Plus One

by Christopher Noxon

  “Listen, Alex, I’m rooting for you. I am. I like an underdog. But I’m not getting involved.”

  Fine—he didn’t need Huck’s help. Alex had already brainstormed other ways to break through the protective scrim surrounding Lester Price. His first move was the simplest: a single email to the tip account of StarHomes-dot-com, the dishy and heavily trafficked blog that covered open houses in prime L.A. neighborhoods with the sort of intensity and attention to detail that Alex noted had entirely disappeared from coverage of things like public schools and local government.

  Apparently, the people behind StarHomes.com didn’t even live in L.A.—Alex heard it was compiled by interns at a startup in Tempe, Arizona. You’d never know it from “Price Eyeballing Park-Adjacent Crash Pad,” a three-paragraph item that appeared the day after Alex’s tip. The blog duly reported that Lester Price was bidding on a three-bedroom house with sumptuous interiors and lush grounds at such-and-such address, alongside a complete floor plan and a street-view photograph. All that was missing was a Google map.

  It was almost too easy.

  On the Wednesday before the Benjamins were to make their final decision, Colby learned that Lester Price had arranged for a final visit, to show the house to his girlfriend. As it happened, Colby had a listing for a split-level modern just up the hill—the two houses were so close, in fact, that you could see the balcony of the empty house from the backyard. Alex got busy with the kids’ art supplies and a sheet of butcher paper. He took no small measure of pleasure picturing Lester Price stepping out onto the patio of the home he felt sure would soon be his and spotting, not one hundred yards away, a ten-foot banner printed with the cheerful greeting:

  “WELCOME TO THE NEIGHBORHOOD LESLIE SYCHAK!”

  • • •

  Les Price dropped out the next day. Apparently, he’d decided his place in Malibu was fine. “Too many freaks east of Fairfax,” he told the agent.

  “What’d I tell you?” Colby said when he called with the news. “You didn’t think I’d pull this off, did you? Going toe to toe with high-profile Hollywood competition—it’s what I do. It takes some pretty crafty maneuvering, let me tell you. The Mr. Dreamhouse thing—corny, right? But I hope you can see now Alex, where the title originates, right? Right?”

  Alex thought for a second about pointing out that all his “crafty maneuvering” consisted of lending Alex a spare key to a vacant house so he could hang a banner. He didn’t even know about the blog. For that matter, neither did Figgy. She was so busy, and anyway Alex thought it best to spare her the details—especially his agreement to finalize financing and inspections in just ten days.

  A thirty-day inspection period was quick. Ten days was insane. But Colby had urged Alex to go forward—he’d heard Zooey Deschanel and the director McG had both called his office to get a showing of that fabulous house they’d seen on Starhomes-dot-com. “Get the accepted offer on paper,” he said. “The terms are tight, but we’ll get it done. I can hustle the mortgage guys. And you know how inspections go—they’ll clomp around, poke their flashlights all over, and be on their merry way. Don’t worry: It’ll go fine!”

  Alex tried to wait up for Figgy to come home from the set so he could catch her up on the news. When she finally arrived, the clock radio read two a.m., and Alex was passed out with the light on.

  “Huge fight over wardrobe,” Figgy said, collapsing into bed. Apparently, Katherine was feeling “unsafe on set” and had demanded that five members of the crew be replaced for “looking at her in a predatory, offensive way.” Today she’d gone to the network with complaints about the latest script, which she found “sitcommy and hammy and nothing I want my name associated with.”

  “So today the network decides we need to handle our quote-unquote ‘talent issues’ and in waltzes Dani Dooling. Non-writing producer, total glad-hander, lasted seven or eight seasons on that NBC show about the trampy pharmaceutical reps? She launches into this whole spiel about ‘process’ and ‘inclusion’. The Diva Whisperer, they call her. She’s only supposed to handle Kate, but I’ve seen this act before. The network brought her in to take over, give them a show runner who’ll roll over, take every one of their notes.”

  “Honey, stop,” Alex said. “It’s your show, remember? They can’t replace you. Not so soon after the Emmys, right? You’re the show runner. The creator.”

  “Apparently, creator counts for jack. I’m so depressed. I ate an entire tub of Red Vines today.”

  Alex reached over and put his hand on her arm. “It’s not all bad,” he said. “I have some good news. Our offer was accepted today. Formally. On the house.”

  Figgy’s eyes got wide. “What about Les Price? He didn’t outbid us?”

  “I guess our offer was just more attractive,” Alex said.

  Figgy wiggled up close. “We beat Les Price?” she said, grinning. “How the hell did we do that?”

  “I dunno,” he smiled, loving the mysterious aura he’d cast around himself. “Just a little crafty maneuvering.”

  Figgy let out a big breath and turned onto her back. “I am so turned on right now.”

  • • •

  Alex met up with Colby at the house the next day to sign the offer and do a walk-around with Rex Benjamin. Alex wandered around the front yard for close to an hour while Mr. Benjamin was upstairs on the phone. When he finally appeared, he shoved a handful of papers toward Colby and took Alex’s hand in a ridiculously tight grip. “Back again,” he said. “Wanna see what you’re getting into? You’ll want to see the sprinkler timers before anything. Trust me.”

  Alex raised an eyebrow to Colby and followed Mr. Benjamin out the back door into the garden. Colby flashed a thumbs up. That was it? He’d expected some sort of ceremony—if not bugle calls or an exchange of family crests, maybe a nice WASPY gin and tonic on the patio. Instead, it seemed Mr. Benjamin intended to seal the deal with a tutorial on sprinkler timers.

  “The raccoons ate all my koi,” Mr. Benjamin said, pointing to a fountain on the patio. He stopped at a patch of overgrown rose bushes. “Judy was supposed to prune these. She’s let them go. She’s either upstairs getting crispy in that goddamned tanning contraption or running around labeling everything. For the auction people—she’s putting prices on every doily and serving spoon.”

  “Those label makers are pretty addictive,” Alex offered. “I love the way you can change the font—”

  “Women, you know?” he said, ignoring him. “She’s not taking any of this very well. I keep telling her: Yes, we had expectations. But whatever happens, we’re the same—they can’t change that. They can’t get you in here,” he said, tapping his temple with a muscular index finger. “Judy seems to think we’re finished now, that all bets are off. All bets are not off.”

  “Oh no—not off at all,” Alex said, leaning in toward the sprinkler box. He felt something on his face. It made a horrible crinkling sound and seemed to wrap around his cheek. He reared back.

  “Shit—spider!” he yelped.

  “Hold still,” Mr. Benjamin said, stepping forward and plucking a tangle of filmy web from his face. “It’s just a goddamn web.”

  His voice rang with authority. He had the sort of voice that belonged in a boardroom or a court chamber. Alex slid down that voice, into the upstairs bedroom in better times, where Mr. Benjamin was undoing his cufflinks after a night out, kicking off his wingtips and running a hand through his thick head of silver hair. Over at the vanity, Judy perched in a slip, dabbing off her foundation and readying herself for the heaving, one-sided bout of lovemaking that Mr. Benjamin would soon initiate. She’d yield, lay open for him, do what was necessary. She was his bottom, his base, his support. She took care of her man; he expected it, deserved it.

  Alex brushed off his shirt and picked a strand of web from his cheek. “Sorry—just surprised.”

  Mr. Benjamin turned his attention on Alex. He seemed to take him in for the first time. “So I understand your wife is in television—what line of
work are you in?”

  Alex swallowed. “Advertising—but I recently left a job,” he said. “I was working on a big testicular cancer campaign. Not pro-testicular cancer, of course. Anti. It’s a charity!”

  The tendons on Mr. Benjamin’s neck twitched. “And now? What are you doing now?”

  “Looking after the wife and kids,” Alex said. “Also early stages on a new project. Still working out the nuts and bolts. Centered on punk rock, if you know anything about that. Early eighties L.A. hardcore, the Misfits, Circle Jerks, that whole milieu, seminal stuff, really under-appreciated.”

  Had Alex really just managed to group together testicular cancer, the Circle Jerks, and the word “seminal” in his career recap? He wouldn’t blame Mr. Benjamin for thinking Alex made his living in gay porn.

  “I see,” was all he said.

  • • •

  Alex couldn’t help wondering if things would’ve gone differently if he and Mr. Benjamin hadn’t had that exchange in the bushes. If he hadn’t left Mr. Benjamin with the impression that he was leaving his family estate in the hands of a flinchy punk who used words like “milieu” and complained of a weak stomach when taken to the spare refrigerator to view the bags of venison Mr. Benjamin brought home from Wyoming.

  In any case, after their little man-to-man, Rex Benjamin seemed to go into a full adversarial crouch, doing everything in his power to undermine the transaction. The first troubles centered on inspections. According to the official report, the chimney’s firebox was damaged, roots had broken through the sewer line, and three types of toxic mold spores had been detected in the basement.

  Colby swore the report was standard, routine for a house of that size and age. They’d know more once they brought in the chimney, sewer, and mold specialists.

  The Benjamins, however, were having none of it. After complaining that the general inspection was “intrusive,” they dropped all pretenses of civility, cursing and slamming down the phone when Colby called and telling their agent they refused to speak to “that hustler with the haircut.” The sewer technician arrived at the arranged time to find the gates locked; inside, his calls were apparently unheard by Judy, who he spotted in the driveway chatting with a car detailer scrubbing the tires of her SUV.

  Two days later, the mold man found Mr. Benjamin wiping down the basement with a bucket of dishwashing detergent. After “inadvertently” locking the mold guy in the basement for ninety minutes and then ordering him to leave their property immediately, Mr. Benjamin told his agents his house was available as-is, with no credits for repair or remediation of any kind.

  Colby said they should lodge a formal complaint. But somehow Alex couldn’t muster much anger. For one thing, he couldn’t help feeling sympathetic toward Mr. Benjamin. Of course he was upset. And anyway, the chimney was probably fine; according to Huck, inspectors were always finding problems they could charge you thousands of dollars to correct; similarly, Huck told him he shouldn’t get too worked up over the mold, which he called “a pretend poison hyped by fake specialists for paranoid housewives trying to explain why their kids can’t do math—what do you think cheese is made of?”

  Still, as the deadline approached, Alex began to panic. Maybe Colby’s theory was right and Lester Price had circled back with a bigger offer. Maybe Mr. Benjamin wasn’t wounded and irrational but devious and manipulative? Maybe bad things happen to bad people, too?

  Or maybe Alex was just over-thinking. This was business. However grievous the injury Mr. Benjamin had sustained, Alex was pretty sure he hadn’t had anything to do with it. Fair was fair. An agreement was an agreement. He wouldn’t be bullied out of a deal so Mr. Benjamin could get a better price from Mr. Movie Star. Not only would he not drop out, he would add up the total estimated repairs and throw around a few decimals of his own.

  Thirty-six-thousand-nine-hundred-and-two. Alex’s request for credits was eminently reasonable, nothing like the hideous digits associated with the purchase itself. He itemized the repairs in a packet that also included a stack of bank statements and in what Alex believed would be the clincher, a snapshot of Sam and Sylvie.

  “It’s like Silence of the Lambs,” he told Huck over coffee. “Psychos have a harder time killing their victims when they know details about their lives. Just look at that picture.”

  “Cute,” Huck agreed.

  “No—adorable,” Alex said. The picture had been taken on a crisp fall afternoon in Echo Park, the kids rosy-cheeked and wind-swept, as sweet and presentable as catalog models. “Now check the back. I’ve been poking around online. Read my little note.”

  Huck turned over the photo. “Children’s exposure to airborne toxic mold can lead to bronchitis, chronic diarrhea, bleeding in the lungs, and even death,’” he read. “Jesus, dude—you are not kidding around.”

  “You think it’s too much?” Alex asked.

  • • •

  Ordinarily, as far as Alex understood the process, the rest was up to the agents. But apparently his letter had upset the normal order. “He’s lost faith in his representation,” said Colby. Mr. Benjamin would only discuss credits with Alex face to face. And the soonest he could do it was Friday morning, the last day of their ten-day accelerated escrow.

  “Is that even legal?” Alex said. “I can’t just go in there and hash something out. He’ll eat me alive.”

  “Just go in there and hold your ground,” Colby said. “Time to nut up, Alex!”

  As he walked up the long front pathway Friday morning, his heart started to race. It was a fine day, crisp and bright. The front yard looked vast and lush. By the time he reached the front door and gave it a few tentative taps, his hands were shaking.

  Mr. Benjamin was waiting in a room overlooking the garden, with tall arched windows and Persian rugs. He was in a tweed jacket and chinos, an empty cappuccino cup and Alex’s packet arranged before him on a spindly antique table. His reading glasses were propped on the end of his nose.

  “Take a seat,” he said, motioning to an overstuffed chair. Alex clasped his hands together and sat. He should’ve guessed Rexford Benjamin would go for this sort of formality. Here he was in his ratty cargo shorts and vintage Dead Kennedys shirt; he’d made a conscious choice not to dress any differently than he normally would on a Saturday morning.

  “So,” Alex said, then stopped. Silence. He’d rehearsed how to start, but now that he was here, “so” was all he had. He felt himself sinking into the armchair.

  Mr. Benjamin tapped on the folder of bank statements. “Let’s start with this, shall we? I don’t really watch TV, but from the looks of it, your wife has done quite nicely. At least lately. Must be nice.”

  “The show business dollar is a very nice dollar,” Alex said.

  “But if you’ll allow me,” he said. “You’re all over the place here. You’ve got stock reports, pension plans, bank records, some sort of promissory note here from someone at a studio. Why aren’t you better consolidated?”

  Alex had only a vague understanding of “consolidated,” but he was pretty sure that a guy who’d just had his entire family fortune embezzled by a single crooked money manager was telling him to put all his money in one pot.

  Heart racing, Alex racked his brain for a halfway-informed response, mentioning a “portfolio manager’s asset allocation.” Across the table, Mr. Benjamin looked pained. Alex got quiet and tried to straighten his back against the quicksand of upholstery.

  “Let’s move on to the inspections,” Mr. Benjamin said, holding up the chimney report with a thumb and index finger. “This,” he said, “is horseshit.”

  Then, with a dramatic flourish, he held up the sewer inspection. “Bullcrap.”

  Finally, he held up the mold report. “Absolute one-hundred-percent mooseturd.” He waved a pencil in front of him like a baton. “This home has been scrupulously maintained. Any suggestion otherwise is unconscionable.”

  Alex crossed one leg over the other and nodded, he hoped thoughtfully. He chose his words c
arefully.

  “I want you to know, Mr. Benjamin, that I appreciate, given all you’ve been through, that you may have some difficulties with trust,” he said. “But I also hope you can appreciate that I’m not trying to cheat you out of anything.”

  Mr. Benjamin took off his reading glasses and drummed his fingers on the pile of papers.

  “Please,” Alex went on. “Big picture here. Our agreement is more than fair. And these credits are such a tiny piece of this, comparatively.”

  The old man narrowed his eyes. “I’ll do half.”

  “Half?” Alex said. “I was thinking more like the full thirty-six.”

  Mr. Benjamin scratched his chin. “Let’s put a pin in that for the moment. Have you had a chance to look over the sale list?”

  Colby had passed along a list of sale items—Alex had stopped reading after two pages of French antiques, Persian rugs, and ornamental fixtures. “We’re not really chandelier people.”

  “There’s one item in particular that didn’t go on that list—and I really think you should take it.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Judy’s tanning bed. It’s in the guest room upstairs? Big bronze monster, with the fluorescent lights? Judy adores it, but no way can we fit it in the new place.”

  Alex nodded, not quite getting where this was going.

  “She got it for eight thousand a year ago. I’ll give it to you for three. Take it and we’ve got a deal.”

  “So—what are you saying? I buy the tanning bed… you take the credits? We’re done here?”

  Mr. Benjamin leaned forward. “It would mean a lot to me,” he said.

  Alex scratched the back of his head. No way this wasn’t a win. But from the look on Mr. Benjamin’s face, this wasn’t about the money—to him, it was a fuck-you. To him, to his wife, to this whole situation. But so what if unloading his wife’s tanning bed on Alex let Mr. Benjamin feel like he was the real man? Let him have the bullshit symbolic victory. The only thing it said about Alex was that he could pull himself out of this horrible armchair, close the deal, and never see Mr. Benjamin again.