Carry Me Home

by John M. Del Vecchio

  Dunmore looked up at Ty, then to Wilcox. “Peter,” he said, “I think I’m going to like this boy.”

  For an hour they talked, hammered out the details. “Then it’s set,” Dunmore finally said. “You put up three thousand, take the property in your name. I’ll put up twenty-seven thousand plus closing costs. In two years we’ll sell it. You get your ten percent plus twenty percent of the appreciation minus my carrying costs and the costs of repairs.” Ty nodded his agreement. “Stay with me, son,” Lloyd Dunmore said. “You get me off the hook on this red-lining charge and I’ll send some people your way. I just have the feeling Tyrolian Finance Corp. is maybe a little undercapitalized.”

  “Maybe a little, Mr. Dunmore.” Ty leaned back, took a pack of Kools from his pocket. “Maybe a little,” Ty repeated, “but it’s moving in the right direction.” He stood. “By the way,” he said, “when do I see the property?”

  “Anytime,” Peter said. “Anytime.”

  Neither Peter Wilcox nor Lloyd Dunmore showed. Instead, as a favor to Peter, Lisa Fonari sat in her Capri convertible before the sprawling nineteenth-century Victorian so far out Miwok Road as to be through the pass between North and South peaks, beyond the fields and pastures and low woodland and back into a tight canyon where redwoods grew from the bottom and Miwok Road—here barely a lane wide—twisted and turned between the trunks. The sun was high and strong, the air still. Lisa had parked in a filtered shaft of light, her face tilted up. Birds chirped. Squirrels scurried. She lounged, glanced at her watch, squinched her mouth, huffed to herself, feeling used, laid back to soak up more sun—waiting, attempting to be patient, growing more and more antsy with each passing second, finally thinking, Screw Wilcox! Let him wait for his own clients. I don’t see why Bobby couldn’t know! She huffed again, gathered herself in, grasped the steering wheel, turned the ignition key, began to leave.

  A late-model Chrysler sauntering up the canyon blocked her retreat. “Hello.” Ty leaned from the window, waved. “Sorry if I’m late. You’re Lisa, aren’t you?”

  She backed up, reparked. He followed her, parked grill-to-grill with her Capri. “You’re Wapinski’s friend, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.” Ty smiled broadly, displayed himself before her, before this lovely woman, he in his finery, his expensive if rented car, his muscular six-one frame. They stood downhill from the Victorian. The stairs and walkway were stone, laid perhaps eighty years earlier, not once repaired in all that time. “So this is it, huh?”

  “That’s it.” Lisa shrugged. “How come you’re using Wilcox,” she asked, brash, forward, “instead of Bob?”

  Ty looked down at her, didn’t answer. “Are you going to take me through?”

  Lisa flipped a hand up the walk. Some stones had separated leaving large gaps; some had slipped one atop another; some had slid sideways out of line. The huge veranda matched the stone entry, corners sagging, boards askew, base so eaten by powder-post beetles that crossing to the door was hazardous.

  “This is it, huh?” Ty repeated.

  “This is it,” Lisa answered again. “She’s got six apartments inside, and the toolshed out back has its own bath and is rented out to a student from College of Marin. How come you’re not using Wapinski?”

  Again Ty eyed her. Then he said, “I don’t think he wanted me to buy anything.”

  Lisa smirked, thought, I wouldn’t sell this place to a friend either; but for once she held her comment.

  “This is a dump,” Ty said. They passed from one room to the next, through makeshift doorways, jerry-rigged halls. The floors tilted as much as those in a fun house, creaked as if splintering under their weight. They climbed the stairs. The banister and balusters were ornate, carved, turned, and built-up, but many of the joints had slipped and even under dozens of layers of paint the gaps were wide. The separate rooms, “apartments,” were without exception messy and filthy. Every tenant was a student or ex-student. Walls had been papered with rock-concert posters or sprayed with fluorescent paint. Windows were covered with sheets or not covered at all. In one room the tenant had half a dozen photos of herself, naked, with half a dozen different partners.

  “What are you going to do with it?” Lisa asked.

  “With what?” Ty was nauseated. The building that he’d just sunk most of his money into was worse than anything he’d seen in Coal Hill, dirtier than most of the refugee hootches he’d seen in Viet Nam. Yet in every apartment he saw expensive items: stereos, radios, cameras, make-up mirrors, lava lamps, leather pants and jackets, musical instruments, bicycles. All the good items were covered with dirt, stained, thrown in heaps with unwashed clothes, sitting on counters with week-, month-old pots and pans and pizza boxes.

  “With this place!” Lisa snapped. “You know the units are illegal. This is single-family zoning out—”

  “I know.”

  “So?”

  “So what?”

  “Do you know what you’ve bought?”

  “I can see.” They moved outside, strode to the toolshed where Ty looked in, gagged, almost fell through the floor where it had rotted out and where the tenant had lifted a covering strip of plywood so as to use the hole as a garbage chute even though the ground was but two feet below and there was no place for the garbage to chute to.

  “Maybe he didn’t show it to you because he didn’t think it was worth it.” Lisa was angry. Her time was being wasted, and she felt her favor was part of an overall sham she hadn’t been told about.

  “Maybe he jus don’t believe in me.” Ty too was angry. He needed to justify himself, needed this woman to know that he knew what he was doing, to know he hadn’t been taken, to know he was on the move, advancing. “Look there,” Ty said indicating nothing particular but gesturing toward the house. “Right now she’s making $720 each month. That’ll carry it. More than carry it. And I’ve got a silent partner. In a year we’ll gut it; restore it. This place is going to be a mansion. It’s going to be worth a quarter million dollars. You watch. You’ll see.”

  Tuesday, 15 June 1971—He had been winning but now was no longer winning. He was anxious. He did not let it show. Instead he joked, continued to work methodically, drew on his every reserve of patience. His last three transactions had fallen apart in escrow. He had not closed a deal since mid-April. There had been no commissions. He had no sales in escrow, no imminent prospects. The market spurt had soured and the entire office staff was in a slump. And now these reports: one more load of shit dumped on his head, one more load to carry through the day.

  Dan Coleman poked his head through the door of the conference room, saw Wapinski with the morning paper, cleared his throat. “Hi.” Wap looked up. “What’s happening?” Coleman said.

  “Hey,” Bobby answered. “Didja hear the one about the landlord with two vices?” Coleman began chuckling even before Wapinski delivered the punch line. “He became the lessor of two evils.”

  Again Coleman laughed. Then he said, “You get to the local yet?”

  “No,” Bobby answered.

  “I’ll wait till you read it.”

  “Read what? There’s all this stuff ...” He paused, turned back to the front page, read the four-line headline aloud. “‘Viet Nam Archives—I: Pentagon Study Traces Three Decades of Growing US Role in Indochina.’ Did you read this?”

  “I only glanced at it. Probably read it later. That’s yesterday’s, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah. Listen to this. ‘A vast study of how the United States went to war in Indochina, conducted by the Pentagon three years ago, demonstrates that four administrations progressively developed a sense of commitment to non-Communist Vietnam, a readiness to fight the North to protect the South and an ultimate frustration with this effort—’”

  “Yeah,” Coleman interrupted him. “Talk about a sense of commitment, have you met Olivia yet?”

  “Who?”

  Coleman patted his hand on the air signaling Wapinski to keep it down. “Olivia,” he whispered. “Twenty-seven. I don’t know w
here Peter finds em. Goddamn, Man, another knockout. Between staring at Sharon and ogling Olivia, I’m never goina get anything done down here.”

  “Well”—Bobby stood—“tell me.” For a minute they stood in the doorway peering into the hall, looking like two shy high-school sophomores hoping to catch a glimpse of the senior cheerleaders, Coleman sighing, offering to help Bobby train Olivia.

  They realized how silly they were being, chuckled at themselves. Coleman said, “Read the part on The Res. Today’s paper. We’ll talk after the meeting.”

  “Good.”

  “Why’s it Tuesday this week, anyway?”

  “Ah, Peter’s got business in Santa Rosa tomorrow.”

  “New office?”

  “Hasn’t told me.” Coleman left. Slyly Bobby gazed forward, hoping to catch a glimpse of the new agent.

  An hour later all of the salespeople were seated about the table in the conference room. They’d completed old business, new business, introductions to Olivia Taft, Peter’s bottom-line talk. “I expect people to deliver, to produce, to keep their commitments. Maybe that’s hard but I’m not doing anybody a favor here by letting you work if you’re not making money. That’s the bottom line....”

  Peter turned the meeting over to Bobby, left for an appointment.

  The salespeople began chatting. Al went to the kitchenette for more coffee; Jane Boswell passed around a tray of homemade tea cakes. Bobby turned, waiting for Al, attempting to let his gaze pass nonchalantly over Olivia. He raised his eyes to Sharon, glanced to the other women, trying to hide that he knew they knew he was ogling the new saleswoman.

  Olivia Taft was beautiful, another beautiful woman in an office blessed with well-dressed, good-looking women. She had all the perfect visual qualities of Sharon, the best of Jane and of Lisa—yet she looked nothing at all like any of them. Her hair was dark, yet her skin was light, almost ashen—winter colors that she accentuated with black eyeliner, crimson lipstick, a white dress with a high-contrast pattern of small navy roses. Her eyes were blue, her earrings, bracelets, sandals silver.

  Bobby’s heart thumped. Somehow, to him, in contrast to his personal life, it did not seem fair. “Respect,” he said quietly. Al Bartecchi poured coffee. “Respect for your clients, for people in general.”

  Lisa clicked her tongue, her eyes flashed to the ceiling. Bobby glanced at her. “Only kidding.” She smiled sheepishly. But she was not kidding and everyone knew it, tolerating her as she tolerated Bobby’s pontifications.

  “There are three sayings that irritate me in this business and I’m going to ask you to refrain from using them in this office.”

  “Is this from Hal and Sal?” Liza Caldicott interrupted.

  “No.” Bobby was terse. “It’s from me.”

  “Then we don’t ...” Liza began.

  “They’re not orders,” Bobby said.

  “Then ...” Liza began again.

  “Perhaps we should listen first,” Olivia said firmly. Her tone was sweet but she did not smile either with her mouth or her eyes.

  “So say it.” Liza fell against the back of her chair, crossed her arms.

  “‘Buyers are liars; sellers are story tellers.’” Bobby delivered the real estate salesman’s axiom. “Don’t say it. Don’t think it. It separates you from your clients. And ‘Lookie-loos,’ as a label for potential purchasers, ‘nosy neighbors’ or not ... that’s a slur. The one I dislike most—please, do not refer to a property owner who’s attempting to market his own property as a ‘Friz-bo.’ Do you know the general public rates real estate agents next to used car salesmen? That disrespect and distrust may simply be a reaction to the disrespect the average agent shows the general public. Let’s not do it.”

  Without further discussion, without comment, the meeting broke. Only Dan Coleman remained. With his notes he had Tuesday’s paper. “You read it yet?”

  “The Pentagon ...”

  “The local. Today’s. Look here. Eight hundred and seventy-six units.”

  “Eight hundred? Whoa!”

  “Up at The Res. It’s already approved. Last night. Some developer from San Diego. God those fuckin idiots want to fuck up northern California just like they’ve done down there.”

  “Eight hundred!” Bobby repeated. He took the paper from Dan, laid it open on the conference table. There was a schematic of proposed streets, lots and improvements.

  “Eight seventy-six,” Coleman reiterated. “All single family but clustered. Eights, tens, and twelves mostly. It’s a great plan. But great or not, it’s going to ruin The Res. They’re goina take the entire north side half a mile up the upper creek.”

  “Hm. Extending Aaron Road ... Fuck up the fishin, huh?”

  “Fuck up a lot more than that. You said something about this last year. I ... geez! I really didn’t think it’d happen. And I don’t think they’ve projected out the figures.”

  “Who’s doin ... MacMulqueen Corp.”

  “Not the developer,” Dan said. “The town. Figure it out. Nine hundred houses, four people per, thirty-six hundred people, eighteen hundred kids, eighteen hundred more cars. We’ll need a new elementary school. They’ll have to add more lights down The Strip, maybe widen it. Probably widen Aaron Road. Maybe need a new fire station. A few more cops. Cry’n out loud, Man. I grew up here! You didn’t know the town ... You know my mother’s house on Third? When I was five I used to walk from there across Miwok. You take your life in your hands now. There used to be fields ... filled, I mean filled, with jack rabbits and snakes. You name it. The creek down here used to have fish, turtles, muskrats. We used to catch the biggest snapping turtles ... Geez! In the spring these old snappers would come out, come all the way up to lay their eggs. Even they’d cross Miwok....”

  “You show this to Peter?”

  “He knows.”

  “What’d he say?”

  “What’s he always say? ‘People’ve got to live someplace.’”

  “And, ‘And life goes on.’ Right?” Bobby said. Dan clammed up, glanced at Bobby, then away. “Right?” Bobby repeated.

  “I grew up here,” Dan muttered. “It’s becoming a goddamn city. That’s the last ... aw, fuck it.” Dan walked out.

  Bobby didn’t go after him. Instead he reread the article, noted on his pad the names of the MacMulqueen attorneys and executives. He closed the paper, stared at the front-page headline:

  No One Really Foresaw

  Pentagon Papers—II

  ... The Phase I deployment of American troops, which was now (Nov ’65) nearing its 175,000-man goal, had apparently stopped deterioration in the military situation.

  But at the same time, the narrative relates, the enemy had unexpectedly built up ... 48,550 Communist combat troops in South Vietnam in July 1965 ... by ... November ... 63,550....

  The Pentagon study says that the carefully calculated American strategy, with its plan for the number of American troops required to win, did not take escalatory reactions into account.

  One more article to cut and store and read when work wasn’t so pressing and Red wasn’t so ... He didn’t finish the thought but flipped the paper over to fold it and give it back to Dan. On the back was a full-page ad for women’s stockings—a fly-away skirt, one fantastic set of legs, surrounding print. Immediately Stacy Carter flashed to his mind. He folded the sections, folded the paper again, huffed, looked down at the date. Only now did he realize it was his anniversary, two years from the day he returned to Mill Creek Falls, to Miriam, to Stacy’s “I want you to meet my fiancé.”

  Wapinski put a hand to his forehead. He did not want to think back to all that shit. He did not want even to think back to last night, back to his breaking down, his caressing Red’s shoulders in bed, her immediate tensing at his touch, her silent rigidness as he rolled away.

  All day people came and went. All day he was vague, preoccupied. At six thirty Olivia brought him a young couple who’d been sent to her by a friend of her mother’s. “Mr. and Mrs. Klemenchi
ch ...” (Olivia, Bobby thought. He liked the way the word felt in his mouth.), “this is Mr. Wapinski, our office manager.”

  “Bob,” Bobby said. “Please call me Bob. And I’m just the assistant manager.”

  “I’m Rod and this is my wife, Estelle.” Rod was big, burly with a full beard and thick uncombed hair. Estelle was dressed in a nurse’s uniform, white shoes, stockings, jumper. They exchanged handshakes, pleasantries. Bobby looked to Olivia for an introduction to their housing needs, but none came. Rod wasted no time. “I’ll get right to the point,” he said. He whipped out a five-by-eight-inch green sheet of paper. “Is this worth squat?”

  Bobby glanced at the VA Certificate of Eligibility, noted the issue date—Nov. 28, 1970: the Branch of Service—Army: the Entitlement—PL 358. He nodded, thought to ask Rod about his service, tell him he too was a vet, but he let the urge pass. “With a quarter,” Bobby said, “it’ll get ya a cup of coffee.”

  “See!” Rod blurted at Estelle.

  “Well, at least we tried,” she shot back quietly.

  Rod began to rise.

  “Wait a minute,” Bobby said. Rod paused halfway up. “You want to buy a house?”

  Estelle was firm. “Yes.”

  “Down payment?” Bobby said.

  “Squat.” Rod collapsed back into the seat, humiliated, angry, looking away from the other three.

  “That’s why we thought we could buy through the veterans’ program. My sister and her husband bought a veteran home in Texas last year and I had a patient who said he bought one in San Leandro....”

  “They’re more common in the East Bay,” Bobby said. “But they’re pretty hard here. North Bay sellers just aren’t accustomed to paying points and putting up with the delays and restrictions. But there’s other ways.”

  “I don’t want to live in a dump.” Rod turned, challenging, looking as if he were about to punch out the fat blond boy in the suit across from him.

  Bobby smiled. “I’m not talking a dump. What do you do?”

  “Duct work.”