by Jane Smiley
When we got there, three cars were already parked across the street, and as I unlocked the front door, another pulled up. It was a beautiful sunny day, and even though the kitchen was heated only to fifty-five, solar gain made it warm, almost tropical.
At one, the doorbell rang.
Each of the four Realtors presented an offer. I thanked each one, said that we would get back to them in twenty-four hours, and closed the door. Gottfried and I went into the kitchen and laid the offers out on the kitchen counter. One was easy to throw out. The buyers’ financial statement showed it would be a stretch for them to qualify and they were borrowing part of the down payment from her parents. We set that aside.
I said, “Here’s one. Twenty thousand more than the asking price.”
“What do they want?” he asked suspiciously.
“Well, they’d like you to replace the refrigerator with a Sub-Zero.”
“What else?”
I read down the list of contingencies. Best to get the toughest one out of the way first. “They want you to build a wine cellar in the basement in the same style as the kitchen cabinetry.”
“Stupid. Get rid of it.” He put that one underneath the other one.
The last two, both for the full price, were almost identical. The buyers had plenty of money and qualified easily. Their contingencies were mostly about time and financing. One wanted a forty-five-day closing—after Christmas—and the other wanted to be sure he got a mortgage. I said, “We don’t have to respond until tomorrow. I expect I’ll be hearing from all four Realtors tonight, now that they’ve seen the competition.”
“Yeah.” He didn’t crack a smile.
“Aren’t you happy? Look how this is going! I’m going to have an offer on that other house pretty soon too.”
“I’m happy.”
“Then smile.”
“I’m not that happy.”
He meant it. He said, “We done here? I got to get back to the farm.” He left. Someday, I thought. Someday I will get used to him.
That evening, the four Realtors, who had of course seen one another, called me to sweeten the deals they were trying to make. By the end of the evening, Gottfried’s wife and I had accepted an offer for the house in question—fifteen-day closing, no mortgage contingency—and had generated tremendous enthusiasm in the breast of the losing buyer for the other house, a Queen Anne not unlike Marcus’s house but on a bigger lot. That buyer had seen the Queen Anne once. The next day he and his wife would be seeing it again. I expected I would be making a deal on that one within days. Closing on the first house meant over sixteen thousand in commission for me, before Christmas, and after I called Susan and then got into bed, I lay awake for a while, spinning a fantasy of short-term riches. There was, on the one hand, the future billion, but perhaps even more interesting than that, there was the immediate, say, fifty thousand. I could build a nice house for that in a spot that Susan would like, maybe on one of those south-facing hills near Roaring Falls, not so far from Deacon, up on high ground. Gottfried could build it.
In the morning, I got to work ten minutes early, and I went into the gold trader’s office, and there I found George Sloan, still with that permanent grin on his face, and I said, “Am I going to be priced out of the gold market by Christmas?”
“It goes up and down. I’ve made a bundle in the last week. But I’ve been tracking it pretty closely.” He shrugged.
“Well, I’m coming into a couple of unexpected commissions. Well, not unexpected, but unexpectedly early. I thought I might gamble a little.”
“I think that’s a good idea, Joe.”
“Don’t tell Marcus.”
“How come?”
“Well, I want to try this once without him breathing down my neck. If it works, I’ll tell him.”
“I’ve got you. Boy, if ever there was a guy with a theory, he’s the one. I sit here for hours, just listening to him.”
“What do you think?”
“About his theories?”
“Yeah.”
George looked at me, then said, “Shit, Joe, I haven’t got one hell of a clue!” We laughed. “But I do listen to him about any tax thing. I figure if he does it, it’s okay to do.”
“Don’t we all? But what’s your theory about the gold market?”
“I don’t have a theory. I do it by feel.”
“And that works?”
“Works so far. But I told you my rule. I define my stake ahead of time and then I put a certain percentage of my winnings away and never touch them.”
“I’ll call you when I get the money.”
“I’ll be here.”
That was Thursday. The next day, the buyers who had lost the first house of Gottfried’s made a good offer on the second house and Gottfried accepted it Saturday morning. They offered to close between Christmas and New Year’s. Gottfried said that was fine with him. Then he got off the phone and put his wife on, and I said, “Is he smiling yet?”
“Kind of.”
“This is the quickest we’ve ever sold any of his houses, and these are the most expensive.”
“You do a good job, Joe. I bet he doesn’t tell you that.”
I thanked her.
When I saw Susan over the weekend, I had a strong sense of having a delightful secret, and there was no repeat of the cocaine. We went for a walk on Saturday afternoon, then got a bite to eat and went to a movie, and somehow that evolved, and we were still together Sunday morning, reading the paper and making toast at my place, which was nothing at all like her place, and she said, “You keep telling me how sterile your condo is, Joe, but I find it soothing.”
“Bland.”
“I don’t judge it like that. It’s clean. It’s neat. The surfaces are clear. You know what my mother says? If you’re depressed, you should always clear the surfaces in your house and put things away, and then you’ll feel genuinely better.”
“What if that doesn’t work?”
“Then you do three small things that you’ve been putting off.”
“And then?”
“Well, then you pray.”
We laughed and went back to bed.
I took her home around dusk and drove back to my condo, thinking about what sort of dog we would have and how he would go out and about with me, lying on a blanket on the backseat.
Marcus was at my condo when I got home, peering at the numbered doorbells. He’d never been there before. When I pulled up, he turned on the headlights and waved to me, then came over and opened my car door. He said, “I was trying to call you all day.”
“You came all the way over here because I had the phone unplugged? I guess you’ve forgotten what it means to be single, huh?”
“That’s an understatement. Listen, what do you have stashed away?”
“What do you mean, like dope?” But I knew what he meant.
“No, not like dope. Say, do you remember that old question, is it better to have money and no dope or dope and no money?”
“No.”
“Oh. Well, it was the great existential dilemma when I was in college.”
He seemed in high spirits. I said, “Come on up.”
When we got inside, he looked around, wandering from room to room for four or five minutes. I occupied myself by putting things away. He came out into the kitchen. He said, “So, you had a woman here last night.”
“Yes, Dad, I did. Is that why you came over?”
“No. Was it Susan?”
“Seemed like it.”
“Well, best not to progress too fast. But I’ve said all I have to say on that score.” He sat down on the couch. He still hadn’t taken off his coat. His demeanor changed. He rubbed his hands together for a moment, then looked at me. He said, “You know, Joe, I didn’t want to come to you, because I’ve honored your wish to keep a little separate from the project. I think that was a natural wish, and you’ve certainly worked hard—as hard as anyone, or harder, frankly. I said to Jane that your circumstances wer
e a little different, but she’s been after me for weeks to talk to you. Last night, she said she was going to talk to you herself if I didn’t, so I figured I’d better get to it.”
“About—”
“About some bills we’ve got to pay. Those last engineer’s bills, for one thing, and some materials for Gottfried, and the last design fee for the golf course guy. I’ve put off the architect who did the drawings of the clubhouse.”
“I thought you paid all the engineer’s bills.”
“I thought I had, but another one came in, and Jane argued with him about it for two weeks, but they went all through everything, and yes we do owe him and he wants it before New Year’s.”
“How much?”
“Well, everything together comes to about ten.”
“Ten what?”
He smiled at my evasion. “Ten grand. Well, that covers everything, including this month’s rent for the office. I’m thinking the big check will be here by the first of the year, so it’s just a little year-end crunch.”
I said, “I can do ten grand.” Actually, I was surprised we had gone this far without him asking me.
“I’m glad, because no one else can. If this big check doesn’t come in, it’s going to be very hard to segue into February, let me put it that way. But what’s that saying? ‘Sufficient unto the day the evils thereof.’”
“What does that mean?”
“That means, if it doesn’t work out we’ll eat shit at the time.”
“How about my mortgage payment and all that stuff?”
“Well, you ought to pay that, actually. And whatever other bills you think are essential.”
“You know, Marcus, I have the feeling you’re giving me some bad news.”
“Not really. Nothing has changed, we’re just waiting and waiting. Things are always hard around the holidays.”
I said, “The squeeze will be over once spring rolls around.”
“Yeah. Did I tell you the article is coming out in the golf magazine in March?”
“That’s the key.”
“I think so too.”
He looked at me expectantly. Finally, I said, “Oh. I guess you want a check.”
“Well, yeah.”
I stood up and went over to my desk and wrote a check out to the company for ten thousand dollars. I handed it to him and he looked at it. I said, “Thousands in, billions out.” He laughed. Only then did he stand up and take off his coat, which he draped neatly over the arm of the couch. He sat down again, put the folded check in his breast pocket. He leaned back and put his hands behind his head. He sighed. I couldn’t tell if he was relaxing or worrying. I sat down again without offering him a beer. I only had one in the fridge, and I was saving that for myself. He said, “You know, it about kills me to ask you for money.”
“Why is that? I’m a partner.”
“I don’t know.”
“You’ve been pretty straightforward with everyone else.”
“I have—I was, maybe is what I should say. I’m not quite as sure of myself now, so I can’t summon up the same self-righteous attitude.”
“That’s interesting, Marcus, because from my perspective, things are progressing and we’re getting closer and closer to actually turning up some buyers.”
“I know that.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“Probably marriage.”
“How so?”
“Imagine this. Every night you go to sleep, and a couple of hours later you wake up, and right next to you in bed someone is sighing and muttering. So you lie there quietly. You can feel her shaking her head, then lying quietly, then there’s a little sigh, then there’s a sniff. Then her head turns, and she looks at you for a long moment; then she sighs and lies flat on her back.”
“Yeah, I can imagine that.”
“Well, I can read her mind. This is what she’s thinking. ‘Oh, God. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I’ve got to get this out of my mind. I believe Marcus, but what if Marcus is wrong? He’s been wrong before. He’s been wrong more times than he’s been right, hasn’t he? Well, in some ways yes and in some ways no. Of course, there were reasons why things didn’t go the way he said they would. I’ve got to forget this and go to sleep. Is he awake? No, I don’t think so. I hope not. If he were awake, we would talk about this for the millionth time, and that wouldn’t do any good. You just can’t predict the future. Everyone knows that. I don’t know if I can stand this.’ So eventually she goes back to sleep. But then, in the morning, when the children are getting dressed for school, she says quietly to me, ‘What’s the plan for today?’ as if I’m going to tell her something the children shouldn’t hear. The plan for the day is the same as every other day—to get on with it. But she wants there to be a breakthrough, some event that will make her feel safe, except that nothing makes her feel safe.”
“My mother is kind of like that.”
“Is she? Anyway, for the last week, she’s been saying, oh, so respectfully and casually, that maybe she would like to get a job. She misses teaching. But I know it’s not about that. She didn’t like teaching very much and was glad to stop. She thought she was going to write children’s books. That was the plan when we moved here. She set up that fourth bedroom as a study so she could write a series of young adult mysteries. But she hardly goes in there. Anyway, it isn’t about missing teaching, it’s about putting her finger in the dike.” He sighed. “The worst thing is, Justin is taking her mood. He’s sensitive, you know. You saw that, I’m sure. And even though she doesn’t talk about it in front of the kids, Justin understands that she’s on edge. Actually, I think for him not talking about it is worse, because he knows something’s going on, but no one tells him how big it is. Or isn’t.” He got up and walked around the room, stopping for a moment to look at an old picture I had of woman with her hand in a muff. “So, he thinks it’s really big and getting bigger.”
“So talk to him about it.”
“Oh, I think we’re past that point. I’ve thought about that, but if she doesn’t agree with me about talking, then things could get out of hand. I don’t know.” He turned away from the picture and looked at me. “Look. I’m going to be up front with you. George Sloan told me you were in there asking questions Friday.”
“He did?”
“Well, I asked him when we went out to dinner Friday night if he’d seen you and he said that as a matter of fact he had, but he didn’t volunteer the information. I was a little hurt that you talked to him without—well, behind my back.”
“I didn’t.” I felt a little alarmed.
“I feel like you’re holding out on me, when I haven’t held out on you at all.”
“Holding out on you?”
“Caution is understandable, I suppose, though I still think it shows a lack of commitment, but that’s your business. I’m not going to question your commitment because you work as hard as anyone, and if—when—this project goes it will owe a lot to you and your knowledge and hard work. But”—he sat down again and stared right at me—“I can’t help feel that you’re holding out on me. That you don’t trust me.”
I didn’t say anything.
“I knew that would be a danger when I brought Jane in. I thought about it for weeks, balancing the likelihood that she would undermine me against her abilities and expertise, and finally I decided to give her the benefit of the doubt, and maybe, to tell you the truth, I didn’t have a choice, because once Jane makes up her mind to do something, she generally does it, and she made up her mind that she wanted a piece of all of this, so maybe I’m kidding myself, but anyway, you were the person I worried about. I knew all along you had reservations about the whole project from the beginning, you were the one I had to win over, because your influence with Gordon was greater than anyone else’s. So I was careful with you, and I spent time with you, and I told you things I didn’t tell anyone else, and when you then decided to maintain your distance—well, I honored that, because you’re smart and
I respect you. But still, when I was talking to George, I got kind of upset, because I felt betrayed. I thought, Well, the project is one thing, and Joe can do whatever he wants with regard to the project, but this gold thing—well, that is my thing. Those are my marbles, and he’s trying to get at my marbles without telling me.”
“Marcus, I don’t—”
“Of course it doesn’t look that way to you. I see your point of view. I don’t have a stake and all. But it was my idea.” He looked at me. I looked at him. He said, “Pretty childish, huh?”
I licked my lips and said, “Well, Marcus. I understand your point of view too. I guess that’s why I told George not to tell you about me coming in. Maybe I was being a little—I don’t know—sneaky. But it really isn’t that. I don’t know what it is. I was kind of up about these commissions I’m getting from Gottfried. We sold the houses fast, and they were expensive, and I was having a get-rich-quick fantasy.”
“So what’s wrong with that?”
“I know you want me to put more money into the project—”
“Do I? I don’t. Getting rich quick is my favorite fantasy. There’s nothing wrong with it. I want to do it too. Shit, man! Of course I do! Here’s Mike, getting rich without me. Here’s George, getting rich without me. Here’s you, getting rich without me.” He laughed.
I said, “Look. Let’s do it together.”
He said, “Nah. Nah, you don’t want to do that. When all is said and done, and we’ve talked about marbles and friendship and everything, really it is every man for himself. I know that. I wouldn’t even let you get me in on this deal, and that’s because you’re about the only friend I’ve ever had.”
“Excuse me?”
“Doesn’t that make you want to puke? I mean, that whole expression? It’s very corny, and I apologize, but if I had to be honest, I would have to say, Where am I going to get a friend? My brother is a shit. My father and his uncles were shits. I went to college and all, but I spent most of that time and my time in the army in a fog of dope, so even though we were great friends, we didn’t actually know one another’s names. And then there was the IRS. Do you know how suspicious IRS agents are? It’s a way of life. You think you aren’t bringing it home from the office and all, and you do get together with the other guys, but if all day long every day you’re looking for cheaters, then what you do is think the world is full of cheaters. I didn’t even realize I didn’t have any friends until just a while ago, like a few months ago, when we started to be friends, and it wasn’t like anything I knew before, and I wondered what the hell was going on.”