It was coming. He climbed to his knees—his buckling knees—and rest his head and slung his arms and begged it to come and to give him at least that small respite that settles between the purges—that still, quiet place where the tsunami bulge draws down the tide from the beaches, and for a moment they are placid and rare. But even here, the altitude was a vertigo-inducing peril, and he coughed into the basin and collapsed down onto the floor. He wanted urgently now to get beneath his heart, to slip down under its yoke. His arms and legs quaked, his abdomen—his chest shook in reedy gasps, wheezing, hacking. His body—his face—rest where they’d made the floor with a slap—against the cold, etched, ammonia-wet concrete. His eyes blinked and his limbs writhed in trembling spasms, or locked in waves of full-body contraction, absolute in their tooth-grinding, toe-pointing totality. His legs splay out somewhere under the verge of the stall and he blinked at the stains of the toilet neck, and the down of coiled hairs, and Foster did not think of Catherine, or frail Pauline, nor his mother, or the man from the Executive Office—The Familiar; not August or Sachs or his plane, or the blade-spoilt knife, or the small company of the paper rose. He pointed his feet and clamped his arms to his side in breathless contraction and looked at the cover of tissue crumbs spread before the toilet and watched his breath disturb the coiled hairs, and he convulsed vomit and felt that his trunks were everywhere moist and warm. He disgorged a bloody sputum then, and felt the contractions abate, and he rest his gaze upon the streaks down the toilet—lip to collar—and the array of crumbs, and the cloudy surge which crept slowly toward, and embraced them.
XVI.
Patricia Harvey parked her carmine red Mercedes Geländewagen in the driveway, and strung balloons from the yard sign. She opened the garage to the bright mid-April day, and placed crisp new orchids on a table in the foyer and baked two sheets of cookies in the oven and set out mimosas in flutes and by ten o’clock she was proudly watching the cars pulling in at the curb of Creveling and handing out listing sheets from the counter and cookies and mimosa flutes, and walking couples through the kitchen features and two-stall garage and the master suite and three beds too, and the impressive barrel-vaulted living room, cherry-paneled, lead-glassed, and amply-spaced for large and various furnishings.
“We’re neighbors—” said the man.
“We’re agents, too,” said the woman.
A family of boisterous children was in back on the pool deck; upstairs a gay couple lingered in the master suite—Patricia knew by their perfect sweaters and black-rim Capote glasses, and they wore no socks with their loafers. A woman downstairs turned through the finished family room and fed appetizing descriptions by phone into her husband’s ear—and it was then the couple in running clothes had come in panting and glazed and greeted Patricia by her fine, tan-leathered hands and extravagant jewelry, and shared guilty looks over baked goods and champagne—they were Jan and Thomas Marginot, and they were agents, too, and it was a pleasure.
Thomas was fixing his hair with his hand and wiping it on his hip and drinking the mimosa for water. “Wasn’t this on the market a year ago—maybe last winter?” he asked.
“December, January?” asked Jan.
“It was,” said Patricia.
“Is it the same seller?” asked Thomas.
“No, it sold to a client of mine at that time—a real estate investor—speculator I think—foreign, very eccentric,” she said, and laughed her favorite cocktail laugh: “A Swiss.”
“Market’s strong—I wouldn’t sell,” said Jan.
“He isn’t holding?” said Thomas.
“I believe he’s moving his portfolio to other markets. I’ve the impression he does it at whim,” said Patricia.
“I may have somebody for it,” said Jan.
“It’s true,” said Thomas, “we have a client very much in the market.”
“Well, cheers to that,” said Patricia, and snuck a mimosa to toast. “Have them buy the house, and you can sell them the land as well.”
“The land?” asked Jan.
“Acreage, I mean.”
“How much?”
“Where?”
“Out 44,” said Patricia, “south of Cuba—south of Cuba and Bourbon.”
“How much?” Thomas repeated.
“Three parcels. About three-hundred acres together.”
“Are they adjoining?” asked Jan.
“No, they’re all very much separate.”
“Are they built-out—do they have structures?” asked Thomas.
“One is an equestrian estate with house and stables. Another has a hunting lodge and blinds; and there’s an old farm, but the barn burned in a lightning strike—everything wood is ash and everything metal, all the machinery, melted to pools—it was hot.” Patricia laughed. “Rolling hills—it’s quite beautiful, really—but the barn is a crater with metal puddles,” she said, and laughed again.
Thomas traded his glass for another. “What about the house? Is he flexible?”
“It’s just what he paid for it—they all are.”
“What?” said Thomas.
“You said he’s a speculator—how can that be?” said Jan.
“I know! Very peculiar,” said Patricia.
“But if we had a close offer, you’d take it to him,” said Thomas.
“No,” said Patricia. “I can’t.”
“You can’t or you won’t?” said Jan.
“No. I can’t. I can’t reach him—I’ve tried.”
“How can you take him offers?” asked Jan.
“I can’t. I have instructions.”
“Instructions?” said Thomas, and drank to illustrate his doubt.
“Yes, just instructions. For the sale, and wire transfer.”
“But, what if it doesn’t move?” said Thomas.
“Your commission?” said Jan.
“He’s already paid my commission—isn’t it amazing?” Patricia laughed and toasted her good fortune.
“Already paid?” said Jan.
“He paid in advance—on all the properties?” asked Thomas.
“Yes, yes! Can you believe it? Oh, what did he say?—he called it…an ‘honorarium.’”
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