by Jane Smiley
He turned to me. “Mercedes traffic is our kind of traffic.” I laughed. “Mercedes traffic likes to park in a covered garage facility and enter a carpeted elevator to be lifted in silence to the top floor,” he said.
“I’ve got to tell you that Gordon’s projects generally work out of trailers or modular buildings.”
We passed out of Deacon and drove along the river. Here it was quieter. The river was low and off in the distance, the crowns of the hills dark where the trees had dropped their leaves.
At Cookborough, I crossed the river and turned south on the interstate. We drove in silence until Marcus said, “Here’s the deal. See that farm there?” He pointed to the right as we passed some red cattle with white faces grazing the side of the interstate.
“That’s Gordon’s farm,” I said. “He’s had that place for years, but the town never came out here.”
“Not so far. But it will come out here if you make something for it to come to. You know how they settled the West?”
“The West?”
“Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota. All the places that no one in their right minds would think of living in. Colorado.”
“How?”
“I bet you think that enterprising farmers got land from the government at a dollar twenty-five an acre and built themselves modest homesteads, like Little House on the Prairie. Did you ever read Little House on the Prairie?”
“No.”
“Well, when I was in third grade, we sat there for half an hour after lunch every day while Mrs. Judson read us Little House on the Prairie, and if you think a classroom of eight-year-old wops and micks and yids from Brooklyn could imagine what in the world she was talking about, you should have been there.” He laughed. “Let’s say she had difficulty maintaining order. Anyway, people don’t go out and take a liking to a piece of raw land unless they’re crazy. What happened all along was, the developers got the government to pay for the land being developed, and they got the banks to pay for the development, and then they got the farmers to buy in, once the farmers had a place to go where they could feel comfortable. Gordon’s crazy to wait for the town to come to him. He has to build a place for the town to want to come to.”
“It’s at least six miles to the outskirts of Portsmouth from here. There’s hardly even any housing developments out this way, just some trucking companies and that sort of thing.”
“How old are you?”
I got a little defensive. I said, “Forty, actually.”
“Here’s a riddle. You know what was more important than the Cuban Missile Crisis?”
“The Kennedy assassination?”
“The Beatles.”
“I was around for the Beatles.”
“The day the Beatles got to the States, I skipped school with a couple of other guys and took the train uptown. We got off at the wrong stop and just walked around, looking for the Beatles. You can’t believe all the kids that were there. It was like—oh, I don’t know, water pooling around a storm drain, deep water, water from the whole neighborhood, enough water to sweep you away into the drain and down to the river. Anyway, by following the stream of kids, we got sort of to where the Beatles were. We never saw them, but we saw so many kids. I just never got over that.”
“Never got over what?” We had passed the light industrial section and were driving through a part of Portsmouth that was seedy and run-down.
“Record buyers. Burger buyers. Blue jeans buyers. Hmm mmm. Customers. I mean, in this last election, everyone breathed a sigh of relief. Finally the sixties were over and the revolution had ended and something bad had happened to all those kids—they, or we, got our just deserts. We disappeared or grew up or something. The Carter years taught us the long-awaited lesson.”
I had heard something like this from my parents, not specifically directed toward me, because I was, of course, a basically good boy with a steady employment history who was more sinned against than sinning, but nevertheless the date when a due sense of responsibility would begin to impose itself upon “young people” had been a long time coming. I nodded. I said, “That life is hard and success doesn’t come easy.”
“That’s the lesson.” He laughed. “But it does for some people. Oh, yes, it does. And here’s the key. More people mean scarcer resources, scarcer resources mean inflation, and inflation means property and interest-bearing capital have a higher value and work has a lower value. It’s as simple as that. Gordon is an interesting guy. He lives by simple principles—buy it if you can, drive a hard bargain, have fun, don’t make enemies. He has a lot of personality that helps him ooze here and ooze there and in general keep himself spreading across the landscape, but on the other hand, he really doesn’t know what he has. What’s wrong with the other son, what’s his name?”
“Norton?”
“Yeah.”
I said, “Oh, he’s a hothead. His problem is that he’s already acted on his natural mean streak before he remembers that alienating people doesn’t do him any good. He’s always wanted to be rich, but he wants to inflict pain just a little bit more.”
“That’s not very cool.”
“You know,” I said, “Gordon is a warm and generous man and he’s helped me and worked with me every day of my adult life, but he would take a poke in the eye before getting the short end of a deal, and Norton is like that. He just doesn’t know where the deals end and life begins; he always thinks he is getting shafted, and Gordon has never let him think otherwise. I once saw Gordon beat Norton sixty-two times in a row at gin. And every time he rubbed it in, just a little. The tournament lasted—oh, three weeks or so. Norton never won a game.”
We pulled up in front of the old Acorn State Bank building. I could tell that Marcus appreciated the grandeur of it, and in fact the building was more ornate than large. We peeked in the etched glass windows set into the large double doors and got a glimpse of the triangular lobby with all the old tellers’ windows stretched along the base of the triangle. I took out my key and opened the lockbox. I said, “I don’t think anyone’s been in here in three years or more. Acorn moved out in ’seventy-two, I think. Then the Portsmouth County Credit Union was in here, but when the price of heating oil went up, they moved. I mean, look at those windows!” The lobby, where I had come so often with my mother when she brought me on the streetcar to deposit the week’s receipts, reminded me powerfully of being a preschool child with nothing to do but say my prayers, obey my parents, and love God.
Marcus went behind the bank of tellers’ booths and wandered around, a smile on his face. He rocked back on his heels and looked up at the ceiling. I looked up too. There was a faded scene depicted there—some men in a boat and a dim line of trees in the distance. He said, “That’s Washington crossing the Delaware, I bet.”
“I bet it is. It has that WPA look about it, doesn’t it?”
He nodded and went through a door into the vault room. The big heavy vault door had been removed, as well as all the safe-deposit boxes and whatever else would have been there. I said, “This was our bank. We came here every Monday morning on the streetcar. My mother handed over her money and her passbook, and the same teller stamped her book and wrote something with a fountain pen. People stayed close to their money in those days.”
“It sounds like an orderly existence.”
“Order is my father’s middle name.”
“I would like to meet your parents sometime.” He seemed sincere, though casual too.
“You would? No one ever says that. They’re well known for expressing strong religious opinions without being asked, though always in the kindest of terms. My father and Gordon have agreed to maintain a cordial but extremely distant friendship.”
He sighed. “Well, this is grand, but it wasn’t what I had in mind.”
We got back in the car and I pulled onto Essex Street. I said, “South Portsmouth might be more the ticket, but it’s a little far from the farm.”
“The farm is only the beginning. We don’t
want the corporation to be too linked in people’s minds with the farm.”
We drove for a while in silence, and then Marcus began humming a little tune that I couldn’t identify. Maybe I’d been supposed to answer something, because suddenly he said, “What’s the matter with you, Joe? How did you let yourself get roped into this?”
“What?”
“This development.”
“I didn’t get roped in. I mean, I’ve worked with Gordon for years, and then you came along.”
“Crosbie is the real villain, you know why?”
“Why?”
“Because a big loan is an asset. All those deposits he’s got, those are the liabilities, and those loans are assets. Crosbie’s new. He came in to transform the savings and loan from money loser to moneymaker, and he’s got to make the books look good, so he’s making big loans, which go on the asset side and cover old loans that aren’t making any profit. Was this whole thing his idea?”
“No, it was Thorpe’s idea, remember? He didn’t know Thorpe. And I don’t think Portsmouth Savings has ever been a money loser. They’re the biggest S and L around here. They got the first charter in the state way back when. They actually opened two branches a couple of years ago, when all the others were—”
“You know what I hate the most?”
“What?”
“I hate paying taxes.”
“You do?”
“Sure.”
“Well, everyone hates paying taxes.”
“You know the simplest way to avoid paying taxes?”
“Obviously not.”
“The simplest legal way that takes no cheating and no creative bookkeeping and passes every audit?”
“No.”
“You live on borrowed money. You sell the property piece by piece to pay the interest and you keep borrowing more. Gordon’s got collateral up the wazoo. That’s how you got roped in.”
“That’s assuming that—”
“That the value of the property keeps rising. And it does.”
“I don’t know, what with interest rates so high—”
“It does. That’s the lesson of the Beatles. More and more people who like things nice, who are educated and have good taste, are just starting to come into some real money. Families with two ambitious adults in the workforce instead of one. Gay couples. You know what?”
“What?”
“I’m hungry.”
I laughed out loud. Just then we passed Cheltenham Park, an office complex that looked more like a private school: Colonial-style red-brick three-story buildings with white trim and fanlights above the two entrances. Marcus said, “What’s that? Is that on your list?”
“That’s incredibly expensive office space.” But I didn’t have to be told to stop. I turned into the parking lot.
He opened his door and got out of the car. His clothes fit in perfectly here. I saw with a sinking feeling that this was the place. I said, “Maybe they won’t have any space, they’re usually—”
But as we walked past the management office, a small elegantly printed sign in the window read: LIMITED SPACE STILL AVAILABLE. We went in. The management office was carpeted in pale Berber with a wheat-colored Persian on top of that. The manager, a blond woman with her hair pinned up, was very well dressed. I cast Marcus a sidelong glance. I could tell he felt comfortable here, and she could tell the same. I said, “I’m Joe Stratford of Stratford Realty. This is my client, Marcus Burns. Mr. Burns is looking for office space.”
The woman came from behind her desk and held out her hand to Marcus. She said, “Mary Linburg King, Mr. Burns.”
Marcus gripped her hand with his right and her arm with his left. He looked at her warmly.
She said, “What can I do for you, Mr. Burns?” It was like watching two people get married on the first date.
“First of all, show us around,” said Marcus. “We haven’t seen anything really first-rate all day.”
“Oh, believe me, Cheltenham Park is first-rate.”
“How many office suites do you have vacant?”
“Only two. Businesses love it here. Two of the best restaurants in town are here, too, Chez Maurice is down there and Laguna is at the other end of the building. Very upscale. But let me—”
“We haven’t had lunch yet,” said Marcus.
Inside the complex, the floors were marble, the walls had chair rails, the trim was elaborate and thickly enameled. The anchor store for this building was the Persian carpet store, which was spacious and beautifully lit. Carpets were piled everywhere, like treasure spilling out of a chest. They hung on the walls and from ceiling racks. Several of them had discreetly lettered signs saying, OWING TO THE DELICACY OF THESE PIECES, PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH THEM, BUT GAZE TO YOUR HEART’S CONTENT! Mary King spoke in a low voice. “The owner is quite a well-known expert.” Marcus was beaming.
Next door was an art gallery. This was a smaller establishment, only one long room of white-painted, brightly lit walls. A display of prints and paintings of horses ran down one side and a display of black-and-white photographs ran down the other. There were two locked glass cases of antique jewelry. The proprietor, a tall woman with black hair, was standing by one of the photographs, inserting a price card into a wall mount. It read, 2ooo.
Mary said, “Dana, this is Marcus Burns. He’s looking for office space.”
Marcus made an expansive gesture. He said, “Some wonderful works you have here.”
“Thank you. The photographs are more in demand, but I have to tell you that the horse paintings are actually very good. Mr. Mellon’s advisor was in here yesterday and said that Mr. Mellon might be in himself tomorrow. He doesn’t come in unless there’s something very rare.”
“Paul Mellon?” said Mary.
“Oh, of course,” said Dana. “I’m sorry. Mr. Mellon is a huge lover of English animal painting.”
“Mmm,” said Marcus. “I suppose you know that the Thorpe estate is changing hands?”
“He was killed in a car accident,” said the art dealer.
“No, actually not,” I said. “He had the accident outside my office and walked away from it. But he died that night of a heart attack.”
“What a shame.” Her face fell and then brightened. “But it would be great to have a look at some of their things.” She gave Marcus a glance, and he gave her a glance back. Marcus shook her hand.
From the art gallery, we went to the first vacant suite of offices. They were on the second floor: a reception area, four nicely carpeted rooms, a bathroom, and a tiny kitchen area for making coffee. Marcus stood in the door and then shook his head decisively. “Not big enough.”
“For what?” I said. “There’s only one of you.”
They paid no attention. We went to the other building. As we walked along, Marcus said, “So, Mary. What’s the square-foot cost you’re asking?”
She quoted a price I had never before heard in my life. Marcus said nothing.
The other building was anchored by an antiques store. We didn’t go in. Mary leaned upward, toward Marcus, and whispered, “Only French. Not even Italian. I asked the owner once why he didn’t have any Italian pieces, and he said, ‘Too gaudy.’”
The second suite had six rooms arranged somewhat differently from the previous one. There was a front office, a conference space behind that where the coffee and refrigerator setup was, and then a corridor leading from there with two rooms off either side of it. The bathroom was at the end; it had a shower as well as a stool and a sink. As I followed the two of them from the front office to the conference room, Mary lost her footing. Marcus caught her elbow. When she was balanced again, he gave her a little squeeze, and she gave him a grateful smile. There was a brief moment of silence, at the end of which she sighed a very short and quiet sigh. Marcus did not move away from her and she did not move away from him. He said, “This is a bit better, at least for now. We could manage here for the first year or so. But, Mary, what has me really excited, and maybe persuades me
to take this suite more than anything else, is what we could do for you.”
“What would that be?”
“Let me ask you this question first: What business is your husband in?”
“He—um, he’s a doctor, but I’m not actually married anymore.”
“Well, you know,” he said, with special kindness now, “I’m not going to congratulate or commiserate, at least for right now, maybe later, but that’s perfect for my example here, because you can understand what I can do for you. You know the Thorpe property that we were talking about down in the art gallery?”
“Of course. I mean, I’ve never been out there—”
“I own it. I’m developing it. It’s not going to be like anything this area has ever seen before. These four hundred houses are going to suck up Persian carpets and French antiques and fine art. You should see the house plans.”
I said, “Four hundred?” They didn’t hear me.
“Families like these—women like these—are going to need a destination for shopping and lunch and dinner and all sorts of things. Gold trading. Joe here said there’s a gold-trading firm?”
“SAF Investments has an office on the first floor. Actually, a bedding shop is talking about coming in. You know, Swedish down comforters and silk blankets.”
“Perfect! And a fitness center would be great. Have you thought about a fitness center?” He poured an appreciative gaze down upon her that seemed to honor her personally for installing the bedding store. “I knew this would be perfect as soon as we drove past. I think Joe tried to call you, but we couldn’t get through, right, Joe?”
“Yesterday I was calling around.”
“But here we are and it’s working out perfectly. I think I can offer you—” He lowered his voice and turned his back to me, but I heard him say “square foot” and then he said, normally, “As soon as one of the bigger suites opens up, we can roll over our lease. Here’s what I want to do, I want to be here, right here, to oversee how this place develops into a mecca for our buyers. Something bigger would suit us better, but this is where I can make sure that everything comes together, you know what I mean?”
