The Good Neighbor

by William Kowalski

Francie waited in the hallway. Since Francie was working for free, the museum couldn’t exactly fire her, but there was a certain amount of smoothing-over to do. She was reinstated to her for mer position, which had consisted of standing in one of the Re naissance rooms and making sure no one touched anything. She wore a badge and a ridiculous maroon blazer that didn’t go with anything she owned, and she carried a heavy walkie-talkie in her pocket that pulled her spine out of alignment, giving her a neck- ache. That was all right. She didn’t care. She took her Benedor in the morning and again in the evening, and she protected the in tegrity of the Renaissance, and she waited patiently to be discov ered.

  Her parents went back home to Indiana, confident that they had helped their little girl out of the last serious scrape of her childhood, and that she was now equipped with all the tools she needed to deal with the world. Now all they had to do was get Michael whipped into shape, and they could retire in peace.

  In fifty-three days, Francie was to go home again. Then she would have to go back to school, and that was a whole other thing to be dealt with. She’d already enrolled in a master ’s program she had no interest in, for no other reason than that she needed some thing to do. Maybe she would drop out of that. Perhaps she could get a job instead, and write poems on the side. For now, though, she was content to stand and stare at the paintings, and hope that no one would try to touch anything so that she wouldn’t have to speak to them about it.

  And then Colt walked in, leading a group of wide-eyed Japan ese investors. He sized her up from across the room; she could feel his eyes burning her skin. Francie didn’t know it, but she was pretty, in a wide-eyed, corn-fed kind of way, and she had an inno cence about her that stood out in a place like New York. Her red dish brown hair caught the light and held it long after it had passed over the rest of her; her nose was small and upturned; her ears delicate, stomach and hips trim, breasts high and firm. Colt

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  himself was tall and broad-shouldered, with flecks of gray along his temples, and an intensity to his eyes that she mistook at first for kindness. It was the first time in her life that she had ever wanted to be approached by a total stranger. God, I hope that man comes over here and talks to me, she thought, and the very next thing you know, he did, and suddenly everything seemed all right again, more all right than it ever had before, because even though she didn’t know his name she could tell he was not afraid of anything, and what was more, he liked her. He really liked her. She didn’t know how he possibly could—Francie did not believe herself lovable, or even attractive—but he did.

  Several of the Japanese investors took pictures of Francie and Colt speaking to each other, believing that she was some sort of important artistic authority. During that conversation, Francie smiled for the first time in two weeks. A few hours later, she was telling Colt over dinner that she’d been led to believe by the small, wise doctor that she could—in theory, at least—learn to take care of herself, but now that she had met Colt, she knew the truth: he was the only one who could take care of her, really and truly. She held nothing back from him. She told him everything right away, and she was glad she did. She saw the fire this statement put in his eyes, the protective swell of his chest, the way he took her arm as he walked her back to her sublet. He fell in love with her because he needed to be needed, and she needed him; he hadn’t read as many novels as she, but this made perfect sense to him, too.

  “That beautiful face of yours is going to be in photo albums all over Japan,” he told her. “What do you think of that?”

  “I think it’s neato,” said Francie, because it was all part of the magic.

  He invited himself in, as she had known he would, and he availed himself of her, kindly, behaving as if he held the title to her body. That was all right with her, too. She didn’t have to worry about it anymore. It was his body now. In the morning, when she woke up, he was still there, and then she knew that things really

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  were going to be all right, because he hadn’t left her in the middle of the night. She made him breakfast the next morning, and he woke to the smell of coffee.

  So this was the big thing that happened to her when she went to New York, not getting published, but getting attached; and within a few weeks, she knew that she was never going home again, because Colt had said out loud that he loved her, and she had said it back. She was going to stay in the city instead, and things were going to be just fine, and her future was going to be perfect.

  Back in Indianapolis, her parents rejoiced that their strange and wayward daughter had finally found a man to take care of her. Michael moped and wept, to no avail; his sister had found another man, and there was to be no house in the country after all. Fran cie’s poems stopped altogether, of course, killed off by the pills as if they were vermin. No more chapbooks. No more adoring pub lishers. And so every age must end.

  3‌

  The Brass Ring

  Colt stood in the front yard of the house that he already knew he was going to buy, up to his ankles in leaves, craning his

  neck to see the peeling white paint on the widow’s walk. A light breeze toyed with his carefully barbered hair, still mostly its origi nal chestnut, and dimpled his white Brooks Brothers shirt around his gym-sculpted chest; his sleeves were painstakingly rolled to just below the elbow, in order to convey a sense of relaxation. He was thinking that this house was a far cry from the apartment building on Avenue A where he’d been born thirty-nine years ear lier, and where he’d grown up. He rarely thought of that place these days. He didn’t know what made him think of it now, un less it was the wondrous sense of full-circularity, the feeling that he’d finally arrived. Of course, having already arrived years ago, it was really only a new way of feeling it—the feeling being so ex ceedingly pleasant that he sought constantly to re-create it every day, in ways small and large, right down to the manner in which he flung his change at convenience store clerks. If only his parents could have seen this place. They would have been astounded at

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  his success. Nothing like this had been envisioned for their only son. Nothing had been envisioned for him at all, in fact; but it had already been many years since he’d forced himself to forget about that.

  This huge old house, now, Colt mused, was just the thing he needed to get away to once in a while, and to show off a little. It might even help him make partner—you had to show the higher- ups that you knew yourself what you were worth before you could hope for them to acknowledge it. In his early days, when he’d just been starting out as a stockbroker, Colt had noticed that all the men he respected most owned a country place. It was the ultimate brass ring, even better than a fancy car, or a big apart ment, or a beautiful wife. All those things were good to have, but a country place was proof that one had transcended the carnage of life in the city, and could lift out of earthly orbit at will, to fly off to a calmer, cooler, cleaner place. His first boss, at the brokerage firm he’d worked in after he’d finished school, had owned a monthlong timeshare in a tiny cottage on Long Island, just east of the Hamptons. He could walk out of his front door, turn right, go five hundred paces, and walk smack into the ocean. At the time, that had seemed to Colt like the highest state of luxury. The ocean was a place one went when times were good, and there was plenty of money. Colt himself had not seen the ocean with his own eyes until he was twenty-two years old.

  His boss now, Forszak, co-owner and senior partner of Anchor Capital Investments, had a palatial mansion in the Adirondacks that had once been featured on the television program America’s Castles. That was impressive, but Forszak also owned an apart ment in Hong Kong, which he used perhaps once a year. This was in addition to his penthouse overlooking Central Park, of course, a twenty-room apartment with a hot tub on the deck and a dining table that sat twenty-two. Forszak was wealthy beyond all earthly proportion; his holdings actually verged on the interplane tary. This was no mere exaggeration,
for his name was on a list of

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  people waiting to fly to the moon, in a Russian spaceship that had yet to be built, at a cost of roughly $50 million per passenger. It was his serious ambition to be the first Hungarian Gypsy on the moon, and at age sixty-something, the oldest person to boot. Once his feet were firmly planted on the loose, gray dust of the lu nar surface, he intended to say his Roma prayers for all those who had been murdered by the Nazis, and to look down with a sense of supreme satisfaction on the planet whence his people had sprung, and where they had nearly expired, and revel in the fact that they, in the form of Forszak himself, had made it through, af ter all—barely. As the Nazis exterminated the Gypsies along with the Jews, twenty-seven Forszaks had gone into Dachau and Auschwitz. Only one had come out, but that one had achieved such success as was almost never heard of, and had arisen to the most exclusive of country places. It could be said of Forszak that his latest “country place” was to be so exclusive and remote that it didn’t even have any oxygen.

  Already, the newspapers had made much of his ambition. But Forszak’s real concern was not his reputation; it was to say his prayers for the dead while gazing upon the planet that had been the scene of the crime, hoping perhaps that their scope would be greater from that perspective, and that they would get that much more quickly to God’s ear, not having the interference of the at mosphere to contend with.

  Colt and Francie had been to Forszak’s Central Park place once and his Adirondack place twice, with a standing invite to come again any time they wanted. The Adirondack place was like a mansion, Colt had marveled afterward, but one made entirely of massive logs. Endangered logs, Forszak told him slyly, though he was probably joking. That was what you got when you were rou tinely one of the top five performers in a capital investment firm of over two hundred people. Even your boss tried to impress you a little.

  Of course, it wasn’t the kind of invitation you took advantage

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  of. One didn’t want to wear out one’s welcome with Forszak. It was enough just to have been invited to the Log Palace once. It was like a badge one could wear around the office. Out at Forszak’s last weekend. Great time. Great fishing. Great guy. These words, dropped casually into water-cooler conversation, had the effect of putting on stilts; Colt was suddenly elevated ten feet above every one else, breathing the same heady ether that inflated the lungs of all the great men of finance. The rank stench of the Cuban cigars that Forszak loved and handed out freely to his darlings was also the taste of wealth, all the more titillating because they were just the teensiest bit illegal. Don’t think of it as helping Castro’s economy, Forszak told him. Think of it as burning his fields. Colt laughed duly and lit up; the smoke deadened his tongue and lingered in his mouth, and he thought of it as a harsh but necessary poison that killed off any cells of mediocrity that might still be polluting his genetic structure.

  ❚ ❚ ❚

  Kicking through a pile of leaves now, Colt stumbled over a metal FOR SALE sign. He pulled it up disdainfully, soiling his hands on the moist organic detritus underneath. A small community of potato bugs and centipedes briefly considered their options, then pan icked and fled from the gilded sunlight. Like some kind of me dieval disease, a pox of rust had spread across the face of the sign, rendering it O ALE.

  “Would you look at this?” Colt remarked to Francie, who was sitting half in and half out of the car, trying without much luck to raise various preset stations on the radio. One slender leg extended from the car, the other resting inside. Her reddish blond hair was pulled into a ponytail, revealing the freckles that were scattered like snow across her usually concealed forehead, and the back of her neck. She noted with delight that they were out of the city’s broadcasting range.

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  “Someone didn’t want to sell this place,” Colt said.

  “What makes you say that?” Francie asked, without much in terest. She usually only half heard things Colt said until he had re peated them two or three times; it was a reflex she’d developed some years ago, after noticing that he rarely remembered what she said to him, or, for that matter, what he himself said to any one.

  Colt cocked a hip impatiently. “Well, look,” he said. “They hid this sign under the leaves.”

  Francie looked, paying attention now. “If someone really wanted to hide it they would have thrown it away,” she said. “Probably it just fell over and got covered up.”

  This being the likeliest scenario, Colt decided she was wrong; he decided furthermore that it was evidence of some kind of plot. He would investigate later. For now, he considered wandering be hind the house to explore the backyard again, but he didn’t want to miss the agent when she finally pulled up, because he wanted to give her a good dose of the Eye of Doom, which was one of his most effective business techniques. It was the look he used when he had fixed on making a deal, no matter what the body count. The agent’s name was Marge Westerbrook, and after their initial chat on the phone, Colt thought he had her number pretty well: divorced, raising one child on her own, lonely. One of those women who pretended real estate was an actual career. It wasn’t that he was psychic. It was that Marge Westerbrook felt obliged to tell everyone her personal details over the phone, before she’d even met them. This was a habit Colt despised—people talking too much about themselves.

  “She’s fucking late,” he snarled for the third time.

  Francie sighed. It had been her hope that exposure to the coun try air would teach Coltrane how not to be in a hurry all the time. She could see now that this would take longer than a few minutes. “Do you still like it here?” she asked him, hoping to distract

  him from his own impatience. “The house, I mean?”

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  He paused, lifting his head, smelling the air like an animal. “Sure,” he said. “Kind of place I always wanted.”

  “Really?”

  “Uh-huh.” Colt got back in the driver ’s seat, sniffed again, and let loose with a sneeze that rocked the car.

  “Jesus,” he gasped. “I wonder if I’m allergic to something.” “I didn’t know that about you,” she said.

  “I’ve never been around these many damn plants before,” he said, looking in the glove compartment for a tissue. “Plants every where you look. It’s like they’re invading or something.”

  “No, I mean about the house. I didn’t know you always wanted a place like this.”

  “Oh, that.” He found one and blew his nose. “Yeah. Always thought, you know, when I was a kid, I’d have a country place someday. Everyone who’s anyone has one. Forszak has one, re member? Good idea. Somewhere to get away to.”

  She wanted to ask him, But do you love it? Or do you just want it because of Forszak? But questions along these lines irritated him be cause they were analytical, and she had no right to be analyzing anybody. Instead, she got out of the car and leaned on the roof, looking across the road where the river lay hidden from view be low the embankment. Instantly she felt better about everything, even the dwindling number of things in her life that had nothing wrong with them. You could be invisible over there, she thought. You could be down there soaking your feet in the water and no one would be able to see you. Not a soul.

  “Here she comes,” said Francie.

  She had spied a yellow Volkswagen, one of the new models, raising dust as it came around the bluff. Colt got out of the car and slammed the door.

  “Half an hour she made us sit here,” he said. “Could of called.

  She has my cell number.”

  “Colt, please,” said Francie. “Be kind.” “Good Lord, she drives a bug,” said Colt.

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  The Volkswagen scrabbled to a halt in the gravel driveway. A large, florid woman got out, already trilling at them before she closed her door. She had red hair, wore a flowery-yellow printed top with black slacks, and in the crook of one arm she cradled a cli
pboard to her oversized bosom as though it was a nursing child. “Helloo!” she called. “I’m so sorry, my son wouldn’t change his shirt, I just . . .oh, teenagers. Hello there, sir, are you Mr. Hart?”

  “Hello,” Colt said, shaking her hand. The Eye of Doom, he felt, had gone unnoticed, but he had only loaded one shot; he didn’t re ally feel like causing trouble today. He would save that for negoti ating. Marge Westerbrook shook Francie’s hand by the fingertips and called her Fanny.

  “Pleased to meet you,” said Francie. “We’re so glad you could come out.”

  “Oh, my goodness,” gasped Marge Westerbrook, “this is my pleasure, this is my job, and all the way from New York you are, too. Oh, my. I am late, aren’t I?”

  “Yes,” said Colt.

  “It’s really okay,” said Francie quickly. “We’ve got the day off.

  Colt does, I mean.”

  “Oh, how nice!” said Marge. “And what do you do, Mr. Hart?” “Finance.”

  “Oh, my, New York City and finance! How interesting. Listen, let’s go in, shall we?” She lowered her voice and leaned in toward Francie. “And we’ll just leave him out here, until he changes his at titude,” she said.

  For one uplifting moment, Francie thought she meant Colt, un til she looked in the Volkswagen and realized there was a giant, sullen teenager lurking there, so hunched over that despite his size he was practically hidden by the dashboard. The teenager perked his head up, sensing he was being discussed, and then ducked again when the stares of two strangers confirmed it. Francie caught a luridly red flash of acne splashed across his cheeks like buckshot. Instantly she felt sorry for him; her cheeks had looked