“Okay. Are you religious? Because in The Burning Papers—”
“No, no, no,” Bob says. “Not that.”
The quiet woman grabs her friend’s hand and squeezes it. They look at each other and nod.
“I love secrets, don’t you?” Bob says, smiling at this exchange.
George is feeling better. The little-kid pill isn’t half-bad. The room is sharpening up. The women’s plates are cleared. Soon, their glasses are empty. Jim is on his cell. The people entering the lobby are drenched. The waiter asks if the women want anything more. They shake their heads no, but sadly, and look at Bob.
“Waiter!” Bob calls. “Where have you been? What is your name?”
“That’s rude,” George says, opening his eyes, feeling passionate about the matter. “It’s rude to ask them their names. Their names are their private business. Unless they offer.”
“I’m Travis,” the waiter says.
“Travis, thank you. A bottle of champagne, have the bartender pick.”
“Shampoo!” says the talking woman, whose name George now somehow knows is Gita. “Our favorite!”
The other woman, who he’s now decided is mysterious and beautiful, pulls a notebook from the leather satchel beside her on the banquette. “Carrying a big bag—gauche, don’t you think?” Gita says to George. “But she likes her little books, to communicate. I’m trying to learn—” She waves her hands in mock sign language. “But it’s a lot of work. And”—Gita cups her mouth out of sight—“you know how it is, best friends this month, and next month she’ll be all ‘Gita who?’”
Her friend writes a moment without letting him see, shows it to Gita, and—she really is something—plunges the notebook back into her bag, which is red with a black fringe. She reaches over and rustles around in George’s pocket. She smells like sugar and the thick aisle-air of the CVS he occasionally frequents in Stockport. She pulls out his phone. She taps and puts it on the table. Floating on the contacts screen he reads the name PENNY.
“You’re kidding me,” he says. “Is this for real?”
Jim Frame looks up and does not smile.
“Look who’s the favorite man today,” Bob says. He shakes his head.
“I’ve got to go,” George says, handing his credit card to a passing waiter.
“You sure do,” Bob says.
“No, home.” George stands, steadily enough. Who cares if the Met or City won’t consider his opera? All it proves is he’s ahead of his time. He’s more confident now than ever. Confident as a knife! Confident as a clock! Confidence itself meaning secret, something to wait for, to be confided. When the time comes, everyone will see what a fine work he’s made.
“Home, right. Jim, we’re staying, yes? Jim’s got some ideas to loop. Then maybe I’ll get to go home too.”
Bob grabs and pumps George’s hand, giving him a mean, tight sort of pull toward the table. “Comes down to it,” Bob whispers, “you don’t fuck the face.”
“No,” George says, “huh.”
The waiter returns. “Is there another card?”
“Forget it, we’re not finished. Take mine, keep it open,” Bob says, waving the waiter away. “George, I’ll call you on those numbers. We don’t want the grass to grow too long on this one.”
George does not remember talking numbers.
“Good meeting you,” says Jim Frame. “That was a lot of insight.”
Gita holds out her glass. “Champagne’s turned.”
“This I will fix,” Bob says. “Don’t you touch.”
“Sorry,” George says, looking into the spoiled amber of the flute, one hand still caught in Bob’s and the other around his credit card, his voice embarrassingly flooded with sorrow. “Opening week, you’re all going to have seats in the first row. You’ll come to the theater and see it and hear it and, I promise, it will be the most beautiful you ever did.”
“What’s he talking about?” Bob asks.
“He’s a big shot up in here maybe,” Gita answers, tapping the side of her head.
“You don’t believe me? You don’t even know me!”
“Americans,” she continues, ignoring George. “Ask them what they want to be, they say famous. But it’s usually the ones younger than him.”
“I’ve done my very, very best,” he tries.
Gita’s laugh is sharp. “God has a glass eye. A bullshit country saying, but I like it.” She turns her back to George, back to the men at the table.
15
They take Iris’s car. They have the narrow, sunlit highway to themselves. 3D is in the backseat, one ear flapping out the window, one eye scrunched against the warm air whipping around the interior, the bright trees spinning past. The smell of new tar rises from the road.
“A perfect day,” she says.
“I still don’t think I can afford a house.”
“Did I show you the brochure?” She reaches over Victor’s legs into the glove compartment and tosses the glossy foldout onto his lap. “Don’t bother with the text, it’s all pitch. Look at the pictures.”
“I can’t help it. The words are so big.”
* * *
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DID YOU KNOW?
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* * *
“The developer updated the units in the towers and built the clusters on the adjacent lot. But your house is nicer than those.” She gestures to the row of semidetached colonials in the photo.
“My house?”
“I’m showing you the good one.”
“But they’re all the same.”
“Except the property manager’s house, built with the towers in the forties. They weren’t allowed to bulldoze it. State-landmarked with the towers. They sure wanted to. Its footprint is twice the new units.”
“I can’t be looking at landmarks. Not to live in.”
“No, landmarked. It’s a regular bungalow. Real bones. Modest. Tree line separates it from the newer units. A little stained-glass window. Not in the shadow of the apartments. Anyway, you see if you like it.”
“A stained-glass window?”
“Top of the stairs.”
“Stairs?”
“I like showing at Kingsgate. Appraisals go up four to six percent every year. I don’t have to feel like I’m pushing.”
“3D, she’s taking me for a ride.”
“I am taking you for a ride.”
Victor laughs. 3D sits up and barks twice.
“We’re so close to the city, you don’t see big market fluctuations. Wall Street buys shoreline no matter what. Why the schools aren’t bad. Important when you’re looking for room to grow,” she says, smiling at him.
“How do you know about that?”
“Seminar for the licensing course, I guess? And they brief us at the office about how the market’s doing. Downside is stiff taxes. And nob
ody qualifies for the abatement. The abatement is bullshit. But even the worst-case scenario—if something happened and you needed to sell right away—it’s break-even or profit.”
“No, what you said about room to grow.”
“Aha! I guessed the other week. Tell me how you first met Isabel.”
“Isabel?” He looks puzzled. They head down into a dense, tree-puffed valley, the blacktop unspooling behind them. He’s quiet so long she wonders if it was wrong of her to ask. The asphalt turns pale gray, zigzagged with tire tread, writ with pits and fissures. A front tire bangs over a pothole. “Okay. It is a phenomenal story. We met on a cruise.”
“Romantic!”
“No, we both worked housekeeping. A thousand passengers. Ugly as the Pentagon. I was in the kitchen, talking my way into a plate of french fries, and bam!”
3D nudges his paws between them, his head up onto the dash.
“Sit,” she says.
“Cruises hit rough water more than you’d think. Every few passenger cycles. Nothing to you if you work the boat. But the captain fucked up and got us sucked into the tail of a monsoon between Sydney and Madagascar. Half the rescue boats blow off the sides of the ship. Crew coming down from the deck say the passengers are grabbing up on anyone in a uniform. I get under one of the steel prep tables. A raw shrimp falls into my hair right as the captain gets on the loudspeaker. To read last rites. I swear to God. Last rites. This tinny voice through the speaker in the ceiling.”
“Why are you laughing? That’s terrifying.”
“Well, he’s doing ‘Happy are those who are called to His supper,’ the part with the Lamb, and Isabel comes lurching by. I grab her and pull her under the table. Another ten minutes and the storm’s over. Everyone’s fine. Captain was plastered. Went to jail.”
“Your tattoo! The shrimp?”
“Good eye. I was raised with a lot of God, so I thought, This woman is the one who will save me, like I saved her.”
“But you didn’t save her. Everything was fine.”
“I know.”
“A wife and a weird tattoo. Some takeaway.”
“Izzy and I quit right after—holy shit! Is that you?”
The billboard grows larger as they approach. Under the word KINGSGATE is an image of a winding sidewalk under a burst of pink cherry blossoms leading to one of the same semidetached colonials from the brochure. Iris stands in front of the house, her arms crossed high over her boxy, mauve jacket at a friendly tilt, her thumb pointing to a TOWER UNITS & SINGLE-FAMILY HOUSES AVAILABLE! shingle hanging from the mailbox. She smiles down upon them, her violet eyes a six-inch diameter. The car slides under the billboard. Even though the back is nothing but wood scaffolding, Victor turns in his seat, watches it recede. 3D licks his face.
“I was hoping you wouldn’t see that,” Iris says.
“You’re famous!”
“No. I happened to be free the same day as the photographer. We have a bunch of agents at Kingsgate.”
“Or because you are the prettiest one, obviously. Let’s go back. No, let’s drive by very slowly on the way home. I brought my camera. I want a picture of the picture of the picture.”
“I thought they were taking it for something small, like the brochure. I’m so embarrassed. They’ve got eleven more in a three-hour radius. The jacket is so churchy! We give up the ad space as soon as we close on the last units. I’m counting the days.”
“Which is worse—they paper over you or they don’t paper over you? What if no one buys the spots? This is a low-traffic road.”
“The rains will fade me? The birds will crap on me?”
“The snows will drift and cover you? I’ll call the toll-free number and it will be disconnected?”
“Maybe when I’m long in the tooth, I’ll drive out here and look up at my big young mug. I accept my fate. Back to your plans. Tell me.”
“Well, we’re not sharing it much yet, but we’re trying to adopt. Keep it to yourself please, for now? If it doesn’t work out, we’ll be sad and we won’t want people asking us how it’s going, or, like, not asking, in that awkward way. I think it’ll take forever, but Bill’s optimistic. And more patient. I said to him last night, maybe owning property would strengthen our application.” Victor peers down at the brochure. “I see kids here. That’s nice. I also see a lot of bullshit. I don’t get why the prices are this low. Is there a terrible smell, or something?”
“Bill?”
“You met him. The time he picked me up.”
“Of course.” Bill. Of course. Her cell phone rings. “Can you look?”
“O-Park,” he says, pulling her phone from the cupholder.
“No, no, no, don’t touch it! When George doesn’t answer his phone she calls and accuses me of his not answering. She’s figured out if the rings stop short, I’m killing the call. Let it ring!”
“Yikes.”
“Selling houses is about knowing right away what people want. Seeing who they are. I thought you wanted a house for you and Isabel. It’s a mystery I sell anything.”
“Isabel!” He bursts out laughing.
“You were married to her.”
“I’m not laughing at you. I shouldn’t have assumed, except—”
A helicopter churns a diagonal descent across their vision.
“No, I’m an idiot. Anyway, the helicopters—you can hear those from the house. They don’t go over too often though—one helipad, one runway. Fifteen miles away. Private planes only. Small. You think about if it bothers you while we walk around.”
She slows the car. They turn and pass between two stone gateposts scarred with long, black iron hinge marks. “Kingsgate, no gate. I keep singing that one to the developers. They say next month.”
She drives slowly. He takes out his phone and leans his forearm on the window, taking video. Spiraling maple pods fill the air and litter the colonnade. The sound of the helicopter fades.
“What the developer has done here, see”—she gestures to the nearing towers—“is refresh the facade and modernize all the interiors—upgraded appliances, countertops—and created more traffic-friendly landscaping. See how the sidewalks aren’t straight? See the flower beds and the benches? It’s community-minded. There’s the parking lot over there on your right. Every unit gets a spot. You can buy a second spot, for not too much. Your house is a ways, but let’s get out and take a look. Come, 3D, come.”
They stand in the bleak glint of the two buildings, rising before them like giant cheese graters.
“There’s a gym in the West Tower you’d have access to. Garbage, snow shoveling, that’s taken care of.”
Victor raises the phone eye level, lowers it, raises it again, but does not take a picture. “These are housing projects.”
“They were housing projects. Now they’re homes. But, yeah.”
They get back in the car and drive slowly beyond the gray monoliths. Iris waves out the window to a woman pushing a stroller. The woman is leaning over and does not see.
“Basketball and handball,” Iris says, pointing. On the handball court are three teenage boys, leaning their noodle bodies in unconvincing menace against the wall, watching the car.
“I’m proud of how many of the original renters we were able to convert to owners. First-time homeowners. Didn’t have to move. Didn’t have their lives turned upside down. I used to think before I met George that homeownership was for other people. I didn’t understand all you need is access to the right financial information. Our team structures the shit out of a loan. A responsible loan. Anyone can buy a house. It’s a secret they don’t tell people like, well, people like me.” She gestures out the window. “The developer wanted to first jack the rent before conversion, squeeze them out. Our firm said, ‘No, let us try to sell to the occupants. Save a lot of time and legal if you avoid eviction. Built-in buyers.’ And the developer said okay, and I thought, I can help. I can do this. They need someone like me, who understands both sides. Have we talked about transportation?
I don’t know how much time you or Bill spend in the city, but we’re only twenty minutes from the train station. Parking at the train is wait-listed but not impossible. There’s a bus that stops a half mile up from the gate, or the no-gate too.”
She parks the car at the last cluster of houses. From this distance the towers are not as fierce. The ground is thick with leaves, more beds of green maple pods. They walk the narrow concrete path. Squirrels scrabble up and down the trees. The blue leash goes taut in Iris’s hand. In front of one of the houses across the street, a woman with a plastic cane sits on a bench.
“Hello, Mrs. Baldwin,” Iris calls. “How are you?”
“Eh,” the woman says.
They come to a medium-size house behind a low hedge. As she promised, it’s different from the rest. A sturdy bungalow with dark green shutters, a front porch, and a gabled roof.
“On a private lot,” Iris says, “a house like this would cost double.”
* * *
That day, Iris takes Victor to four other houses. They see six the day after. But she knows this is the one, a good house at that price. The next week they return with Bill. Bill is older than Victor, with a mantis frame in brown, age-smoothed corduroys. He folds his legs in and out of the car like an accordion ruler. He wears large, unfashionable rectangular glasses, a gray-and-tan beard like a peel of birch. He is a jewelry maker, he tells her. She imagines him bent over a tiny green gem. He has a shop in town—Stone Soup—has she seen it? A pretty decent Internet business too. Roman coins on leather strings, and brooches of owls and flamingos pounded out of copper with jade or turquoise for the eyes. A series of pins sold as mother-of-the-bride gifts, filigreed silver starbursts with a tiny uncut diamond nestled here and there.
“After the chandeliers at Lincoln Center,” he says.
“I know those! At the opera.”
“I like poking into the shop and catching him bent over the table with that silly thing in his eye,” Victor says.
“It’s called a loupe,” Bill says.
“Look at this, Bill.” Victor leads him to the stained-glass window at the top of the stairs. “If you were a giant, this is the rainbow you’d see with your loupe.”
The Unfortunates: A Novel Page 14