by Jane Smiley
“Mingle,” said David John, and then we had to mingle. Felicity stayed for maybe forty-five minutes. I watched her the whole time. She kissed me good-bye when she left, a full-on Felicity kiss that reassured me in several ways, and then I stayed till at least three, because I couldn’t believe how many new people had slipped into our area without first stopping at Stratford Realty. I was very friendly and welcoming—a lot of them hadn’t bought yet. I fell into bed later thinking I had done a good night’s work in every way.
It snowed on Christmas Day, and I had a piece of luck. I was supposed to go to Gordon’s late in the afternoon, but I stopped by my office on the way, to do paperwork for an hour. Even though the snow was cascading out of the sky, there came a knock on the door, and then Morris Levine walked in. Morris was looking for a five-bedroom house, and he wanted to buy before New Year’s. I pulled out the multiple listings, and we found one—just one—five-bedroom house. It was south of Deacon, maybe seven miles from the office, and we drove there carefully; Morris had chains on his tires. I let us in with the key in the lockbox, and two hours later I had a signed purchase agreement—a perfect example, I told Bobby, when he didn’t even show up for work on Monday (hungover), why Realtors have to be prepared to work holidays. “Well, yeah,” he said, utterly without conviction. But by the time I had finished with Morris Levine, the roads were so snowy that I dared not go anywhere but straight home, and so I didn’t see Felicity, which I had been counting on.
After that, two storms came right up the coast and turned inland, and a third storm came south off Lake Erie instead of going north, and the result was that I was preoccupied with shoveling and just getting by for almost two weeks. I saw more of my parents. I shoveled their driveway and walks five times in fifteen days and helped my mother with grocery shopping and a dentist appointment; she was terribly afraid of breaking her hip. Even if my father hadn’t been at his store, I would have taken her around because, as she herself said, “He’s got enough to handle in this weather with his own old age.” On Sundays, I took them to church before noon and brought them home in the late afternoon. It reminded me of when they drove me to church when I was a boy. We took the same streets and made the same turns. The only difference was that I was not as sure as I had been that everyone going in the opposite direction was literally going to Hell. I didn’t see Felicity at all. I came to think that spring would solve our insoluble dilemma or at least we would find ourselves going off together again once things picked up at the state park and Hank had more to do.
CHAPTER
15
IT WAS LATE JANUARY when I emerged from this familial cocoon. The weather had been clear for a couple of days. The sun was out and the roads were dry. Ice hung in the trees like glass beads. I was driving around, checking on my listings to make sure they didn’t need any caretaking—that the driveways were clear and no tree branches had fallen in front of doorways. I didn’t want any buyer’s first impression to be that there was a mess to clean up. I had two listings in Portsmouth, and after the first one I happened to be driving past Cheltenham Park. I saw Marcus’s car in the parking lot, so I turned around at the next intersection and went back to see what was going on. I hadn’t heard much from him—or from anyone, for that matter. My eagerness for Felicity had subsided a little too. I was just a guy doing stuff, not a billionaire in the making or a connoisseur of the erotic. It was boring, but familiar and not unpleasant. That was another pleasure of not being married—I could subside into dullness without bothering anyone.
I hadn’t been to Marcus’s office since he’d moved in, which struck me for the first time as odd. If I was his partner and his friend, shouldn’t my presence be required more often? Perhaps I shouldn’t be feeling like I didn’t know even the most basic facts, like where was the place. Whose office was this, anyway, Salt Key Corporation or Marcus himself? I was suspicious and edgy by the time I actually found the door and opened it, and my first unmannerly question to the person inside was “Who are you?”
She looked up. She was a thin brown-haired woman in a blue dress, and before she had time to say anything, Marcus flowed out of his office with a grin and came around her desk. “Joe! This is so perfect, man. I just said to Jane, here, you’ve got to call up Joe at his office and see where he is, because there’s so much going on that I need to talk to him about. God! I can’t believe this weather! Where have you been, in hibernation?”
“More or less. Bosom of the family.”
“Speaking of family, this is my sister Jane. She’s helping me out.”
Jane came around her desk with a big smile, holding her hands out, and when I went to shake hers, she slid smoothly up to me and gave me a hug. She said, “Joe this and Joe that. I was beginning to think they were putting me on, and there wasn’t any real Joe to help me put my little brother on the right path.”
“Jane Burns?” I said.
“Ah. I wish. Jane Johnson for now.”
“Have you moved here?”
“Lock, stock, and dog. Three weeks ago today.”
“Where did you come from?”
“Kansas City.”
I laughed.
She said, “You must have been to Kansas City.”
“No, I was thinking of something my mother said. Someone she knew came back from the Midwest, and she couldn’t remember where, only that it was one of those places with slaughterhouses.”
They laughed.
“So, Jane,” said Marcus. “I’m going back to my office, and you show Mr. Stratford in to me.” He sped into his office and closed the door.
A moment later, Jane called out, “Ready or not, here we come!”
Then she turned to me. Even though she was plain-looking, she had a humorous smile and a twinkle in her eye. She propelled me in front of her, opened the door, and said, “Mr. Stratford to see you, Mr. Burns. Won’t you go right in, Mr. Stratford?”
She closed the door behind us.
Marcus leaned across the desk. “Jane is a genius, Joe. I couldn’t believe it when she told me she was coming East. I begged her to come and work with me, even though she had already taken a position in New York. I won’t even tell you what they were going to pay her to analyze third-world loans. Enough to buy an apartment by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She was all set to sign the papers and I talked her out of it. She is really excited about what we are doing. Makes banking look like playing pattycake, that’s exactly what she said. I mean, everything I know I learned from Jane.”
“I didn’t realize you had a sister.”
“Well, she’s five years older, you know; she was a senior in high school when I was in seventh grade, so she’s always seemed beyond everything else. And then she moved out to the Midwest right out of college, got married and everything, so I’ve mostly viewed her as a legend.” He leaned forward. “No kids. That’s the bad part. She waited too long. And then he left her for a younger woman who he’s already got pregnant, and they aren’t even married! Good thing my mother isn’t alive to hear that. Ugh. I can’t believe that guy. I’d like to say I could see it all along, but I couldn’t. I thought he was great. We’ve played golf plenty of times, no problem. I thought they were stuck together with Krazy Glue.”
“She must be devastated.”
“Well, she and Linda have had a few talks, but she’s a monster for work. Just sets it aside and gets on with it. She is really on top of things, too. She knows all the new investment instruments, and how they work, and who’s doing this and who’s doing that.”
“What are we doing?”
“Well, that property is still on the market, the farm by the side of the road that we talked about a couple of months ago. Time to make our offer. Crosbie thinks the whole thing is a brilliant idea, very visionary; even better than that, I discovered he’s been in secret negotiation with an S and L in the western part of the state. I have to hand it to you, Joe. I didn’t understand what Crosbie had to offer, but now I do, and it’s exactly what you said. Lots
of very conservative depositors.”
“I’ve had an account there since junior high.”
“Exactly. I guess this possible merger candidate has a better loan profile but iffier depositors and is dying to get into this part of the state. Anyway, the place is about to get a tremendous infusion of cash. He told me one of the nuggets he had to offer was this new idea. Even though the Salt Key Farm thing wasn’t big to them, our plan for a sewage plant and the minimall and the more modest housing was like a golden apple hanging from the branch. No one else in the state is doing anything like this. You would have to go down to the DC area to find anyone who really understands the possibilities; that’s what they told him. So the merger is waiting on some paperwork, and then there’ll be cash everywhere.”
“What did Gordon have to say?”
“He was pretty dazzled. Crosbie called him, so he called the guy in New York who was going to come and cart away all the good stuff and told him to wait. I think, outside the savings-and-loan and even outside the inner circle over there, we might be the only ones to know what’s in the works, and we’re all pledged to secrecy. The problem is working capital. It’s almost February already. The first of April we’ve got to start on the roads and the pipes—”
“Where did you get the permits?”
“Well, that’s what I was going to call you about. The planning commission out there meets in eleven days—what is that, Tuesday, February eighth?—and I think you have to have your application ready before that meeting. I leave that entirely to you, since I don’t know that side of it at all.”
“What am I applying for?”
“Everything we talked about. Four hundred houses at Salt Key Farm, a golf course, a clubhouse and equestrian facility and bridle paths, the sewage treatment plant, and the minimall and two hundred dwelling units on the new property. I haven’t mentioned the elementary school; I think it’s best to wait on that for at least six months, but obviously we’re going to need permits, and pretty fast, so there you go!” He was grinning enthusiastically.
I thought he was joking. The last planning commission meeting I had been to, in Deacon Township, they had talked for an hour and a half about whether the Washington Market should be allowed to enlarge its sign from four feet by twelve feet to eight feet by sixteen feet and eventually voted it down. They denied the post office another twelve feet of parking space. That took forty-five minutes and the testimony of thirteen citizens of the town. I said, laughing, “And when would you expect to get the zoning approved?”
“Well, an April-one start date would mean approval, at least basic approval, in March. The March meeting is also on the eighth. I think twenty-five days would be time enough after that to get things in order. Gordon built those townhouses in about four months—”
“Which isn’t the same thing at all.”
“Larry built that house in—what, twenty-eight days?”
“Twenty-nine, but that was in the sixties. I’ve seen that house. It was a simple ranch-style house on a slab.” It seemed he wasn’t joking after all. I sat down, the way you always do when you are delivering unexpected bad news. “Look, Marcus. For a project like this, we are going to be going back and forth with them for months, maybe a year. It’s not like we can go in there eleven days from now and come out with permits.”
“You work on it. Don’t be careful unless you have to. See what you can get away with. Dazzle them with the size of the project and the beauty of it. I’ll find some plans somewhere. I’ve got the ones of my house here. I’ve been showing them.”
“Are you crazy? Those are Gottfried Nuelle’s plans, and he isn’t going to be building these houses. It would take him four hundred years to build four hundred houses.”
“Just to give the feel of that house. I never say he is the builder or these are the plans, but just for a sense of what it’s going to be like. Jane thinks we should have a model of the whole thing, 3-D, like they do corporate headquarters and stuff. I don’t suppose you know anyone who does that sort of thing? If you could have that ready by next week?”
He looked so excited and eager and well-dressed and businesslike that I hated to say what I had to say, which was, “I doubt it. Actually, I wish you would come to the board meeting and meet the enemy. It’s not the way you think. These are people with jobs. They don’t get paid much and they do it in their spare time.”
“Maybe I should, but for now I’ve got too much else to do. Potential investors are parading in and out of this office. Jane is bringing some people in on the third to work up this investment idea we have. Out West they do it all the time. It’s called real-estate trust shares.”
“Did you tell Gordon you expected permits in the next two months?”
“Well, his attitude was the same as yours, so I didn’t get into it with him.” He came around the desk and sat down on it. He leaned toward me. “You’re right. We should have gotten started on this in the fall, I admit that, but we didn’t, so we are getting started on it now. Time flies when you’re having fun. That’s okay. Crosbie wasn’t being swallowed up in the fall, that other property wasn’t on the market in the fall, Jane was still married and working in Kansas City in the fall. Everything is fitting together just fine. Don’t worry about it.” He put his hand on my shoulder. “I’m telling you, Joe, we are never going to pay taxes again.”
So I didn’t worry about it. For one thing, he had the big suite, and for another, although there was no way to explain the challenges of the permitting process, one meeting would bring him right back down to earth, and there was no use worrying until he’d been to that one meeting.
I checked on my other Portsmouth property and went back to my office and called the Board of Supervisors for Plymouth Township, and—lo and behold—Vida put me on the agenda for the February eighth meeting, after Marie’s Pink Poodle Dog Boarding Kennel, which wanted to add six more runs; the county itself, which wanted to upgrade the toilet facilities at the state park in the northern corner of the township—“That shouldn’t take long,” said Vida, “they’ll rubber-stamp that one”—and the Darley Corners Garage, which wanted to take out one gasoline storage unit and put in a newer one. “And that isn’t voluntary. Mike Lovell would dearly like it if the township wouldn’t give him a permit. It’s a big job. But they’re gonna stick it to him after all this time. That place is an eyesore. So, you’re up after Mike, Mr. Stratford. I hope the weather holds and the meeting isn’t canceled.” She added that I would need to have a sketch plan for the township engineer and the commissioners themselves a week before the meeting. That would be four days from now.
I sat back in my chair and gazed out the window, thinking how maybe I was the only person in the whole world who could appreciate these two things coming together—the nationwide quality of Marcus Burns’s ideas and the sheer localness of Plymouth Township. As if my mind was being read, the phone rang, and it was Hank Ornquist. He asked me to have lunch with him and, not taking the no I couldn’t quite utter for an answer, said he would be passing my way around lunchtime and would stop by. I should look for him a little after twelve. All I could manage in reply was “Okay.”
After he hung up, I called Felicity, not even thinking that he might still be at home, but sure enough, he answered. The sound of his voice when I had been expecting hers ran up the back of my head like the point of a knife. I said, “Oh, Hank. What time did you say? I was momentarily distracted.”
“Just after twelve.”
“How about more toward twelve-thirty?”
“I’ll be there.”
So I had thoughtlessly done myself out of “mistakenly” missing his visit.
Hank showed up. Why was it so easy for him to show up and so hard for her? I was drawing up my little plan of two phases of the Salt Key Farm project, the golf course and the clubhouse. I had a call in to Gordon’s favorite engineer, who was supposed to get back to me after lunch. On my own I had decided it was best to break our plan to the zoning board gently, one step
at a time. First the golf course and the clubhouse.
There was a knock on the door. I put my sketch plan in the drawer of my desk, and shouted, “Come on in!” Even the fact that he bothered to knock when there was a sign on the door that said WALK IN annoyed me, but I smiled and stood up and held out my hand and said, “Thanks for coming by.”
“Oh, sure.” He pulled out his handkerchief and wiped his nose. He said, “Sorry, we’ve all got colds.”
“Really? That’s too bad. I haven’t had a cold in a year.” I saw that I was going to be involuntarily posting evidence in my own defense throughout the lunch.
“Mind if we get something to eat? I’m starving.”
“There’s a sandwich shop over in the mall.”
I held the door for him and turned the sign to the BACK IN A FEW MINUTES side. He walked out ahead of me. His pants were too short. His hair curled in a lank and unsightly way over the collar of his shirt, and its sleeves were also too short. His feet were very big, as Felicity had said. I couldn’t stop looking at them. I said, “So, there must not be much going on in the—uh, state parks this time of year.”
“Cross-country skiing. Snowmobiling. Snowshoeing. Helicopter rescue.”
I looked at him: deadpan or humorless. Hard to tell. “Yeah?”
“We brought a fellow and his son out last weekend.”
“Were they okay?”
“A little exposure was all. They got caught in that storm Friday night. They didn’t quite have the equipment and supplies they needed.”
We ambled on. I said, “You like that sort of thing?”
“Winter camping?”
“Yeah.”
“Not much anymore. I used to take the boys out, but then I broke my leg one time.” I imagined Felicity catering to a broken leg. We entered the sandwich shop, and he ordered tuna salad and water. I ordered a double roast beef with cheese and extra pickles and a large Coke, a very masculine order I would have said, if I had been entirely honest. I paid.
