by Jane Smiley
“It’s their house, Gottfried.”
“I never trusted that guy. He’s too sharp.”
“Taste isn’t a moral question, Gottfried.”
“Oh, you don’t think so?” He said this so pugnaciously I stepped back and looked at Dale, who gave me a maybe-yes-maybe-no sort of shrug. “I’m finished.”
I glanced at Dale again, who by this time wasn’t looking at me. I said, “What do you mean, Gottfried?”
“I’ve had it.”
“Had what?”
“I can’t work with you people. I can’t do the house at the farm. I can’t renovate it. That guy is going to be in my face all the time, telling me to change this and change that and try this and try that and this thing, whatever it is, won’t be so bad. I can tell you right now I won’t have a free hand, and between us all we’re going to screw it up. That house is a work of art. I won’t wreck it.”
“No, you won’t. You’re about the only person who won’t.”
“Who’s paying?” He almost shouted this.
“We are.”
“So I’ve got to do it your way. That’s the way it works. The guy who pays has the say. That’s the way it works. I can’t do that.”
I looked at him, then looked around the room. They had put up plain pine cabinets with black wrought-iron pulls in the shape of oak leaves. The cabinets had lots of knots in the wood and were a rich yellow color. The floorboards were of differing widths, also pine. Gottfried had laid the interesting knots in the middle where they could be appreciated. I said, “Well, you’ve never done that, that’s true, but you’re always complaining about the carrying costs of taking your own loans and building on spec. This is a way out of that. You finished these houses. I’ll sell them over the winter, and you just do this job. It won’t take long, and in the spring you’ll have plenty of money to go on to something you’d rather do.”
“I can’t do it. I knew you were coming out today. I told Marie you’d be coming out today, and I said, ‘He’s going to ask me and I’m going to have to turn him down, so be ready, because it might be a hard winter.’ I already told Dale I might have to let him go for a few months.”
“Gottfried, you know, I’ve been putting up with you for years. One crazy thing after another. But this is the craziest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“You think you can insult me and maybe it will change my mind, but—”
“You know what, Gottfried? I’m not insulting you. I’m telling you the truth. Anyone in the world would agree that it is crazy to turn down an indoor job in the winter and lay off your favorite co-worker and refuse to work in a place that you love and get lots of money for it just because someone else is paying for it, especially after complaining for years that you always have to front all the money and take all the risk yourself.”
Dale cleared his throat. I looked at him. He said, “I don’t like to say anything.”
“I know,” I said.
“Especially since, you know, I don’t want to seem like I’m trying to save my job and all.”
“Why not, Dale? It’s okay to try and save your job.”
“Okay. Well, then. Here’s what I think.”
We waited for a long moment while he looked out the window.
“You can’t always pick the guy you want to work for. I was reading about this artist: Poussin. I saw some of his paintings one day at a museum. Anyway, he was in Italy, minding his own business, and the king of France got him to come back to Paris and gave him lots of things to do that he had never done before, and he had a terrible time getting paid to boot, and then when he managed to get back to Italy and be his own boss again, he died.”
“I can’t tell whose side you’re on, Dale,” I said.
“Well, it just made me think of that.”
“I can’t compromise certain things,” asserted Gottfried.
I turned back to him. I opened my mouth. I started yelling. “Who says, Gottfried? Who says you can’t compromise? Who do you think you are? You’re a builder! You’re a small-time builder in a small place! You do good work, but you’re not Rembrandt! You’re not even this guy Poussin, who I’ve never heard of! You’re not rich! You’re not Frank Lloyd Wright! You build in a traditional style that is pleasing to people! So what? Get off your high horse and live in the real world!”
I turned on my heel and stomped out.
He really was the only one capable of remodeling the clubhouse and making the new work disappear into the old, but I was fed up with him. As I drove back to the office, I tried this idea out in several ways. Fed up. Fed up with Gottfried. Not kidding. Who did he think he was. And so on. Maybe I could get Dale by himself.
Marcus was gone. It was after lunch by now, and when I walked into the office, Jane was just hanging up her coat. I said, “Where did you have lunch?”
“Laguna.”
“Very high class.”
“I just had an appetizer-size plate of tortellini with pesto sauce.”
I went into my office a little abruptly, still annoyed with Gottfried. Jane followed me. She stood in the doorway. She said, “So. Did you find Gottfried?”
“I did, unfortunately.”
“Did you finalize the deal?”
“I did not.”
“You seem—uh, pissed off.”
“I am.”
“I’ve never seen you pissed off before.”
“Frankly, Jane, I think this process is getting to everyone.” I straightened the folders on my desk.
She stood there with her arms crossed over her chest. She said, “It’s taxing, I admit. I mean, for me, the hardest part is that there’s always something more to do. I focus on something, like fitting some investors to a particular deal or putting together loan papers, and it’s a tremendous effort to get that one thing done, and as soon as it’s done, there’s this moment when I realize that that one thing, as hard as it was, wasn’t even the point.”
“Like getting the permits.”
“We haven’t even started building yet. The thought of that terrifies me.”
“Or selling. Try thinking about that. These houses are as expensive as one of Gottfried’s houses. He builds and sells at the most two or three of those a year. I’ve had a couple of his houses on the market for six months or more. Who says there’re buyers for a hundred of those houses?”
“Marcus,” she said.
We stared at each other.
She said, “Don’t listen to me.”
“What?”
“I don’t want to say it.”
“Say what?”
“Say anything negative.”
“Then don’t say anything negative.”
“Okay.”
We looked at each other again, both knowing that she was going to say something negative. She said, “Marcus was a stranger when you all took him in here.”
“Yeah.”
“I mean, think about that.” She looked at me soberly, giving me a moment to think about it.
“I have.”
“I’m going to say something.” She was still looking at me, and without her customary air of faint amusement.
“Say it.”
“Okay, I will. No one who knew Marcus before would have ever taken him in like you all did.”
“Is he a crook? Is there something we should know?”
“Well, it’s not that. It’s more like he’s a crackpot. He’s always had big ideas, but no one ever listened to them before.”
“No one is a hero in his own hometown, Jane. You know that as well as I do. The people who know you are used to pooh-poohing you.”
“Maybe. But I remember when Marcus first met Gordon and everyone. He called me and told me about it, and he was so excited, and I had no idea who anyone was, and I thought, Someone has to warn these people.”
“Of what? Are there things he’s done in the past that I should know?”
“No. But I’ll tell you why. No one ever gave him a chance before.”
Together we let this sink in.
“Are you saying we’re the biggest suckers ever?”
“Maybe. Of course, that makes me a sucker too. I mean, when I told my sister I was working for Marcus and had put some of my assets in, she told me I needed my head examined.”
“Gordon is cross-collateralized up the butt.”
“I know that.”
I sat down in my desk chair. I said, “You’re right. I’m sorry you said anything. I’m sorry I listened.”
“I should tell you something else.”
“What?”
“We haven’t paid your electric bill, and they’re going to cut you off.”
“You mean in the condo?”
She nodded.
“When?”
“Next couple of days.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that until now? Were you going to tell me, or just wait until they cut me off like before?”
“Well, actually, since I haven’t spoke to Marcus in a few days, I don’t know what the plan is now. I got the warning last week, and I told him about it, and he said he was going to negotiate it but then we had that argument so I lost track of what he’s done. It may be okay, but maybe not.”
“Why don’t I just pay it?”
“You could do that.”
“Have we reached some kind of a crisis, Jane? I don’t know what’s going on. Do you? Is there something you argued about that you haven’t told me about?”
She gave me what I would have to say was a calculating stare, went to the door of my office, looked out into the other office, and came back in. I said, “He’s not here.”
“He said not to tell you what we were arguing about because it was too embarrassing. Anyway, how did you know we were arguing?”
“Mike heard you from outside the door and went back out into the parking lot to wait things out. When I pulled in, he told me. What he heard didn’t sound exactly like an argument, Jane, it sounded more like a knock-down drag-out fight.”
She burst into tears. “He’s seeing someone.”
“Who?”
“Someone I know. A friend of mine.”
“Mary King.”
She looked at me in surprise.
“I figured that one out a few weeks ago.”
“I’m not going to say yes and I’m not going to say no.”
I took this as a yes. I said, “But why should that cause a knock-down drag-out fight?”
“I hate it. I’m caught in the middle, for one thing. Linda has no idea. She comes over to my place and she says to me, ‘What’s going on, Jane? Why is he acting so strange? Do you know anything? Does he need to go to a therapist or anything?’ and then—uh, this other person comes over and says, ‘Does he love me? Is he going to leave her?’ And of course he’s stringing both of them along. I’ve been going crazy.”
“What is he going to do?”
“What do you think? What would he do?”
“I have no idea.”
“He’s going to play it by ear. At this point he’s still planning to have it both ways. But this other person, I know she isn’t going to stand for that. She’s not that type. That’s what we were arguing about. He said it was my job to help him keep things going, that that was what the project needed, and if it all blew up right now we’d lose everything we’ve put into it.”
“Why would that happen?”
“It would just fall apart. I know it would. I can’t say why.” She heaved a deep sigh.
I said, “I don’t see how Mary King would jeopardize the whole project, but maybe it’s a psychological thing. She’s not an investor or anything, is she?”
Jane shook her head. After a moment, she said, “Joey, Marcus has a heart about the size of a pea. Once I said to him, ‘Watch out, Marcus, your heart is going to swell to the size of a walnut, and then it will burst,’ and he just laughed. He doesn’t care about anyone else.”
“Oh, Jane.” I thought this was typical of a woman, to realize that a guy wasn’t putting her first and so taking that to mean that he was heartless. My experience of Marcus wasn’t like that at all. I said, “I’m sure it’s not that bad. I’m not saying there’s nothing to worry about, but I think when you don’t talk to someone for a week and you spend that time brooding about the things you hold against them, that makes everything look worse. Make up with him, go along with him for now. What is there to be gained by blowing his cover? Nothing. He could get over Mary King. Does he love her?”
“I don’t know. It’s not—”
“Does he know?”
She shrugged.
“So just go along with him. Make up with him. See what happens.”
She nodded and went out of my office. Marcus came in about ten minutes later, and after five minutes or so, I heard her say something to him, and I heard him reply. Their voices were too low for me to make out, but the conversation went on and seemed amicable. In about five minutes, Jane came in and put an envelope on my desk, addressed to the electric company, bearing a stamp. She said, “You mail it, just so you know it’s paid.”
Later that day I went out to find Gottfried, who was also in a better mood, and he said as I walked up to him on the porch of the house he was building, “All right. Dale and I talked about this. You’re right. You sell these houses and I’ll take that job, and in the spring I start work on that lot I got in Deacon. Wait till you see what I’m planning to build there.”
CHAPTER
24
IHAD A DATE with Susan Webster. It was a real date, not a casual getting together. I put on a jacket and a tie, and when I picked her up she had her hair done up on her head with wispy curled tendrils floating down on the sides and the back, and she had a black dress with a wide neckline that showed off her collarbone and a tight-fitting beaded top. When she turned around for a moment, I saw that instead of a zipper up the back there was a row of small buttons, maybe forty of them. I said, “How did you button all those?”
She laughed. “I had my neighbor’s sixteen-year-old daughter come over. I said if she buttoned all these buttons, I would loan her this dress for the prom. It’s an antique.”
I didn’t ask who was going to unbutton her, because I knew.
I took her to the Rochester Hotel, a resort across the river from Roaring Falls, kind of a famous resort from before the Second World War that had revived in the last couple of years and become a luxurious spa and supper club. They had upscale food with a chef from California and a band and dancing. I knew how to dance, though I hadn’t danced since my marriage, but I had come up with this plan when I was looking at my ads for Gottfried’s houses and right on the facing page was a picture of a couple dancing in an ad for the Rochester. Dinner and dancing seemed suddenly exotic and fun and elegant and completely nonlocal.
I liked the way Susan got out of the car and stood looking at the Rochester Hotel while I handed the keys to the parking valet. She was relaxed. She surveyed the façade of the hotel and waited for me; then we ambled up the steps. She smiled at people we passed, in a gracious way, but didn’t look at them as if she were curious about them. When the maître d’ showed us a table not far from the door to the kitchen, she smiled at him and said, easy as you please, “Oh, do you mind? I’d rather sit over there.” She gestured toward a banquette under the windows. He showed us very smoothly to the banquette, and she said, “Thank you. This is much better, don’t you think, Joe?” She paused just for a moment, and the maître d’ pulled out her chair and she sat down. When he spread her napkin over her lap, she had just the proper degree of nonchalance about it. She glanced around the room. She said, “They’ve done a nice job refurbishing the room. Look at the faux marble woodwork. I can do that. Do you like it?”
“This is the first time I’ve seen it.”
“It’s lots of fun. Do you know, I met a woman from New York. They have a big apartment on Park Avenue. She had the whole place marbleized.” She leaned forward. “She paid twenty thousand dollars just for paint.”
She laughed merrily. “I mean, it’s time-consuming, but it’s not six months’ work! I did it to my bathroom last weekend. You’ll have to come up and see it. It’s very funny. This tiny bathroom from the thirties, very utilitarian, with faux marble around the doorway and along the baseboards.”
“It sounds great.”
“Well, it is, but don’t tell anyone you caught me being immodest.”
She picked up the menu. I appreciated how seriously she looked at it—not like a person who was hungry but like a person who meant to enjoy herself. The food was Italian, but not the usual sort of Italian you found in our neighborhood, just pasta and plenty of red sauce and sausage.
“I love risotto,” she said. “I thought I would order the saffron risotto with truffles and slivers of fennel, and maybe the salad of greens with olive oil and balsamic vinegar.”
“I eat Italian all the time, and I’ve never heard of half of those things.”
“I make risotto. And gnocchi. I much prefer them to pasta.”
“What do you recommend?”
She looked the menu up and down.
“I would try the bruschetta.” That was pieces of toast with chopped tomatoes on top. “Then the crab tortelloni with the light chanterelle sauce. There’s only three of those, they should be nice. And then, are you hungry?”
I nodded, but really I was horny. She went on. “Hmm. I would have a bite if you tried the chicken, prosciutto, and spinach roulade. I don’t think the chef would put that on the menu if he didn’t enjoy making it. It’s rather delicate.”
“Have you made that too?”
“Something like it, but I like to use chard. It has a brighter flavor, if you’re careful not to cook it too long.”
“I’ll have all those things.”
She smiled and fingered one of the pale tendrils of hair that curled around her ear. Her smile got wider. She said, “Now you have to tell me what’s gotten back to you about me. I mean, about what I’ve said about you.”
“I haven’t heard a thing.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“No.”
“I thought the grapevine was working all the time around here. I mean, they practically promised me that if I liked you and found you attractive, you’d know within days.” She was grinning.