“No!” Teddy said, pushing Cole out of the way and sitting down beside Bart. “No, this ain’t right. We’ve got to take him to a hospital, Cole. Look at him. Look at him!”
But Cole would not look at his friend, just rubbed at his jaw and at the back of his skull, and occasionally stared at the windows, at the bridge-building crew, how efficient they were, how, at that very moment, they were cleaning the landing on the far side of the river, readying it for what the foreman assured Cole was a reliable if temporary fix. Then, in the spring, they’d return to lift the bridge off its temporary footings, pouring proper new concrete pilings that would withstand most anything. The important thing was, in three days, they’d have a functioning bridge again, and with any luck, at least most of their subs would return to the site.
“We’re almost there,” Cole said quietly. “Just a matter of weeks now. We’re weeks away, boys. Weeks!”
“I don’t care,” Teddy said. “I’m takin’ him to the hospital.”
“And then what?” Cole roared. “You see his arms! Those ain’t bug bites, Teddy. He’s on meth. Okay? You want to get him arrested? You know how long it’s gonna take him to dry out?”
“I don’t care, Cole. He’s my friend, and right now he needs our help.”
Teddy took one of Bart’s arms and draped it over his own shoulder, then, standing, took his friend’s weight, which, to his surprise, was frighteningly reduced from even a month or two earlier.
“Sit. The. Fuck. Down,” said Cole.
Teddy stood there, beside the bed, Bart leaning into him like he was a broken fencepost.
“This is a partnership, amigo,” Cole said sternly. “Or was. ’Cause you go through that door, we ain’t partners anymore.”
“He needs help,” Teddy pleaded. “He’s working himself to death.”
Cole bobbed his head and cracked his knuckles, glancing at Bart.
“All right,” he said. “What if we meet in the middle? That bridge is gonna take three days. So maybe everyone goes home, gets some sleep.”
“What about Bart?” Teddy asked. “He doesn’t even have a place anymore.”
“You mean you don’t want to take him home?” Cole laughed. “And here, a minute ago, you were talking about taking him to the hospital.”
“Fine,” Teddy said. “He can come home with me.”
“No,” Bart croaked. “I don’t want Britney seeing me this way. Or your girls.”
Cole shook his head. “I’d take him, but . . .” He sighed. “I don’t even know what furniture’s left at my place.”
“Yeah, well, we can’t leave him here,” said Teddy.
“I’ll be fine,” Bart said, slumping onto the bed.
“No, you won’t.” It was true. Cole knew it. And then there was the fear that if Bill found him this way . . . “We gotta get you out of here.” He glanced at the open door.
“I ain’t goin’ out there,” Bart mumbled. “How do I know this ain’t some kind of ruse?”
“A what?” Teddy asked.
“A goddamn act. The feds out there, pretending they’re our bridge builders. How do I know what to believe?”
Cole sighed, stared at his recalcitrant friend, this man who, now that he studied him hard, looked very unwell indeed. Not just exhausted but gruesomely transformed, the kind of strung-out junkie you could push over with a pinky finger, if he didn’t stab you first.
“Tell you what,” Cole said. “If those mugs out there are the feds, you can have my bonus. I swear to god.”
“Have your bonus?” Bart repeated, arching his eyebrows and probing his arms with twitchy fingers.
“Come on,” Cole ordered, picking up his friend by the elbow. “Trust me, amigo. I got an idea.”
They helped Bart dress and then tossed his toiletries and some clean clothes into a duffel bag and led him upriver along a newly beaten path to their jury-rigged bridge. Bart seemed to have shrunken overnight, moving about as feebly as an old man. When they neared the bridge-building crew, he gamely put on a good face, straightened his posture, and moved briskly past the workers, even as Cole slapped a couple of backs and shot the shit for a few moments, before catching back up to Bart as he and Teddy stood near their trucks.
“I don’t know, Cole,” Teddy said. “Maybe this ain’t worth it. Maybe we ought to just . . . I don’t know. . . . Look, there’ll be other great projects. Maybe this one is just doomed. Even if we were to walk away now, we still would’ve made a bundle of money.”
“No way,” Cole said. He opened the passenger-side door of his truck, and without having to say anything to Bart, his friend ducked into the cab and sat motionless, his eyes closed. “Take three days off, Teddy. All right? Relax. Have fun with your family. We’ll all come back better for this break. Ready for the home stretch.”
Teddy leaned through the window of Cole’s truck and extended his hand to Bart.
“Take care of yourself,” Teddy said firmly. “I got your back, no matter what. Far as I’m concerned, we can walk away at any time. You just say the word.”
Bart gave a little grin and waved his hand in the air.
As Teddy walked away, Cole caught up to him.
“By the way, this notion you’ve got that we’ve made all this money?” Cole said. “That ain’t exactly true.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean,” Cole continued, “we bought a brand-new trailer, generators, tools. Teddy, we’ve spent easily over a hundred and fifty grand, already. And the thing is, if we don’t get our bonuses, it ain’t like we’re millionaires. Not even remotely. Sure, we would’ve made some decent bread, but it ain’t life-changing money. You know that, right? We need to finish the job, and on time. It’s nonnegotiable, far as I’m concerned.”
Teddy stood silently, unable to meet Cole’s eyes. “Take care of him,” he said finally. “He’s our friend.”
“I will,” Cole said. “I promise. And I’ll see you in a few days.”
* * *
—
Cole drove them to the finest hotel in town and, parking his muddy pickup in the valet line, said to Bart, “Wait right here.”
“Don’t you worry about me,” Bart said, staring down at his dirty, disheveled clothes. He glanced at himself in the mirror, grimaced, then aimed the mirror away. “I ain’t going anywhere.”
Cole walked casually into the hotel lobby, aware that he was still in his work clothes, his boots grimy, on the thick, cream-colored carpeting. The lighting in this lobby was golden and intimate, the walls decorated with tasteful black-and-white prints of the surrounding landscape. Behind the front desk was a fantastic European mount of a massive elk, looming like a crown above the head of a wisp-thin female clerk. He had given some thought to checking into much cheaper accommodations, but then again, what he wanted most was relaxation. He did not want scratchy bedsheets, a tired mattress, or eighteen-wheelers idling outside the window.
“I’d like a room, please,” Cole said. “And I don’t have a reservation.”
The clerk typed away at her computer and then, after frowning at the screen, looked back to Cole, with a barely camouflaged look of contempt. “Unfortunately, the only room we have available is our largest suite.”
“Perfect,” Cole said, slapping his credit card on the counter. “I’ll take it. Three nights.”
“Three nights?” she repeated.
“Yep,” he said, glancing back at the pickup truck, where he imagined Bart sat, picking at his arms.
“Two beds, right?” Cole confirmed.
The clerk looked at him, confused. “Sir?”
“There’s two of us. We’re, uh, friends.”
“That room has only a king-size bed, sir. But we have had guests sleep on the couch, which is lovely. I’ve heard.”
“Fine,” Cole said. He nodded, signed her forms, and pl
aced his credit card in his wallet.
“Two keys?” she asked.
“How about just one,” he said.
* * *
—
Cole settled Bart into the suite; pushed him into the bathroom and threw his clothes into a garbage can. Then he ordered two hundred and fifty dollars in room service—salads, steaks, a few appetizers, and a bottle of very good wine—and then slumped back into a comfortable, overstuffed leather chair to think. He had to get Bart back on track, get him eating again, figure out how to nurse him through the end of the year.
Assuming he was able to persuade their subs to return, he did not doubt they could finish before Christmas. But if the subs would not come back to Gretchen’s house, that was another matter entirely. There’d be at least a week of trim work, followed by a week of painting. The countertops were on order, and all the natural stone Gretchen had selected was sitting in a warehouse and needed to be installed before the plumber could install the sinks and faucets. He needed to get the appliances moved, and there was no time to spare. He only hoped their cabinetmaker was on schedule; he’d need to get him on the telephone, and pronto. So much depended on an order of operation, and he needed these subs to work in concert, to follow his directions, and to be flexible. What was more, he needed all this to happen despite the fact that some of them had been thrown off the project when Gretchen’s first crew quit, and despite the delays incurred by the broken bridge. He was prepared to pay these guys premiums, too, even as he tallied the cost for this three-day break likely in the low thousands.
Cole felt a wave of anxiety pass over him. He began dialing numbers.
20
Britney led Teddy from house to house, each one more overpriced than the last. A three-bedroom for seven hundred and fifty thousand in need of a new furnace, a new roof, a kitchen that would have to be completely remodeled, and a radical overhaul of at least one bathroom carpeted in dandelion yellow shag circa 1976. Every time he pointed to something that was hopelessly outdated, broken, or hastily and only impermanently repaired, she scoffed, folding her arms defensively across her chest.
“But that’s the thing, Teddy: You can do all those things. We don’t have to pay to fix those things.”
All he wanted to do was sleep. Or work at his own leisurely pace on Gretchen’s house. Perhaps roll onto the worksite around noon and kick off at five. That would seem like a vacation.
Now they stood inside a nondescript 1960s-era rambler, and the sound of Britney’s voice comingled with the real estate agent’s, a white noise he ignored as he stared out into the backyard, pretending to imagine some future fire pit, or the herb garden Britney was always talking about.
“Isn’t it great?” Britney asked. “Some TLC, some elbow grease, a little attention to the curb appeal, and we can turn this place around. I mean, the bones are good, right?”
He absent-mindedly rapped his knuckles against some faux wood-paneling; the hollow sound that returned to his ears betraying a lack of insulation. He imagined exorbitant winter heating bills, especially since the girls complained anytime he turned the thermostat below their requisite seventy-five degrees.
“Yeah,” he said, “great bones.”
“And honestly,” the real estate agent said, a prodigious keychain dangling off her index finger, “the price is right. You just can’t get into this market for any less than this. It is an impossibility at this point. Trust me.”
Teddy stared hard at the agent, a woman in her fifties with a Jane Fonda aerobics body, platinum blond hair, and the ridiculous name of Shelley Winterbottom.
“We’ve looked at twelve houses, honey,” Britney said. “And I really think this is the one. This has to be the one. Don’t you think?”
But the only house he could think about was Gretchen’s, out there in the mountains, the hot springs steaming up into the blue late-autumn sky, the last of the yellow cottonwood leaves falling into the river, the house’s sleek lines and beautifully wide windows staring out, searching for the builders, looking for him.
Britney was standing beside him then, holding his arm gently in both of her hands.
“Teddy?” she whispered. “I know you’re tired, baby, but help me out here. This is so important. If we don’t make an offer, this house could be gone by tomorrow. Or even tonight. We don’t have time to hem and haw.”
Winterbottom made a point of looking at her watch. “Tell you what,” she said, her heels clicking loudly on the wood floors in all that unoccupied space. “I’m going to be at the office the rest of this afternoon and evening until six. If you want to write up an offer, just shoot me a text and I’ll get your paperwork started, m’kay?”
After escorting them out of the house, they shook hands all around, and the agent drove off in a black Audi R8, leaving the Smythes on the driveway, both with their arms crossed and rather troubled looks on their faces.
“Teddy,” Britney began, “what’s your head at?”
He didn’t even know where to begin. Perhaps by explaining that working on Gretchen’s house had pretty much ruined him for any other house, or that he found this endless tour of the town’s less desirable real estate to be something of a death march, that everything about this property they now stood upon depressed him, that he could spend the next twenty years remodeling and troubleshooting this house and it would never, never approach even a fraction of the beauty of Gretchen’s house—not its quality of materials, not its breathtaking vistas, not the time and thought that had gone into every inch of those blueprints. He thought of Gretchen’s kitchen. Of the deep sink that would soon be installed and the beautiful farmhouse faucet. Of the Wolf range and Sub-Zero appliances. Of the hood so powerful it would practically suck a sparrow out of the kitchen and up into the mountain air. Of the giant island of Italian marble and the skillfully made cabinets. The granite countertops. And that was just the kitchen; never mind the fireplace, the space-age mechanicals, the solar array and geothermal heating, the triple-glazed, ultra-efficient windows . . . And all of that was before he even got to the really troubling stuff, to the subject of Bart, or their deadline, or the fact that December was no longer so very far away.
He reached for her hand. “I really like this house,” he said at last, looking into her eyes. “I think it’s the one. You’re right.”
He could see her heart leap. Could see her eyes brighten and her shoulders rise before she came to him, kissing him hard and squeezing him with all her might, smothering him with happiness.
“Oh, Teddy, you really think so?”
He smiled. “I do,” he said. “This is it. It feels right.”
“Oh, baby,” she purred. “Finally. Finally we have ourselves a home.”
She snapped out her phone and shot a text to Winterbottom before they’d even crawled into the car. A few blocks down the road Britney directed him down a new cul-de-sac, no houses yet built, and only after she’d told him to park the car did he understand, just as she pulled down her underwear and moved over to his side to straddle him. He closed his eyes and allowed himself to forget everything, felt her hand freeing his belt, and then her hand on him, and he pushed into her and felt an incredible relief and a sort of healing, and they kissed and kissed and then, just before she was finished, she arced her body backward, pressing into the steering wheel and the horn, and both of them collapsing into giggles, because he thought, Fuck it. It’s just money. That’s all it is. I’ll just work harder.
They drove on to the agent’s office, holding hands. Teddy glanced over at his wife to see her wipe away several tears. “You all right?” he asked, pulling the car to the side of the road. “Baby?”
“No, no, no!” she said, smiling through tears, and laughing. “You don’t have to stop. Please—keep going.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m just so happy,” she explained, new trails of mascara now streaking down her cheeks. “I
’m just so, so excited, Teddy, is all.”
He couldn’t help grinning as he pressed down on the accelerator.
They’d scratched and saved for years, but these past few months, with all the work on Gretchen’s house, they had just enough for a down payment. Of course, Teddy’s heart had fairly stopped when they talked to the bank and calculated their monthly mortgage payments. The debt they were assuming was colossal. But if they could finish Gretchen’s house on time, the bonus would go a long way toward paying off the principal. But without it . . .
For the first time he understood that this town did not want people like him and his family. As laborers, yes, but . . . could they just please live as far out of sight as possible? Or, better yet, strive for invisibility altogether. This town did not want rusted, old minivans on driveways, plastic toys in the front yard, or loud music and smoky charcoal grills, true townie bars or mom-and-pop greasy spoons. No, everything was becoming polished and perfectly clean. The town wanted houses like this to be razed, torn down and rebuilt five times larger. A few of his ranch-hand friends never even came into town anymore; they’d come to hate the looks they got for chewing tobacco, smoking a Marlboro, or ordering a Bud Light.
And yet, he felt a growing wave of excitement at the notion of being a homeowner. All right, the place wasn’t perfect. But Britney was right. Bart and Cole would gladly help him out, and starting with the roof, they could work their way down: gut the kitchen and bathrooms first, then finish the basement. Maybe the girls would even pitch in, help paint the house, have the opportunity to know the pride in improving something. Heck, in ten years, maybe they could flip the house for double what they’d paid and start a new project—maybe even get some acreage outside town.
Whenever he thought about the mortgage, his chest tightened, so he put that out of mind. America is the greatest country in the world, his father always used to tell him, as long as you don’t run out of money. Now those words rang in his head. The only solution was to work harder, harder, and then harder still.
Godspeed Page 14
