by Rachel Kane
The problem with knowing a guy since you first entered kindergarten together is, you really can’t keep a secret forever, even if it’s a dull, boring secret, a little bit humiliating. “It sucked, okay? The chemistry wasn’t there. Everything was…wrong. I could smell his aftershave from across the table. He kept making sex jokes. When the waitress brought out the breadsticks, he picked one up and said, Girthy but a little short, just like I like them. He was just so obvious, you know?”
“You’d rather a guy keep you guessing whether he likes you or not? I don’t know how you manage to be that desperate and that picky at the same time.”
Finally, the cables were ready to snake down the wall, and he ducked his head out of the ceiling and put the tile back into place. As Mason stepped down from the ladder, he gave it some thought.
Am I too picky?
The guy last night had clearly been interested. Was clearly ready to go as far as Mason wanted to. And yet that lack of a click between them had left Mason with blue-balls as bad as if he’d been the one turned down. He’d gone to bed with a unsatisfied hard-on, bringing himself to the most sullen climax of all time. Not that he’d tell Alex that part.
“I’ll survive,” he said. “We can’t all be bed-hopping, glory-hole-visiting, app-tapping—”
“Ahem, I feel like you’re about to make a personal remark about me,” said Alex.
“Oh, come on, you know what I mean. You enjoy those kind of relationships. I don’t. I like…”
“Yes? Yes?”
Finally he shrugged. “I don’t know what I like. Not that.”
“It all becomes clear,” said Alex. “You only like guys who you’re not sure like you back, and that won’t have sex with you. No, no, that makes perfect sense. If you’re straight.”
The ladder made an awful metallic squeal as Mason pushed it to the wall, and Alex winced at the sound. He climbed back up to affix the cable-cover over the twisted wires now dangling from their proper place in the ceiling.
“Well, if you’re not going to satisfy my need for tasty gossip, then I won’t tell you my little bit of news.”
“If it involves the aforementioned glory hole—”
“Jesus, Mason, I’m not some pent-up suburban dad. No, this is an entirely different kind of news. Janice from the law office was in here earlier, and she said someone’s coming to look at Cooper’s Folly.”
“Oh hell!” Mason said. “Who is crazy enough to take on that place?”
“She said it was family.”
“Family? Crazy old Silas Cooper had family? I thought he poisoned them all and buried them in the basement.” The cable-cover snapped into place, click-click, neatening the appearance, and now he knelt to wire the cables into the outlet by the floor. A moment’s worry that his shirt had pulled up in the back as well, and Alex would make a joke about plumber’s ass. But no, Alex was too wrapped up in his news to notice.
He leaned against the counter. “You know that’s just a story kids used to tell to frighten each other.”
“I still remember going there that one Halloween and getting the hell scared out of me by that owl.”
“No such thing as ghosts, Mason.”
“No, but there’s such a thing as electrical wiring that hasn’t been updated to code, plumbing that hasn’t been maintained in decades, and who knows what else. I wouldn’t step foot in there without a tetanus booster.”
“I just hope it’s someone interesting,” said Alex, a note of longing in his voice. “What I wouldn’t give to have someone new in town. Even if they are crazy. Hell, maybe crazy would be an improvement.”
While his screwdriver twisted, Mason gave that some thought. Who would take over a place like Cooper’s Folly? The woods had practically taken it back over by this point; maybe it would make more sense to let nature take its course, crumble those walls to dust. The place hadn’t served any purpose other than to scare neighborhood kids for decades.
Of course, he knew the type to take over a property like that. Developers. People who didn’t care about Superbia itself, just the profit they could make off it. Hiring their cheap outside contractors instead of local guys like Mason. As far as Mason was concerned, out-of-town businessmen could stay far, far away from here. What Superbia lacked in privacy, it made up for in being a family, a tightly knit little world all unto itself. Why mess that up by trying to make it grow? They were doing just fine without outsiders coming in.
“All right,” he said, standing up, his tool-belt jingling. “Plug in your stuff, let’s see how it works.”
“Ah, the moment of truth!” said Alex. He connected a CAT5 cable from the cash register to the wall outlet, then another from his computer to the next jack, then the phone to the third, smaller jack. “And…and…voila!”
“You’re connecting?”
Alex pointed at his computer screen. “I’m online! Mason, you’re a genius!”
“It’s just cables.”
“Don’t sell yourself short! This is fantastic! I’m finally part of the modern world!”
Mason looked around the bookstore. Its old fixtures, creaky ladder, and hand-painted signs in the windows suggested something other than the modern world. Something kinder, something that moved at a more gentle pace. “Don’t be too eager,” he said ruefully. “It’s a harsh world out there.”
“Oh, you did have a bad night. Look, send me an invoice for the work, okay? And don’t skimp this time. I’m doing fine, I can pay the full price.”
Not a single customer had entered the store while I’d been there. “Are you sure?”
Alex scowled. “I said what I said, Mason. Send me the bill.”
He set his tool-belt and case on the passenger seat of the truck, and started up the engine. The old thing roared to life, then quieted down to a soft putter. One of these days he was going to have to buy something to replace it, and that was going to be a sad day. He wasn’t the kind of guy who would name a truck—that was going a little too far—but he’d been rattling around in this thing since he’d bought it back in high school, and it was a faithful companion by this point.
Without another job on the books this afternoon, he took a drive down Route Four, a little ways out of town proper. Soon enough he could see the tangled mess of trees, shrubs and weeds that bordered the old Cooper property.
Who was crazy enough to take that place? It bothered him, the idea that such a public landmark (or eyesore, if you listened to one of the Mulgrew’s speeches to the town council on behalf of the Superbia Beautification League) might fall into the wrong hands. It was one thing if those old walls fell on their own accord; quite another if bulldozers came in to put in a new dollar store or a cheap motel.
He spotted Mr. Edwards’ Cadillac out by the gate. The gate was open, but nobody was standing there. Maybe Mr. Edwards was showing the property off right now to some salivating buyer. Or, just as bad, some Cooper family member from far, far away, who would look at the house and see its ‘potential’—by which that long-lost cousin or niece or nephew would mean a vast parking lot, or department store, or expensive housing development, cashing in on the land without worrying about what was best for Superbia.
You have got to get laid, and quickly, he told himself. You’re taking everything way too personally. It’s not your land, it’s not your house, so what do you care who buys it? You’re always wishing people in town would mind their own business when it comes to you, stop asking when you’re going to settle down, or whether you’ve met anyone ‘nice’—so why not practice what you preach and keep your attention on yourself?
It was true. It had been so long since his last relationship, that sometimes he felt like his skin was paper-thin, no protection from all the nerve-endings that called out for stimulation. Like he was walking around with a hard-on at all hours of the day, desperate for something, anything to touch him.
You tell yourself, I just need a little time off from relationships.
You say, I need a little space.
Then suddenly it has been a year, and your body is constantly on fire, and you can’t stand it, but everyone around you is either someone you’ve known your whole life, or a stranger you can’t trust, and who does that leave you with?
He shook his head. There was no point in even thinking about it. He’d work out his loneliness the way he always did, with his hand, with his eyes closed, imagining The One, whoever that was, a shadowy figure whose face he could never quite see in these fantasies.
When he was at a wide enough spot in the road, he turned the truck around, and headed back towards town.
3
Liam
Overwhelmed wasn’t the word for it. Liam suddenly knew how the Wicked Witch of the East felt, when a house dropped on top of her. Except in his case, it was the biggest house he’d ever seen. His eyes couldn’t take it all in at one time. There was so much to see.
When Mr. Edwards had pushed the front doors open, Liam hadn’t known what to expect. Ceiling caved in? Walls crumbled into piles of rubbles as though a bomb had hit? A flock of birds bursting out? (Or maybe a thousand bats?)
Yet for all the chaos on the outside of the house, for all the crazed overgrowth, the inside was practically pristine.
He walked in with a soft step, afraid to make a single sound that might disturb the long silence that had been the sole resident of the interior of the house.
The windows, for the most part, had been papered over, yet enough of that paper had curled over the years, to let random beams of sunlight in. There was enough light to see, and in those beams danced a thousand motes of dust. This entrance hall lead to a grand staircase, which climbed upwards towards an immense stained glass window.
“I’m told that in the late afternoon, the sun catches that window, and you can see the design better,” said Mr. Edwards. But even now, Liam could see the intricate picture, a grassy hill with a spring of water jetting up, like a deep blue geyser, the whole thing set against a dark crimson background. It must be glorious when the full light poured through it.
“I can’t believe how…how beautiful it all is,” Liam said. Beneath his feet, the floor was a checkerboard of white and black marble; the dust was thick underfoot, but the pattern continued out to the borders of the room.
“I believe the architectural style is called Richardsonian Romanesque. Meant to be imposing, classical, calling back to ages past.”
“How is it that nobody lives here?”
“Who could?” asked Mr. Edwards. “Your great-uncle was adamant that no one should own it but family…and your father was adamant that he didn’t want it.”
Liam ran his finger over the banister of the stairs, the thick wood that must once have gleamed with polish. “I can’t take it, even if it’s willed to me,” he said. “This is too much. I mean, a mansion? I’m not a mansion guy, Mr. Edwards.”
“Of course,” the lawyer conceded, maybe a little too quickly, as though assured that Liam could never deserve a place so grand. “I’d assumed all along you would probably want to put it on the market. With some minor updating, it could be ready to convert into a resort, or a holiday home for someone of…greater means.”
I knew I should’ve worn a suit, thought Liam. When he’d seen what the temperature was going to be like, even in March, he’d stuck with casual clothes, short sleeves and the semi-skinny khakis that were as comfortable as his own skin. But he definitely didn’t look like Mansion Guy.
“What could you get for a place like this?” he wondered, half to himself.
The money, no matter how much, would be an extraordinary gift. As a single dad, he was constantly amazed by the new expenses that seemed to crop up every day. Babies keep growing, and they have this incessant need for food, and clothes, and college funds… Yes. Selling this place would definitely help with all that. He could finally utter a sigh of relief like he hadn’t been able to do since Richard—
Since Richard—
“Shall I show you around?” asked Mr. Edwards. “It’s a sight.”
“Please do,” Liam said, anxious for any interruption in his thoughts.
There were bedrooms galore, each of them entirely furnished in turn-of-the-century (well, last century) style. Dust cloths covered everything; it was like being surrounded by tall, wide ghosts. “The bathrooms are probably the most urgent need as far as modernization,” suggested Mr. Edwards, showing him the complex old pipes leading to one of the surprisingly few bathrooms upstairs. When Liam turned on a spigot, the pipes rattled and coughed, and the whole room seemed to tremble, and he had the sudden feeling that he was dealing with an old patient on the death-bed, until finally the pipes gave up a thin trickle of rusty orange water.
“Um,” he said.
“Yes,” said Mr. Edwards. “Don’t drink that, please.”
Downstairs was the ballroom (the ballroom!), as well as a long hall for dining, furnished with an enormous fireplace (”Not that it received much use, I imagine,” said Mr. Edwards), galleries that stood empty of pictures, just darker spots on the ornate wallpaper where they had hung, and a kitchen as gargantuan as it was outdated (”No no,” said Mr. Edwards when Liam had started to turn on the old stove. “Gas, you know, hasn’t been hooked up in years”).
“I can’t get my head around it,” said Liam, as they emerged into the entrance hall again. “My family was rich enough to afford all this? Where did the money go? I mean, not to get too personal, but it didn’t make it to my generation. Or my dad’s.”
The way Mr. Edwards pressed his lips together, signaled he was entering the topic of family drama again, where great care was needed before proceeding.
“Well. They call it Cooper’s Folly for a reason, I’m afraid. You know, your family made a tremendous amount of money from the springs, but when they dried up—”
“The springs?”
Edwards looked at him curiously. “Have you really never heard— I’m sorry, it’s just such a surprise. Everyone in town has known about Superbia Springs since the cradle. Let’s walk outside, shall we? Hopefully the walk down is not too overgrown.”
“There was a time,” said the lawyer, “when hot springs were all the rage for their health benefits. And our spring had the advantage of being rich in minerals as well. When Silas Cooper—Silas Senior, you understand, your great-great-uncle—first moved here all these years ago, he had plans to become an industrialist, to convert the fields to cotton and open a mill. Some say he was a fool with no head for business. I don’t know if I would go that far, but certainly the boll weevil’s decimation of the cotton crops meant his dreams of a mill weren’t coming true here. And then he discovered the spring.”
Out back, Liam could tell there had once been an extensive garden. Nature had long since encroached on its cultivation, but there were still curved stone paths, cracked statuary and dried fountains that gave an impression of what it must have looked like. When they exited the gardens, there was a further path, a road, really, well-paved in cobblestones interrupted only by sharp spikes of grass, leading to a long building down the gentle slope.
“He knew at once what he had. The water was pleasantly hot, and its flavor was delicious. Some of the springs, you know, smell of sulfur, terrible, terrible. But not ours. The spring had formed a pool that steamed in the mornings, and the story goes that Silas immediately stripped down and leapt into the water, basking in the warmth for the whole day. They say he felt so invigorated, that all his canceled factory plans meant nothing to him. He took out enormous loans, and began to build.”
Another rusted lock, another creaking door, and then they were inside the low, dark building. Not enough windows here, or maybe they were just visiting at the wrong time of day, but the place was too shadowed to see properly. Liam pulled out his phone, and switched on the flashlight feature.
What he saw then took his breath away.
Even Mr. Edwards was moved to gasp; the older man reached out to steady Liam’s hand, casting the light on the mosaic on the walls.
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Mermaids, dolphins, Triton, what seemed to be a thousand figures made of tiny tiles. Everywhere he shined the light, new features would appear, boats and grapevines, suns and moons. It would have been easy to miss the brass pipes and massive tubs, just staring at the walls instead, except that you couldn’t move further into the room without encountering these fixtures.
“All of it connects to the spring,” said Mr. Edwards. “There were pools for soaking, there were tubs for mud baths, tubs for mineral baths, rooms for steaming. You have to understand, this put Superbia on the map. They had to build a train station here to accommodate the travelers. Silas Cooper, Senior, lived the life of an influential, wealthy man. Hollywood stars, diplomats, even a president or two came to visit and luxuriate in the baths.”
“So…what happened?” Liam asked. His footsteps echoed off the tiles, as he looked into one of the empty tubs. It was big enough for two people to sit comfortably side by side.
“Geology happened. The spring stopped. Silas Junior had never been the businessman his father was, and with no mineral waters to offer, the money quickly dried up. He was left with a vast property he couldn’t maintain. They say he withdrew from the world, and mourned for his one brief moment of glory.”
I know all about mourning, Liam thought.
They emerged into the sunlight once again. “So there you have it. All of this is yours, if you will simply sign the papers.”
Liam’s mouth hung open, looking from the baths to the big house and back. This was such a great distance from his everyday life, it made no sense. Real life was having a phone headset on, talking to customers while you carried Rooney in one arm, coffee in the other hand, bleary-eyed and trying to focus. Real life was pediatrician visits and car repairs, and the relief when your friends would come over and you could finally relax.
