Godspeed

by Nickolas Butler

  * * *

  —

  More than once she realized that she had forgotten to breathe.

  She’d taken to visiting a nearby and venerable steakhouse on her lunch hour, a change in routine that was roundly applauded by her male colleagues, who had never invited her to join them for lunch or even for a collegial downtown stroll, leaving her to work through the noon hour at her desk with the sparest consolation of a Tupperware container full of carrot sticks, or maybe a small green salad, with a Thermos of oolong tea. There was a jocular condescension to their approval now, and it was clear to her that their only conceivable explanation for this change was, obviously, some mystery man—a waiter or chef she liked, perhaps some slender young sommelier. She was not unaware that some of her partners at the firm suspected her of being a lesbian, and in fact delighted in their failure to puzzle her out, for there was always an advantage to being slightly unknown, or unknowable.

  In the close darkness of the steakhouse dining room, she sat alone at a small two-person booth near the kitchen. Her waiter was the same every day, an older man who initially wrote down her order but, after five meals of selecting the same dishes, began asking, “The usual, sweetheart?”

  It pleased her very much that he should call her that—sweetheart. He could not have been more than ten or fifteen years her senior, but there was a warm weariness about him that was a comfort to her, and she imagined him a grandfather, a patriarch presiding over a great tumble of grandchildren. She liked that he hummed to himself as he brought her meal: always a Caesar salad, a petite filet mignon (rare), and a glass of the house red, of which she seldomly drank more than a few lingering swallows.

  Her lunches were spent reviewing the architect’s plans, which, as meticulous as she was exacting, she’d asked to be printed and bound up in a smaller format for easy reading whenever she had a moment—between meetings, say, or on a plane. Having already built three prior houses—the first in Taos, New Mexico; the second on Bainbridge Island in Washington State; and the third in Puerto Rico, an old sugar plantation that she had imagined as a newly remodeled rum distillery; all three now regularly booked as executive retreats or short-term rentals—she’d made enough mistakes not to spend a single dollar on construction until she was absolutely confident in the blueprints. In the past, builders had convinced her to move ahead with a project despite questions in the plans, always citing the importance of getting the foundation laid, a premise that she now realized entrapped and committed her to the structure much more than it did the builder, who could simply walk away from a project without owing taxes on a half-built house and site.

  Her architect this time was young, freshly graduated from UC Berkeley, and this was no mistake on Gretchen’s part, let alone a cost-saving measure. Gretchen had designed much of the house herself, though there were of course countless facets of architecture and engineering she did not know, and this outmatched architect rarely second-guessed her, save in the most critical structural concerns where her own opinions might need to be checked and redirected, if only to stay true to code. They met every week, for twenty minutes over coffee, where the architect reviewed and approved—or helped modify—Gretchen’s own alterations and notes.

  No one in the office knew of her plans to retire early. They all assumed she was a stoic workhorse, this no-nonsense professional, unburdened by children or a needy spouse, consistently billing over twenty-three hundred hours a year and at a ridiculous hourly to boot. Beyond that, no one really knew what she did with her time outside of work. She was not on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or any of the other ubiquitous social media platforms. The younger associates at the firm had made a game of it: trying to find a nonprofessional photograph of her on the Internet. It was impossible. At least Sasquatch had the Patterson–Gimlin film and some hoax plaster footprints to grab on to. But this woman? She was a ghost.

  There were just three things she did with her time: 1.) work, 2.) assiduously manage her investments, 3.) build beautiful houses. As a result, her net worth was approximately $66,750,000, at least in part on the strength of seven properties, including her Pacific Heights condo (a 1913 post-earthquake mansion she’d bought and rehabbed during the late eighties); a small but well-run apartment building in Oakland; an office complex in Mountain View, California, bought before the tech boom boomed; and the as-of-yet undeveloped hot springs site outside Jackson, Wyoming. It was true that she’d inherited a tight little fortune from her deceased parents, but she had long since quintupled that in the years since, her market timing always perfect, often eerily so.

  “Sweetheart, may I ask you a question?” her waiter asked.

  She folded her napkin onto her lap and smiled at him. “Albert, my friend, you can ask me anything you’d like. Fire away.”

  “It’s just that every day you come here for lunch, you order the same thing, and every day, you never, ever touch your steak. Now, why is that?”

  “I save it for dinner,” she replied breezily, taking the smallest sip of her wine.

  He raised a finger as if in deduction, or polite declaration. “Gretchen-honey, I think you’re fibbin’ ’bout that.”

  “Or maybe”—she smiled—“I’m taking it home for my boyfriend.”

  He regarded her for a moment, a slow grin breaking across his face. “If I was your boyfriend, I’d never let you eat lunch alone.”

  * * *

  —

  Every business day she carried a small plastic clamshell back to her office, where she’d ride the elevator to the very top of the tower and, wrapping her coat around her tightly, step into the daylight, be it a brilliant midday shine or a heavy wool of fog off the bay, all the dozens of neighboring skyscrapers beaming back at her and the wind whirling about, her hair always crazing itself. Then, setting the steak on a squarish HVAC unit, she’d step back some twenty paces, holding the empty container, and sit down on an old rusty folding chair, where she knew the building’s janitors came to smoke on their breaks. She’d even begun to keep a pack of American Spirits in her jacket, should she be interrupted by someone. But the top of the tower was almost always abandoned, and for ten minutes she would just sit there and wait, watching for her hawk to come. She had never witnessed the bird accept her offerings, but every day the meat disappeared, and once, from her office window, she watched as the hawk flew down from the many floors above her, a chunk of meat clutched in yellow talons.

  4

  Every morning Teddy Smythe awoke to a series of happy explosions. Four young girls spilling out of their beds and into his, there to prop open his eyelids with little-girl fingers, there to flop open his covers, there to complain, to cuddle, and to otherwise disturb his last moments of rest. Explosions everywhere: clothes piled on every stick of furniture and spilled to the floor as the girls sifted through their garments, dressing and undressing themselves, leaving the clothes in new piles. Fights over the shower, over the prime real estate in front of a particular mirror, fights for a hair dryer, over the spilled confetti of a box of sugary cereal, spilled milk, spilled orange juice, the blare of a radio, Britney shouting motherly directions, a TV squawking, the minivan outside idling, and now a cavalcade of I love you, Daddy and a parade of kisses, and then—perhaps thirty minutes of quiet before he drove to the jobsite.

  Teddy loved his life. But as good as things were, he could see a brighter future ahead of him. It was like a glimpse of heaven, glowing white-silver on the horizon, a point on the map he now recognized and would undoubtedly touch. . . .

  To start with: Gretchen’s house. The night before Teddy had lain in bed, staring at the ceiling, running various iterations of phrasing through his mind: Riverrun, Steam House, Cloud House . . . searching for an elegant name for the project, like Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater or Taliesin. And he imagined finishing the structure on the morning of Christmas Eve, and the following day presenting Gretchen with the keys along with a flute of champagne before
walking her through the house, and then: that moment when she’d hand the three men their much-deserved fee, and that sensation he’d have, later, carrying that money home to Britney. . . .

  How he longed to see the pride in her face. Pride in the fact that he had changed the fortunes of their family. That finally, after all the years of scraping by, of clawing, they’d done it—and as a family. He could practically feel her ex-cheerleader legs squeezing around his waist as they kissed, just like old times.

  He had a dream-board in the basement of the condo they rented. A secret grotto that the girls were not likely to discover in the shadowy, dank space smelling of old cat piss and mold. It was where Teddy went to bench-press and jump rope, a quiet place to exercise his frustrations away. And above the laundry sink, there was a cabinet in which he kept his dreams sequestered.

  On the inside of the cabinet door was a picture of the body he wanted for himself: a photo of Bruce Lee, circa 1973’s Enter the Dragon. And there were other pictures, of various heroes: Arnold Schwarzenegger in full Conan regalia; Terry “Hulk” Hogan; Clint Eastwood; Mike Tyson; Teddy Roosevelt; and, in-flight from the free-throw line, Michael Jordan, pink tongue tasting the rarified air of a six-time NBA champion.

  There in the basement, headphones shutting off the world, muscles burning, the room dark and somehow womblike, he was free to envision his future. This future where he was a man among men, physically strong, financially assured, and maybe even intellectually surprising. The dream-board was festooned with houses he’d photographed around town: modern ranches with unorthodox angles, big windows, and forever views—views looking all the way out to those big, white-teethed monster mountains amid the clouds, and Valhalla not so far away. He saw a future where his family would own dozens of acres of land and he’d look out in the mornings and see eight or nine horses frolicking in a meadow, his daughters delightedly chasing them or perhaps collecting fistfuls of wildflower bouquets. And back in their bedroom, he and Britney would be as enraptured with each other as ever.

  They’d always been good at that—sex—ever since they were teenagers. Soothing each other with their bodies. Whatever was in their way, whatever troubles addled their minds, they were perfectly matched for each other and always would be, he knew. They would grow old, of course, but their love would continue on like an eternal heartbeat, rhythmically pumping on and on into their shared future. In the past he had endeavored to write a poem capturing the intensity of these feelings. A single page. All the heavy words neatly center-aligned and capitalized, but when he sat down to transfer what was in his heart onto a page, he found the task insurmountable.

  These were the kinds of things, Teddy had learned, not to share with Bart, if he didn’t want to suffer through his friend’s unyielding harassment. Teddy practically cringed at the thought of Bart’s jaundiced worldview, snaking into his own untroubled mind.

  After Britney hustled the girls into the minivan for school that morning, Teddy crept down into the basement and jumped rope for fifteen minutes. He needed to steel his mind. Time, he knew, was about to rush forward, as if caught by the shirtsleeve to a locomotive. He would have to be strong of body and strong of brain if they were going to get through this in one piece, the kind of friend and partner Cole and Bart needed. He knew that he wasn’t as smart as Cole or as brutally forceful as Bart, but he could be the vitally positive force between the two, the way he’d been as a child, when his parents fought.

  He closed his eyes, felt the muscles of his arms strain, felt the callused balls of his feet bounce off the concrete floor, and saw that household, the one he’d grown up in. His father arriving home long after dinner had cooled, his mother by then close to tears, and how, as early as twelve, he’d taken pride in separating them, in placing his body between his father and his mother. Even back then, twenty-odd years ago, he was strong. Strong from emulating Kung Fu movies, action flicks; strong from football and wrestling practice; strong from internalizing all the house’s strife, focusing it all into his muscles and diffusing it later, in sport.

  It was the same reason he loved construction. After high school, he’d been lost in life, drifting from one dead-end job to the next: stocking shelves at Walmart; flipping burgers or delivering pizzas; working as a night auditor at Motel 6. Cole was the one who’d gotten him his first construction job, and he’d instantly taken to it. The camaraderie of the work crew. The physically demanding work. And, at the end of a job, the satisfaction of looking at a completed project and knowing you’d done something that would stand the test of time, something that might even outlive you. He loved those nights when, after finishing a project, they’d all hit the bars and their foreman would buy them a round or two of beers and thank them for their hard work and he’d go home, exhausted, sunburned, and so utterly thankful for the reassurance of his bed and the cool, soft cup of his pillow.

  He showered, quickly ate a bowl of oatmeal, pounded a glass of orange juice, and lit out for True Triangle’s last mundane jobsite: a garage teardown-and-rebuild in town. Nothing sexy. An older woman had hired them, and they’d been putzing away, putting in a few focused hours at a time before going off to work other jobs for a week or more. They knew the woman was frustrated, but they’d bid the project too low, and so there was very little profit to be made.

  He pulled his truck up in front of the homeowner’s house. The morning was bright, and he felt hopeful, happy. A new concrete pad waited for them, and he inspected this. If they busted their butts, they could get all the framing and roofing done in a day or two, and then hanging the garage door would be a piece of cake.

  He noticed the front door crack open, and the woman stood there in her nightgown, a TV remote gripped in her hand.

  “Well,” she said. “I thought you boys had given up on me. Hadn’t heard a peep outta you in days now.”

  Teddy was hardly a masterful actor, but there was one role he could play quite convincingly when called upon—that of a dumbed-down version of himself. Sensing the woman’s anger and disappointment, he grinned slowly and rubbed at the top of his head. “Gee, we’ve just been so busy,” he said, walking slowly toward her, “this whole town, there’s work everywhere and we’re just being run ragged.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said. “You boys were sure hungry for this job two months ago. That sales spiel your friend gave me? About being a small local company. Bootstraps and all that bologna. I’m an old lady, and I about could’ve built this garage faster’n you three bozos.”

  Teddy looked at his feet. This was part of the hustle: Line up more work than you could possibly handle, because there was no guarantee there’d be work on the horizon next year, or the year after. And then find ways to manage or ignore your clients’ disappointment when you drifted way past the projected deadlines.

  “Is there something I can do for you, ma’am? Some gesture to make things right?”

  She regarded him coolly. “My furnace has been acting up since May,” she admitted. “Nights are getting colder, and I’d like it fixed before the snow flies. Why don’t you come on in and give it a look for me?”

  Teddy nodded amiably. “I’d be happy to, ma’am. We do aim to please.”

  The house was perfectly kept, everything in its place. Not even any of the bric-a-brac so many of their older clients hoarded: the collectible plates hanging on walls, towering stacks of moldering newspaper and magazines rising from punky warped floors, paperback books, garbage . . . No, this little house was immaculate.

  “You sure keep a tight ship,” Teddy said.

  “Yes, sir, I do. Which is why that mess out there,” she said, pointing to where her garage once stood, “is killing me. I know the neighbors are talking. And yesterday a developer was here, wondering if I was thinking about selling. Let me tell you something, my husband and I bought this house forty years ago. Nine thousand dollars, it cost us. Cash on the barrelhead. There were no millionaires here back then. Just a bunch
of ranchers, some cowboys, and a few dusty miners, hanging on.”

  He followed her down a set of uncluttered stairs and into the cool, dry basement.

  Teddy walked over and knelt down, studying the furnace.

  “Well, ma’am, I don’t know how to tell you this, but . . . this thing’s ancient. Anything could be wrong with it at this point.”

  “I checked the filter already,” she put in. “Just like my husband taught me. Filter’s fine. I’d changed it about a month ago.” She pointed an arthritic finger to a meticulously organized log that hung off the furnace by a loop of twine: Every time the furnace had been serviced, every filter changed, all neatly recorded over the decades. . . . “I checked the fuses, too.”

  Teddy withdrew a pocket flashlight and stared into the furnace. This sort of chore pleased him; he liked the direct contact with a homeowner. So much of their time was spent up on a rooftop or banging away with hammers, covered in dust, loud music playing. Sometimes it felt like their only connection to the homeowners were arguments about money or timelines. But this was real, tangible. Something was broken and needed fixing. And the homeowner wasn’t some toxic tech wonder boy, either, some gel-haired sports agent, or pharmaceutical executive.

  “Got it,” Teddy said at last, revealing a broken loop of hardened black rubber. “Your blower belt broke.”

  “Is that bad?” she asked.

  “Ma’am, this furnace’s older than I am. All things considered, I’d say it’s pretty good news. You can get yourself a new one at the hardware store pretty cheap.”

  She took the broken belt from his hands and looked at him with something like a reserved approval.

  “Would you like a cup of coffee?” she asked.

  He glanced around the basement at shelves of neatly arranged cans of paint, a work bench and pegboard, an old dartboard, and not far down the wall, a Budweiser calendar still counting the days of December 1999.