Godspeed

by Nickolas Butler

  “Cold pricklies?” she asked, frowning.

  “That feeling where the little hairs on your neck pop out,” Teddy offered. “You know. Bad juju.”

  Now Gretchen stood, rolling a pebble between her fingers. “Nonsense,” she snapped. “I have built houses before, gentlemen. I know what I am doing. I had no choice in the matter, I can assure you. To finish this house on time, I needed a new contractor.

  “Look, everything has been worked out and approved, all the permits paid and signed for. This should give you time to gather yourselves and begin finding bids for the other work: what framing needs to be done; the roofing; the steel; windows, trim, cabinetry, flooring. . . . The only subcontractor I must insist on is my mason. The fireplace is already about a third done. He’s been with me for more than a decade, and I wouldn’t entrust that fireplace with anyone else.”

  “I don’t know,” Cole said. He meant it, too; this wasn’t at all what he expected. Contractors got fired—sure, that happened. But contractors rarely walked out on a project like this. And now there was something in her voice, something like desperation, urgency. For a woman who seemed so reserved, so professional, she was suddenly speaking more rapidly and more loudly, too, as if pushing them.

  “Why us?” Bart blurted out. “Huh? I mean, let’s put our cards on the table, huh? You’ve got all this cash. Why choose three dudes who were repairing Sheetrock last night? What gives?”

  She threw the pebble into the hot springs and wiped a bead of perspiration off her nose. She smiled coldly at them. “Two reasons. The first: The builders around here are a bit of an old-boys club, as I’m sure you’re aware. Even with the NDA, I think when my former contractor parted ways, he must have blacklisted me, because now no one will return my phone calls, and even if they did, I’m sure they’d try to gouge me however they could. You know how it goes, gentlemen: ten thousand added on to the countertops, fifty grand on the roofing. . . . As I just told you, this isn’t the first time I’ve built a house. They think I won’t stand up for myself. They think because I’m a woman I won’t put my foot down. But I will, and I know you won’t cheat me. My mason, Bill, will make sure of that. He’s my eyes and ears when I’m not here.”

  “And the other?” Cole asked. “The other reason?”

  “I need this house built before Christmas,” she said, dusting off her hands and smiling at them, each in turn.

  “Lady, that’s, what,” Teddy muttered, counting on his fingers, “four months away?” He looked at the building site as if it were a twenty-five-thousand-foot peak they’d been asked to climb in an afternoon’s time. “I don’t know. . . .”

  “No way, is what I know,” Bart said. “That’s fucking impossible.”

  “Is it?” she asked. “Come, let’s eat some lunch and we’ll discuss the finer points of my ask.”

  They shared some disgruntled and disbelieving looks as she led them back down the path toward her Range Rover, where, as its rear hatch lifted on a press of her car key, a gust of cold from the air-conditioning met them, and she revealed a little picnic perfectly curated down to the red-and-white gingham tablecloth everything sat upon: chilled Sancerre and frosty cold bottles of beer, ham and Gruyère sandwiches, fancy potato salad, a jar of cornichons, even a platter of brownies. The three men eyed one another, their hands plunged into pockets, as they peered back to the would-be house site.

  Bart shook his head. “Look,” he said, accepting a sandwich from Gretchen, “uh . . . thanks. What you’re asking, though, I gotta be honest with you—it’s no wonder that contractor disappointed you. I’ve worked on sites where we were rushing to hit some deadline. Working basically round-the-clock—which is what you’re asking us to do. That’s how people get hurt. You end up working in the dark. Working in the elements. You get exhausted. Even the toughest guys get sick. Nail-gun accidents, trips and falls, stupid mistakes and accidents . . . Hell, we saw a guy working in a rainstorm get hit by lightning. Blew him twenty yards off the house, but he was dead before he hit the ground.”

  “Great sandwich, by the way,” Teddy said, smiling, before popping an expensive little pickle into his mouth. Cole and Bart glared at their friend, who seemed quite oblivious to it.

  Perched on the bumper of her vehicle, Gretchen neatly polished off her sandwich even as she regarded Bart fixedly. She swallowed, wiped her hands clean, and took a small sip of the cold wine.

  “I neglected to mention your bonuses,” she said.

  The three men all subtly shifted; Bart coughed into his hand, Teddy stretched his arms over his head and then commenced rubbing his newly buzzed pate, and Cole transferred his weight from one foot to the other, one finger pressed to his lips. Had they been sitting around a poker table, their tells would have been well broadcasted.

  “One hundred and fifty thousand dollars for each of you, if the house is completed before Christmas.”

  “Holy crap,” Teddy said.

  “Fuckin’ A,” murmured Cole.

  “And if we can’t?” Bart asked, collecting himself. “Finish on time?”

  “You’ll still be paid, of course, and your builder’s fee honored,” Gretchen said professionally. “But obviously the bonus itself will have expired.”

  “Why, though?” Bart said. “Why Christmas? Up here, you’ll be snowed in anyway. There’s no way you can keep that driveway open all winter.”

  “What’s your last name, Bart?”

  “Christianson, ma’am. Bartholomew Christianson. But Bart’s all anyone ever calls me.”

  “That is a mouthful. But look, Mr. Christianson, I’d rather not elaborate. Suffice it to say that time happens to be, well, more valuable to me than money. All right? I’m a busy, busy woman. And don’t worry about the driveway. That’s my business, and I’ll be sure to have it plowed, no matter the cost. Having said all that, though: Look, if you and your partners aren’t interested in this job, then, please, let’s stop wasting each other’s time. I’m sure you have gutters to hang somewhere.”

  With that, she began disassembling the picnic, her back turned to them, as they stood there, looking at one another, the river below them persistently loud, and far overhead one of the buzzards still orbiting on the high thermals.

  “Can you give us a minute, Gretchen?” Cole asked. “I think we’re in agreement, but obviously your timeline is, uh . . . well, it complicates things a bit, doesn’t it?”

  “I’ll tell you what, Mr. McCourt,” she replied. “I’m going to drive back down and check in on the road crew. You can have all the space you need for your little chat. And feel free to go on and look at the site more thoroughly, if you please. As I said, all the preparatory work has been done. I simply need a general contractor to keep things moving along. The question is, are you my men?”

  And with that, she slammed the hatch of the vehicle, climbed in, and then pulled away, kicking up a few handfuls of gravel in the process.

  * * *

  —

  They did not deliberate long. Meeting her in the middle of the gravel road below not fifteen minutes later, Cole pressed her to raise their bonus to a quarter million, per. She sighed, and eventually they settled on a hundred and seventy-five thousand per man. A half hour after that, they worked their way back up to the skeletal housing start, where they signed the paperwork she’d arranged beside the hot springs, and where she poured four flutes of very cold, very crisp, very delicious champagne. None of the three men had ever tasted Dom Pérignon before, but without ever so much as discussing it, they all agreed they liked it, very, very much indeed.

  It tasted like success.

  2

  They sat inside Sidewinders Tavern, each of them utterly flabbergasted at the three-hundred-thousand-dollar earnest-money check sitting on the battered old bar before them.

  “Britney’s gonna be so psyched,” Teddy said. “Now we can pay for Kylie’s orthodontia, and maybe
those baking classes that Kendall and Kelly have been asking about, and still set aside—”

  “Shut up, Teddy,” Bart growled. “I’m of half a mind to cash this check and skip town. Four months? Impossible. A fucking good way to get killed is what it is. A goddamn honey-trap.”

  “Now, slow down, Bart,” Cole said evenly, running a finger over the rim of his pint glass. “Are we supposed to just go back to unplugging toilets and tearing out piss-stained carpeting? What if we were destined to build this house? ’Cause it sorta feels like that to me. Look, I want this project, okay? This is it. This is what we been dreaming of. And she’s experienced; she’s built houses before. You can bet those blueprints are tight and there won’t be two thousand goddamned change orders. The foundation’s done, the I-beam work is done, and once we get the box sealed up, once we get the roof on, brothers—we can crank on that sumbitch. I’m willing to work around the clock for a few months to cash a six-figure bonus. Know what I mean? We can do this. I know we can.”

  “I’m with you.” Teddy nodded fervently. “I am one hundred percent with you. Britney can spare me. Sure, she’ll have her hands full for a little while with the kids and all, but I mean, when it’s done? We can maybe buy our own house, right? No more condos. No more landlords. Come on, Bart. Whaddya say?”

  Bart threw down a shot of Jägermeister and shook his head. “I think this is fucking doomed. I really do. There’s something off about this whole fuckin’ thing, and I don’t like it. My daddy always told me, if it looks too good to be true—”

  “Geez, Bart,” Teddy said, “there’s such a thing as a good luck, isn’t there? Maybe we just got lucky, huh?”

  “—then it probably is,” Bart finished. The two friends sipped at their beers and simply stared at each other across the impasse.

  “It’s gonna be all hands on deck, Bart,” Cole said solemnly. “I mean, seven days a week, no doubt. Workin’ harder than we’ve ever worked before. We need you, amigo.”

  They’d named their little business True Triangle Construction for obvious reasons. There were three partners, sure. And even with their limited educations, they all knew the strength of a triangle. But throughout their lifelong friendship, if that triangle had a weak side, it had been Bart. He was the first to leave Utah, in the wake of a public intoxication charge that utterly embarrassed his parents: caught pissing in an alleyway. He’d been threatened with a charge of indecent exposure, a crime that would have forever marked him as a sex criminal; thankfully his lawyer had finagled a deal whereby the charges would be dropped if Bart left town. So, he had. Less than a year later, Cole and Teddy followed him out to Jackson Hole and an unending string of drunken nights, often culminating in Bart getting tossed in the clink again, this time for a bar fight or possession or whatever the local cops wanted to tag him with.

  There were people in the world who seemed plagued by bad luck. The perfectly healthy thirtysomething who suffered a heart attack on a routine jog or at the yoga studio. Or the well-meaning family that lost its life savings to a nefarious evangelist. But there were others who seemed to manufacture their own bad luck, and it was hard not to place Bart in the latter camp. He was not a nihilist, no, because Bart did subscribe to a kind of code that above all prized loyalty, hard work, and determination. Still, it was difficult to imagine him growing old, let alone aging gracefully. The sundown horizon of his life seemed much closer than theirs. Volatile, that was how Cole and Teddy tended to think of their friend.

  And the drugs, always in the background, like a poorly tuned radio, a fuzz of interference that muddled his days: mostly pot, mushrooms, LSD, a lot of coke, plenty of Molly, and, last but never least, meth. In the summer, Bart was a beer drinker. Fall through spring, he switched to brandy; brandy in his morning coffee, brandy and Coca-Cola in the evening. Throughout, Cole and Teddy were there to prop him up when he fell too hard; ready to carry him into a cold shower, ready with a glass of water and a trio of Tylenol, ready to find ways for him to disappear off the jobsite on some mindless errand if it meant a foreman not discovering his drunkenness. And to Bart’s credit, he never forgot their kindness either. Anything they needed, he was right there.

  Now Cole rested an arm on Bart’s shoulder even as his friend stared down at the bar, at that six-figure check just setting there.

  “You with us, buddy? Can we count on you? ’Cause this is it, Bart. This is what we’ve been working for. Our break. It’s right here.”

  “I’m here, ain’t I?” Bart grumbled. And then, “Hell, fine—I’m with you fellas, all right?”

  “Are you?” Cole badgered. “Because before we talked to Gretchen, you seemed all in. Brother, you were fucking electrified about this project. And Christ, now you’re hangdogging it like all we did was score another shitty roofing job or something. I could swear you almost look . . . pissed or something.”

  “I told you already, there’s just something about this whole thing I don’t like.”

  “Is it that I’m the one leading our talks with her?” Cole asked. “Because if that’s it, buddy, hey, I’m more than willing to take a backseat.” He didn’t at all mean what he’d just said, but it was surely the right thing to offer.

  Bart turned his head to look at Cole. “Naw, well . . . a little, maybe. Then again,” he said, grinning, “you two do seem to have yourselves a budding little rapport.”

  “C’mon,” Cole said with as much conviction as he could muster. “She ain’t interested in a mug like me. Gretchen’s high-class as hell. There ain’t got any room in her world for slumming around with construction workers.”

  “But I seen you,” Bart said as he pointed a finger playfully at Cole, “rushing over there to give her a hand like she was Elizabeth Taylor or something. You like her, don’tcha?”

  Cole sipped his beer so as not to dignify the question. “So, what?” he said, circling back. “You with us, amigo?”

  “I’m with ya.”

  * * *

  —

  After parting ways, Cole found himself driving all the way back to the building site; he couldn’t explain it exactly, why he felt so rejuvenated, so awake. He drove patiently, and when he came to the gravel back road extending off the highway and leading to Gretchen’s driveway, he rolled down his window and moved through the night slowly, that cool, fresh night air rolling over him as he peered up at the stars and down toward the river, where the moonlight quivered and rippled on the moving water.

  At the turnaround, he parked the truck, turned off the ignition, and simply sat there in the cab, listening to the slow tick . . . tick . . . . . . tick beneath the truck’s oversize hood. He could not remember ever feeling so alone in such a remote place, and yet he didn’t feel lonely, not like the past few months in his apartment, in his bed.

  He got out and walked up to the house, thinking the whole way up about Gretchen. How had she settled on this design? Where was she now? And was she with someone, perhaps out at some trendy restaurant, or even just in her bed, fancy reading glasses perched on her nose as she proofread some important document, her companion lying beside her, reading a folded newspaper or working a crossword puzzle?

  He’d joked with Bart that there was no room for a guy like him in this woman’s life, but now, standing there beside the house, he wondered, Why not? Maybe he could make her see him. Maybe he could find some way, some small space, some commonality between them and steal into her days and nights. . . .

  An owl hooted somewhere in the canyon, the sound echoing softly. Cole realized dawn was already bluing the horizon, and so he got back into the truck and beat it back to town, slid his key into the apartment’s lock, and promptly slumped down onto his bed, where he fell asleep with both boots on.

  3

  A few months earlier . . .

  San Francisco, California

  From her office on the twenty-fourth floor of the Century Tower, the hawk’s nest in a neig
hboring building three floors below could be seen with the naked eye as a jumble of debris outside a south-facing apartment window where the bird had chosen a home as much, no doubt, for the generous and predictable warmth of its southeast exposure as its buffered position, a refuge from the howling winds of those concrete canyons. And from the first moment she noticed the Cooper’s hawk (Accipiter cooperii), it was not an overstatement to say that Gretchen found herself uncharacteristically distracted by the bird, spending long passages of her business day at the window behind her desk, a pair of Vortex binoculars pressed to her eyes. During conference calls and even during proper meetings, she found herself gazing out any given bank of windows, thinking of the raptor and wanting very much simply to observe the creature. When she was lucky enough to spot the hawk transporting bits of urban rubbish back to its nest—a length of yellow police tape, a wheelbarrow’s worth of deadwood, and what appeared to be the remnants of a tattered orange windsock—she experienced a sense of mystery she had not known in years. And a sense of true peace. So much of her life was meted out in billable increments; all day long nearly every minute measured and recorded and entirely within this building—her life so predictable and confined. She was a machine when it came to billing, to metering her time, but it also became an obsession, a compulsion, an artificial drive that, increasingly, she wanted to be severed from. Watching the hawk fly from the silence of her office, she often felt as if she were viewing a beautiful film with no soundtrack. At times, the hawk felt like the only real thing in her life, completely ungovernable and wild. Every other component of her existence so rote, so seemingly civilized, so commodified. . . . It was one of the reasons why she could not wait to escape to Wyoming, where she would slough off this life like a carapace.