at the kitchen table, with Rodrigo across from him nursing a coffee.[19]

The comic first visits the house on the evening of junior prom, in Love My Way. Paulo fights his hair gel and a $2.95 plastic corsage, convinced his suit looks “FRUITY”, until Tess arrives at the door in a ballgown.[20][21] A couple of chapters later, in Invitation, he climbs the stairs reading Tess’s vacation invitation and then winces his way through a phone call with David about it.[5][22]

The house’s defining night comes in Another Shoulder. Fresh from Mike’s rejection, a shattered Lucy walks to the front door in tears and asks, “Please help me..”[3] Paulo spends the next six hours doing everything he can think of to distract her, from rounds on the Super NES to a pot of ramen in the kitchen.[14][23]

Upstairs in his bedroom, Paulo makes her a promise: “A’course, Lucy. No matter what I’m doing or where I am, you got me.”[24] Lucy kisses him and pushes for sex, and Paulo refuses her, telling her she is not thinking straight.[25] Nothing happens between them, and the next morning the two walk hand-in-hand into the kitchen and straight into his dad at the table.[26][27]

The doorstep stays busy in the chapters that follow. In Back and Forth, Paulo sweats in front of the bathroom mirror in a borrowed shirt of his dad’s before Jessica collects him, none too warmly, at the front door.[15] Piece of Cake finds him asking his newspaper-reading father whether having feelings for a girl he isn’t dating counts as cheating, and getting a supremely unhelpful “Sure, why not” in reply.[1] He spends the rest of the night in bed with the cordless phone, taking a call from Jasmine and then an unexpected one from Lucy, and ends the evening feeling guilty about both.[16][28]

In Happy Hour, Rodrigo lets Paulo know he’ll be working late yet again, and Mike needles him over the phone about Rachel.[17] Left alone and dejected, fifteen-year-old Paulo walks over to his father’s liquor cabinet and opens it. The drinking that wrecks the rest of the chapter starts right there.[9]

Paulo turns sixteen over a burnt breakfast in Small Fry. Rodrigo botches the cooking, Paulo eats it cheerfully anyway, and then he asks his dad about getting a job.[11] In Total Recall, he pulls his junior-prom suit out of the closet, where it has hung untouched for a year with the dried rose still pinned on, just in time for Rachel to pull up at the curb with a limo. His only comment is “This is some weird deja vu shit.”[13][2]

Guest of Honor opens with Paulo brooding in bed over Tess’s old rejection until Daisy turns up at the door with a favor to beg.[12][6] She talks him into escorting her to a comic convention, then descends his staircase in her full Claret cosplay while he gawks from the couch: “This shit’s today?!”[29]

Two of Paulo’s later phone calls with Mike happen at the kitchen stove. In Model Girlfriend, Paulo cooks while patiently coaching Mike through his relationship troubles.[30] In Eternal Flame, a homework call from the same stove goes wrong from the first ring, because Mike answers in tears thinking the caller was Sandy.[31] Paulo loses all patience with him, the shouting escalates, and he slams the phone down with “So good fucking luck to you and your stupid fucking girlfriend!” as the pot boils over behind him. It is the call that ends their friendship.[32]

The house also gets a canon side-story visit in Door to Door, when Molly rings the bell on her cookie drive. Paulo buys one box, paying with money he keeps stuffed inside his pillow: “Not all of us have piggie banks, okay?”[4][33]

Trivia

  • Rodrigo’s first appearance has him discovering his son hand-in-hand with an overnight guest at the kitchen table, to which his entire reaction is “You’re gonna be late.” Veronica’s commentary on the page adds, “Hey, look! Parents DO exist.”[27]
  • Rodrigo smokes. Veronica confirmed on Tumblr that the cigarette butt visible in the living room during Guest of Honor is his.[34]
  • The prom suit spending a full year in the closet did not escape Veronica, whose commentary asks, “paulo did you even take that to dry clean after a whole year what a slob”.[13]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Chapter 70: Piece of Cake, page 12
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Chapter 85: Total Recall, page 11
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Chapter 52: Another Shoulder, page 4
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Door to Door, page 6 🔒 (members only)
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Chapter 41: Invitation, page 1
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Chapter 89: Guest of Honor, page 2
  7. ↑ Chapter 52: Another Shoulder, page 7
  8. ↑ Chapter 52: Another Shoulder, page 5
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 Chapter 80: Happy Hour, page 5
  10. ↑ Chapter 58: Mother’s Day, page 12
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Chapter 83: Small Fry, page 1
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 Chapter 89: Guest of Honor, page 1
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 Chapter 85: Total Recall, page 10
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 Chapter 52: Another Shoulder, page 6
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 Chapter 54: Back and Forth, page 7
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 Chapter 70: Piece of Cake, page 13
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 17.2 Chapter 80: Happy Hour, page 4
  18. ↑ Chapter 52: Another Shoulder, page 9
  19. ↑ Chapter 83: Small Fry, page 2
  20. ↑ Chapter 39: Love My Way, page 2
  21. ↑ Chapter 39: Love My Way, page 3
  22. ↑ Chapter 41: Invitation, page 2
  23. ↑ Chapter 52: Another Shoulder, page 8
  24. ↑ Chapter 52: Another Shoulder, page 10
  25. ↑ Chapter 52: Another Shoulder, page 12
  26. ↑ Chapter 52: Another Shoulder, page 13
  27. ↑ 27.0 27.1 Chapter 52: Another Shoulder, page 14
  28. ↑ Chapter 70: Piece of Cake, page 17
  29. ↑ Chapter 89: Guest of Honor, page 8
  30. ↑ Chapter 94: Model Girlfriend, page 43
  31. ↑ Chapter 110: Eternal Flame, page 15
  32. ↑ Chapter 110: Eternal Flame, page 18
  33. ↑ Door to Door, page 7 🔒 (members only)
  34. ↑ “Bittersweet Candy Bowl on Tumblr”. 2016-03-19.
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