‘Gawd,’ Kat said. ‘Just kiss and get it over with already.’
The Ford F-450 gleamed in the garage like a spit-polished tank. The four-ton truck guzzled enough diesel to offset whatever help Green Valley was lending the environment, but Mike couldn’t exactly haul gear to a construction site in a Prius. The truck was extravagant – irresponsible, even – but he had to confess that when he’d driven it off the lot yesterday, he’d felt more delight than seemed prudent.
Kat hopped into the back and stuck her nose in a book, the usual morning procedure.
Pulling out of the driveway, Mike gestured at the roof-mounted TV/DVD player. ‘Stop reading. Check out the TV. It’s got wireless headphones. Noise-canceling.’
He sounded like the brochure, but couldn’t help himself; the new-car smell was making him heady.
She put on the headphones, clicked around the channels. ‘Yes!’ she said, too loud since the volume was cranked up. ‘Hannah Montana.’
He coasted up the quiet suburban streets, tilting down the sun visor, thinking about how nervous and yet excited he was about today’s photo shoot with the governor. They passed a jewelry shop, and he looked at all the glimmering ice in the storefront window and thought that once that wire hit, just maybe he’d stop by and get something to surprise Annabel.
As they neared Dr Obuchi’s, Kat’s face darkened, and she tugged off the headphones. ‘No shots,’ she said.
‘No shots. It’s just a checkup. Don’t freak out.’
‘As long as there are no needles, there will be no freaking out.’ She extended her hand with a ceremony beyond her years. ‘Deal?’
Mike half turned, and they shook solemnly. ‘Deal.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ she said.
‘Have I ever broken a promise to you?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘But you could start.’
‘Glad to see I’ve built up trust.’
Her mouth stayed firm for the rest of the drive and all the way into the examination room, where she shifted back and forth on the table, the paper crinkling beneath her as Dr Obuchi checked her reflexes.
The doctor finished the physical and eyed Kat’s chart. ‘Oh. She never got her second MMR, since Annabel wanted me to spread out the vaccines.’ She tugged at a lock of shiny black hair. ‘We’re late on it.’ She fussed in a drawer for the vial and syringe.
Kat’s eyes got big. She stiffened on the table and directed an imploring stare at her father. ‘Dad, you swore.’
‘She prefers to get ready for shots,’ Mike said. ‘Mentally. A little more notice. Can we come back later in the week?’
‘It’s September. Back to school. You can guess what my schedule looks like.’ Dr Obuchi took note of Kat’s glare. Unwavering. ‘I might have a slot Friday morning.’
Mike clicked his teeth together, frustrated. Kat was watching him closely. He put his hands on his daughter’s knobby knees. ‘Honey, I’m wall-to-wall with meetings Friday, and Mom has class. It’s my worst day. Let’s just do this now and get it over with.’
Kat’s face colored.
Dr Obuchi said, ‘It’s just a prick. Over before you know it.’
Kat tore her gaze from Mike and looked at the wall, her breath quickening, her arm almost as pale as the latex glove gripping it. Dr Obuchi dabbed some alcohol on Kat’s biceps and readied the needle.
Mike watched, his discomfort growing. Kat kept her face turned away.
As the stainless-steel point lowered, Mike reached out and gently stopped the doctor’s hand. ‘I’ll make Friday work,’ he said.
Mike drove, chomped Juicy Fruit, and tried to keep from checking in with the bank manager for the fourth time that morning. As they approached Kat’s school, he rolled down the window and spit his gum into the wind.
‘Dad.’
‘What?’
‘That’s not good for the environment.’
‘Like if a bald eagle chokes on it?’
Kat scowled.
‘Okay, fine,’ he said. ‘I won’t spit any more gum out the window.’
‘Snowball the Last Dying Polar Bear thanks you.’
He pulled up to the front of the school, but she just sat there in the backseat, fingering the wireless headphones in her lap. ‘You’re getting some award thing for the green houses, aren’t you?’ she asked. ‘From the governor?’
‘I’m being recognized, yeah.’
‘I know you care about nature and stuff, but you’re not, like, really into it, right? So why’d you build all these green houses?’
‘You really don’t know?’ He angled the rearview so he could see her face.
She shook her head.
He said, ‘For you.’
Her mouth came open a little, and then she looked away and smiled privately. She scooted across and climbed out, and even once she was halfway across the playground, he could see that her face was still flushed with joy.
Letting the breeze blow through the rolled-down window, he took in the scene. A few teachers were out supervising the yard. Parents clustered among the parked cars, arranging play dates, coordinating car pools, planning field trips. Kids whooped and ran and tackled one another on the grass.
It was a life he’d always dreamed about but barely dared to believe he could have for himself. And yet here it was.
He dialed, raised the cell phone to his face. The bank manager sounded a touch impatient. ‘Yes, Mr Wingate. I was about to call. I’m pleased to tell you that the wire came through just this instant.’
For a moment Mike was rendered speechless. The phone sweaty in his grip, he asked for the amount. And then asked the bank manager to repeat it, just to make sure it was real.
‘So the loan is paid off now, yeah?’ Mike said, though he knew he had just received enough to close out the remaining debt five times over. ‘Fully paid off?’
A note of amusement in the man’s voice. ‘You are free and clear, Mr Wingate.’
Mike’s throat was tightening, so he thanked the manager and hung up. He tipped his face into his hand and just breathed awhile, worried he might lose it here in the middle of the Lost Hills Elementary parking lot. It was the money, sure, but it was so much more than that, too. It was relief and pride, the knowledge that he’d taken a gamble and put nearly four years of nonstop effort behind it, and now his wife and daughter would never have to worry about having a roof over their heads and food in the refrigerator and overdue tuition bills tucked into the desk blotter.
Across the playground, her image split by the cross-hatching of the chain-link fence, Kat climbed to the top of a fireman’s pole and dinged the top bar with a fist. The sight of her made his heart ache. Her safe little world, composed of small challenges, open horizons, and boundless affection.
Late for work, he sat and watched her play.
Chapter 3
The workers clustered around Mike’s truck as soon as he pulled onto the job site.
‘Whew-wee!’
‘Boss got a new vee-hicle.’
‘What’d this baby run ya?’
Mike climbed out, waving off the questions to hide his discomfort. He’d never fully adjusted to being a boss and missed the easy camaraderie that came from working beside the guys day after day. ‘Not as much as you think.’
Jimmy leaned on the hood with both hands, one fist gripping a screwdriver.
Mike said, ‘Watch the paint,’ and immediately regretted opening his mouth.
Jimmy put his hands in the air, stickup style, and the others laughed.
‘All right, all right,’ Mike said. ‘I deserve that. Where’s Andrés?’
His irritable foreman trudged over, stirring a gourd with a stainless-steel straw. The gourd held yerba maté, and the straw – a bombilla – filtered out the loose leaves so Andrés could suck the bitter tea all day without spitting twigs. He shooed the workers off. ‘Well, what you wait for? You supposed to loaf when the boss leave, not when he show up.’
The workers dispersed, and Andrés
set down his maté gourd on the truck’s bumper. ‘Aargh,’ he said without inflection.
‘Aargh?’
‘It is National Talk Like a Pirate Day. What a country. All these holiday. Take Your Kid to Work Day. Martin Yuther King Day.’
An import from Uruguay, Andrés was finally applying for naturalization and had become a walking repository of obscure U.S. trivia.
Mike said, ‘I’ve heard they called him Martin Luther King.’
‘That what I say, matey.’
They headed up the slope into the heart of the planned community. The forty houses, framing a parklike sprawl of grass in the canyon’s dip, stretched up the slope on either side, rising in altitude and sticker price. At first glance they looked like ordinary houses, but closer inspection revealed bioswales for storm-drain runoff, roofs scaled with photovoltaic cells and breathing with vegetation, vitrified-clay pipes instead of nondegradable, toxin-leaking PVC. Even with all that, the houses had barely squeaked by to get the coveted Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design green certification. But they had, and now, aside from some final electrical and trim work and a few cosmetic flourishes, the job was done.
They crested the rise and walked down into the park. It was Mike’s favorite part of Green Valley, positioned in the center where parents could look out their kitchen windows and see their kids playing. The development was zoned for two more lots there, but he couldn’t bring himself to build over that land.
They headed for the hole at the far edge of the park, already prepped for the pouring of the fire pit’s foundation. ‘What are we waiting for?’ Mike asked.
‘That tree-hugger concrete take longer to mix,’ Andrés said. ‘But my control-freak developer boss don’t let me use the normal kind.’
This was their routine – an old couple, bitter and exasperated, but in it together to the end.
‘The LEED certification is too tight. We don’t have the wiggle room.’ Mike grimaced, ran a hand over his face. ‘Jesus, who knew what a pain this would be?’
Andrés took another pull through his bombilla. ‘What we gonna build next?’
‘A coal factory.’
Andrés snickered, poked the stainless-steel straw into the gourd. ‘I tole you, we no do this green, we could’ve pull another twenty-percent profit off the top. Then we all drive new trucks.’
As they approached, Jimmy waved and started backing up a concrete mixer to the fire-pit hole. Andrés lifted an arm in response, the bombilla flying from his gourd into the pit. He frowned down as if this were only the latest in a string of the day’s disappointments. ‘Forget it. I buy another.’
Staring at the reed-thin steel straw stuck in the mud, Mike heard Kat’s voice in his head, chattering about trash and decomposing metals. His conscience reared up annoyingly.
Jimmy was just about to tip the drum of concrete when Mike shouted to him and pointed. Jimmy rolled his eyes and stepped off for a smoke while Mike hopped down. The hole was about five feet with sheer walls; they’d gone deep for the gas lines. As Mike crouched to pluck up the straw, he spotted an elbow of drainpipe protruding from the dirt wall. The water main.
He froze.
His stomach knotted. The metal straw fell from his hand. The mossy reek of moist earth and roots pressed in on him, crowding his lungs.
At first he thought he was mistaken. Then he fingered around the crumbling dirt, and dread finally broke through the shock.
The pipe wasn’t the environmentally friendly vitrified clay he’d paid a small fortune for.
It was PVC.
‘How much was used?’ Mike stood at the edge of the hole now with Andrés, trying to keep the panic from his voice. He’d sent the other workers away.
Andrés said, ‘I don’t know.’
‘Get the van here,’ Mike said. ‘I want to run plumbing cameras through the sewage and drain lines.’
‘The day rate for that van—’
‘I don’t care.’
Mike grabbed a shovel from a nearby mound of decorative rock, jumped down into the hole, and started chiseling at the wall. He’d retained his laborer’s build – muscular forearms, strong hands, broad enough through his chest to stretch a T-shirt – and he made impressive progress, but still the packed earth didn’t give way under his shovel as it might have a few years ago. Andrés called for the van, then stood with his arms crossed, chewing his cheek, watching. Mike’s grunts carried up out of the hole.
After a few moments, Andrés picked up a second shovel and slid down there with him.
The plumbing van idled in the middle of the street, a pipe video camera snaking through the laid-open rear doors and dropping down a manhole. Despite the hour the workers, except for Jimmy, had been sent home. Aside from the occasional passing bird, a pervasive stillness lingered over the development. The community of shiny new houses, beneath the late-morning sun, seemed like a fake town awaiting an atomic test blast.
Inside the van, crammed beside the hose reel, their clothes muddy, their faces streaked with dirt, Mike and Andrés watched a live feed on a small black-and-white screen – a grainy, endoscopic view of black piping. The hose reel next to their heads turned with a low hum as the camera continued its subterranean crawl, transmitting footage so consistent it seemed looped. Meter after meter of PVC pipe, stretching out beneath the hillside, beneath the streets, beneath the concrete slabs of the houses.
Light from the screen flickered across the men’s faces. Their lifeless expressions did not change.
Jimmy crawled up from the manhole, his dark skin glistening with sweat, and peered through the open van doors. ‘We done?’
Mike nodded, his eyes distant. Barely able to register the words. ‘Thanks, Jimmy. You can go now.’
Jimmy shrugged and walked off. A moment later an engine turned over with a familiar growl, and then the men listened to Jimmy putter off in Mike’s old truck.
When Mike finally spoke, his voice was cracked. ‘PVC is the worst of all of it. The chemicals leak into the soil. The shit migrates. They find it in whale blubber. They find it in Inuit breast milk, for Christ’s sake.’
Andrés leaned back, resting his head against the wall of the van.
‘How much would it cost?’ Mike asked.
‘You kidding, no?’
‘To make it right. To replace it with vitrified clay.’
‘It’s not just under the street. It’s under the slabs. Under the houses.’
‘I know where pipes go.’
Andrés sucked his teeth and looked away.
Mike registered a dull ache at the hinge of his jaw and realized he was clenching. Tearing up the houses would be a nightmare. A lot of the families had already sold their old places. They were middle-income folks who wouldn’t have the money for a rent-back or a prolonged hotel stay. Hell, that had been a big part of this – to help families get into nice houses. Many of the properties he’d placed not with the highest bidders but with people who needed them – single mothers, working-class couples, families who needed a break.
Mike said, ‘How did you not notice this?’
‘Me? You choose the grading contractor. Vic Manhan. The guy roll in with thirty workers and do the whole thing over Christmas break. Remember – you were thrilled.’
Mike stared across at his Ford with resentment and enmity. A fifty-five-thousand-dollar pickup – what the hell was he thinking? Would the dealership take it back? His anger mounted, the fuse burning down. ‘You got Manhan’s number there?’ he asked.
Andrés scrolled through his cell phone, hit ‘send,’ and handed it off to Mike.
As it rang, Mike ran a dirty hand through his sweaty hair, tried to slow his breathing. ‘This prick better carry a hefty insurance policy. Because I don’t care what it costs. I’m gonna hit him with as many lawsuits as I can—’
‘This number is no longer in service. If you believe you have reached this recording in error—’
Mike’s heart did something in his chest.
&nbs
p; He hung up. Clicked around in Andrés’s phone. Tried Manhan’s cell.
‘The Nextel subscriber you are trying to reach is no longer—’
Mike hurled the phone against the side of the van. Andrés looked at him, then leaned over slowly, retrieved his phone, eyed the screen to make sure it still worked.
Mike was breathing hard. ‘I checked his goddamned license myself.’
‘You better check again,’ Andrés said.
His shirt sticking to his body, Mike made a chain of calls, jotting down each new number on the back of an envelope. The picture swiftly resolved. Vic Manhan’s license had expired five months ago, shortly after he’d finished the job for Mike. Manhan had let his general-liability insurance lapse before that, so it had not been in effect when he’d laid in the PVC pipes. The policy documents he’d produced for Mike had been fraudulent. Which meant – in all likelihood – no money to cover damages.
For the first time in a long time, Mike’s mind went to violence, the crush of knuckles meeting nose cartilage, and he thought, How quickly we regress. He lowered his head, made fists in his hair, squeezed until it stung. His breath floated up hot against his cheeks.
‘You can’t be that surprised,’ Andrés said. ‘About finding the PVC.’
‘What the hell kind of thing is that to say? Of course I’m surprised.’
‘Come on. Vitrified clay is heavier than cast iron. More expensive to make, to truck, to install. So how you think Manhan’s quote come in thirty percent below everyone else’s?’ The brown skin at Andrés’s temples crinkled. ‘Maybe you didn’t want to know.’
Mike looked down at his rough hands.
Andrés said, ‘You got forty families moving in. This week. Even if you want to spend all the money to replace, what are you gonna do? Jackhammer through all their houses? Their streets?’
‘Yes.’
Andrés lifted an eyebrow. ‘To switch one set of pipes with another?’
‘I signed,’ Mike said. ‘My name. Guaranteeing I used vitrified-clay pipes in place of PVC. My name.’
‘You didn’t do anything wrong. This guy screw us.’
Mike’s voice was hoarse: ‘Those houses are built on a lie.’
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