Heaven Adjacent

by Catherine Ryan Hyde

  Then she sat down across the desk from the Rhinestone Realtor and stared at her until she finished her phone call.

  It sounded as though she were talking to one of her kids. Or maybe a babysitter. Terse orders ensued.

  “I have to go now,” the Rhinestone Realtor said into the phone. “I’ll call you back.” Then she turned her eyes up to Roseanna, snapped down the receiver. “Good morning! How can I help you?”

  What is it with perkiness in this town? Roseanna thought but did not say.

  She pulled the folded flyer out of her jacket pocket, opened out the folds, smoothed out the creases, and slid it onto the woman’s desk.

  “This property,” she said. “This very special property.”

  “Yes, it really is. You want to see it?”

  “I want to buy it,” Roseanna said.

  “But first you want to see it.”

  “No. I’ve seen it. Now I want to buy it.”

  “You couldn’t have seen the inside of the house.”

  “Not entirely true. It has windows. Clear glass. So what I’d like you to do now is call up the owner, or whoever is selling it, and put in my offer.”

  Silence. The real estate lady stared at the flyer. Roseanna sipped her coffee. It was dreadful. Full-on, make-a-face dreadful.

  “Before you make an offer, though,” Rhinestone said, “there are some . . . factors . . . regarding the . . . condition of the place. And you’ll want to know them, because then you can take them into account when deciding on the dollar figure of your offer.”

  Roseanna took another sip of coffee, because she had been distracted by the conversation and had forgotten it was dreadful. She made another face.

  “I know how much I want to offer,” she said. “I want to offer to pay the full asking price.”

  “What I’m trying to . . . tactfully say here . . . is . . . while it’s a lovely property with terrific potential, it’s a little bit of a fixer-upper.”

  “So I noticed. Now why not go ahead and make that call?”

  “What call?”

  “The one I suggested earlier. Where you call the owner of the property and tell him—or her—that you have a buyer who’s just offered the full asking price.”

  Another long silence, during which Roseanna did not sip her coffee. This time she remembered.

  “Tell you what,” the Rhinestone Realtor said. “I’m free right now. We’ll drive out there. I’ll show you around the place. And then if you still want me to make that call, I’ll be more than happy to do it.”

  “Whatever,” Roseanna said. “It’s not going to change anything. But it’s your time and your gas.”

  “I think you’ll be pleased with the permitting process in this county,” the Rhinestone Realtor said on the drive. “It’s not grotesquely expensive to get a permit, as localities go, and you won’t grow old and gray waiting for one to come through.”

  But I’m already gray, Roseanna thought. You just don’t know it because my colorist is a genius. But people would know soon. That was second on the list for her new life, after putting on weight. Letting her hair revert to its natural gray.

  Rhinestone drove one of those massive SUVs that put its passengers many feet up above the road. Roseanna found it to be a weird sensation, looking down onto the roofs of cars like her own. Normal-sized vehicles.

  “What do I need a permit for?” she asked.

  She sipped at her coffee, and it was heavenly. They had stopped at a drive-through coffee place on their way out of town, at Roseanna’s firm request.

  “Well, you know . . .”

  “Actually, not so much. Hence the question.”

  “Building permits.”

  “What do you think I want to build?”

  “I figured . . . a house?”

  “It has a house.”

  “Um. Yes. But not much of one. And it’s not in very good condition. I mean, it’s sturdy enough. But it’s . . . old. And it doesn’t have much in the way of creature comforts. I just assumed that anyone who wanted that place would want it for the land. It’s a beautiful location. People buy properties like that one and tear the buildings to the ground and build their dream home. I just assumed . . .”

  Roseanna watched dense stands of evergreens rush by outside her window. She kept her eyes on them as she spoke.

  “All my life I’ve been pretty good at defying assumptions. And now I’m about to get even better at it than I’ve ever been before.”

  “So you’re looking for . . .”

  “Heaven.” It was unlike Roseanna to say such a thing, and she knew it. She heard it. Still, that’s what she said.

  “Heaven?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s a tall order.” The statement was accompanied by a nervous laugh.

  “Maybe not literally heaven. But something close. Something that will do for heaven until the real thing comes along. I still want to keep both feet in this world. I’m not ready to move on just yet. But I want to get as close to paradise as I can get while I’m still here on the planet. If that makes sense.”

  She glanced over at the Rhinestone Realtor. Watched frown lines crease into the woman’s forehead.

  “I’m not sure. What exactly does this heaven look like to you?”

  “My thoughts on that are evolving as we speak,” Roseanna said. “Up until yesterday morning I lived in a condo overlooking Central Park. And most people would consider that heaven. And maybe at the time I did. But it’s in the city. And everything is so complicated. Everywhere you want to go, it’s always so hard to get there. And the air is barely breathable. And it’s dirty. And there are all these fees and expenses involved with living there. Not that I couldn’t afford it. But I had to work hard to afford it. I don’t know anymore how I lived in the city. It’s strange—I left yesterday morning, and now I look back and I don’t know how I lived there. Now I think heaven is more like . . . like just what you need to live a decent life. I looked in the windows of that house yesterday, and I saw just the minimum a person needs to be okay. Heat. A bed. Food storage. Something to cook food on. It does have a bathroom. Right? I didn’t see a bathroom. It’s not an outhouse situation, is it?”

  “It was. Until about twenty years ago. And then the owner had a bathroom added on to the back of the house. Off the bedroom.”

  “See?” Roseanna said. “Heaven. And I don’t need to work just to be able to afford to live there. With the amount of money I’ve accumulated in various holdings, I can buy the place outright and live there comfortably the rest of my life. Never have to get along with coworkers. Never have to drive in traffic. There’s only one problem. The other thing I need . . . the other answer about what heaven looks like to me . . . it has to do with solitude. I’ve had it with people. I like that place because it’s miles from everything. And everyone. I want to be there by myself. I want to be in the world by myself. In silence. And peace. Now that would be heavenly.”

  “That shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “But there seems to be somebody living in that little guesthouse-type shack out behind the barn. That’s why I mentioned it.”

  “Oh, no,” Rhinestone said. “That’s impossible.”

  “Impossible things happen every day. This one seems to be happening in spite of your thoughts on its impossibility.”

  “I’m sure you’re wrong.”

  “I don’t think I am. And if I’m right, I’ll need that fixed. Straightaway.”

  “Oh, that would be very easy to fix, if it’s true. I’m friends with the locksmith in these parts. I’d have him come over and change the locks. Today if need be. Problem solved.”

  They drove in silence for a time. Roseanna was feeling a sense of peace dawning. Things seemed to be working out just the way she had dreamed they might. Though, granted, it was a dream she had not been dreaming long.

  “Pardon me,” Rhinestone Realtor said, startling her out of her thoughts. “But I forgot to ask your name.”

  “
Rosie,” Roseanna said.

  “So, here’s the thing,” Roseanna said as they tracked their way around mud puddles on the way to the guest shack. “I still want to offer full price. Even after walking around inside the house. But I want something in return. And it’s not much to ask of the seller under the circumstances, so . . .”

  She trailed off because she realized she had no idea whether Rhinestones was even absorbing her words. She didn’t appear to be listening. She seemed completely obsessed with proving that no one could be living in this shack, and a bit disturbed as they grew closer to it—now that the visual evidence was stacking up against her.

  “Hmm,” the agent said, and tried the door of the tiny place.

  It swung wide.

  Inside Roseanna saw two twin beds made up with ridiculous stacks of blankets. A small electric heater. A bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling. A hot plate, and one of those half refrigerators you see in motor homes.

  “I see how you could think someone is here,” Rhinestone said. “But I still don’t think so. I think they left in a hurry after the owner died.”

  “Flowers are still in good shape out front,” Roseanna said.

  “Lately we’ve had nature to water the flowers.”

  “Nature doesn’t weed, though.”

  Rhinestones seemed to ignore her logic. “Now what were you saying a minute ago? About something you wanted in return for your offer?”

  It took Roseanna a moment to answer. Because she was straining her ears to listen. There was a humming sound, and she was trying to decide if it was coming from the minifridge. It seemed that it was.

  “I want to move in right away,” she said.

  “We can arrange a short escrow. Thirty days, say?”

  “Fine. We’ll do a thirty-day escrow. But I want thirty days’ free rent while we’re waiting for it to close.”

  A silence fell, except for the humming.

  “Well . . . you’d have to get the utilities on.”

  “I think the utilities are on,” Roseanna said.

  “Oh, no. That’s impossible.”

  “There you go again with your impossibilities.”

  Roseanna moved two steps into the middle of the room and pulled the cord on the hanging light bulb. The bulb sprang to light.

  She walked another two steps and opened the minifridge. Inside she saw a partial package of hot dogs, a carton of milk, and an open box of baking soda. She lifted out the milk, unfolded the top of the carton, and sniffed. As she had suspected, it smelled fine.

  She carried it over to the Rhinestone Realtor, who recoiled at the idea of sniffing it.

  “Trust me,” Roseanna said. “This won’t hurt a bit.”

  The woman took a reluctant sniff. Then her face darkened.

  “We’ll fix this,” she said. “Right away. Right now. Today.”

  “You can’t exactly change the lock.”

  “Why can’t I?”

  “Because there isn’t one. Didn’t you notice?”

  They both turned to look at the door. There was a chain lock on the inside. But nothing that would lock it from outside.

  “Well, no matter,” Rhinestone said, clearly perturbed now. “I’ll call the locksmith and have him put a hasp and padlock on the door. And I mean in the next few minutes.”

  “That seems harsh.”

  Roseanna walked around the place as she spoke, but there wasn’t much exercise involved. Two or three steps in any direction took her across the room.

  In one corner she noticed a dowel suspended horizontally from the ceiling with a few clothes hung on it. More than half were tiny. Barely bigger than toddler sized. And there was a well-worn teddy bear on one of the beds, all but its head covered by the mountain of blankets.

  “Okay, now I’m confused,” Rhinestones said. “You told me you wanted anybody who might be living here to be put out.”

  “Oh, I do. Definitely. But when you send someone packing, there’s packing involved. As in, you let them take their belongings.”

  “If this person wants their belongings back they can show up at my realty office and explain what they’ve been doing living on this property without permission. The very idea . . .”

  “I guess that’s between you and them,” Roseanna said.

  She moved quickly to the door. Then she stopped. Turned back. Looked around the room again, realizing what was missing.

  “It has no bathroom,” she said.

  “I don’t think it was ever intended for human habitation.”

  “Right. Probably not. But it’s being inhabited all the same. Is that outhouse still around after twenty years?”

  “Oh, goodness, no. That was torn down immediately when the bathroom was added.”

  “Hmm.” She looked around for another few seconds, as if expecting the missing bathroom to appear. “How do decent people live in a place with no toilet?”

  “Who says they’re decent people?”

  “How does anybody?”

  “I’m sure I wouldn’t know,” Rhinestone said. With a bit of a self-righteous shudder.

  Chapter Six

  What Would Your Dead Best Friend Say?

  She knew it was Nita’s car immediately. Even in the dark.

  She looked up, saw the headlights coming toward her, and knew. She had never seen Nita’s car before—hadn’t even been sure Nita owned one, in fact. Lots of people in the city didn’t. So it must have been some “other” kind of knowing.

  Then again, Roseanna thought, before you get too chuffed about your own psychic abilities, bear in mind that this diner is closed. And not many people have a reason to pull into the parking lot.

  It was a Jaguar, Roseanna noted as Nita pulled up under a light post and parked. A golden-colored Jaguar.

  Roseanna stepped out. Smiled.

  Nita stepped out. Did not smile. In fact, she did not look at Roseanna at all. She just moved around to the trunk of the Jag, opened it, and began to haul out heavy-looking suitcases that Roseanna recognized as her own.

  Roseanna stood quietly, watching Nita’s breath puff out in clouds, rising up toward the light source on the pole above her head. Still no words had been spoken.

  It dawned as a tingling in Roseanna’s gut—and grew into an uncomfortable ball of tension—to see her former secretary too angry even to glance at her face.

  “So I guess I was paying you too much money,” Roseanna said, hoping to lighten the mood. It didn’t seem to work. “I wasn’t even sure if you had a car.”

  Nita’s hands stopped moving. She raised her gaze to Roseanna’s face. Roseanna knew in that instant that she had been better off before, when Nita had refused to look at her.

  “I don’t have a car,” she said simply.

  “You stole this?” Another attempt at humor that fell embarrassingly flat.

  “It’s Jerry’s. It’s new.”

  A stronger tingle to Roseanna’s gut.

  “He’s not hiding in the trunk waiting to drag me back, is he?”

  Nita slammed the trunk lid. Hard. Without comment.

  “Guess not, then. Why would Jerry loan you his car so you could bring me a bunch of my things? So I can stay away. That seems unlike him.”

  “I didn’t tell him that part. Just that I was meeting you and we were going to talk. I think he figured I would talk you into coming home.”

  “Got it,” Roseanna said.

  She stood still in the cold night, in a rare break in the rain, watching Nita begin to transfer the suitcases to Roseanna’s Maserati. She knew in some vague and distant way that she should help. But it was so natural to let the people who worked for her do all the heavy lifting. Literally as well as figuratively.

  Besides, she felt frozen. Rooted to the spot.

  It struck her that she was experiencing the first moment in which she fully absorbed the gravity of this life change. The weight of it. The sheer scope. The implications. And she hadn’t seen all that coming, either.

  “I gue
ss it seems weird,” she said, as Nita began to load up the back seat of Roseanna’s car. “You worked for me for eleven years and I didn’t know if you had a car or not.”

  Nita finished the transfer of suitcases without answering.

  Then she walked up to where Roseanna stood in the dark parking lot. Stood strangely close. It would almost have felt threatening if Nita had not been barely five feet tall. Her wildly curly hair had deteriorated to a full-on frizz in the humid night. Roseanna watched the wet clouds of their breath intermingle.

  “You’re saying things in the past tense,” Nita said, her elf-like voice a painfully familiar reminder that nothing in Roseanna’s new world came with any history attached.

  “I guess I am.”

  “You’re not coming back. Are you?”

  “No. I’m not.”

  Nita turned on her heel and walked back toward Jerry’s Jaguar.

  “Hey, wait. Nita. Don’t go like that.”

  Nita paused and glanced over her shoulder. “How should I go?”

  “You shouldn’t. Yet. You should stay and we should have a talk.” Roseanna took a few steps to close the distance between them. “That’s why I picked this diner,” she said, indicating it with a hooked thumb thrown back over her shoulder. “I didn’t know it would be closed. I thought we’d sit down where it was warm and light and have a good talk. And something to eat.”

  I should have known it would be closed, she thought. She remembered Rosie the waitress saying, “We make a decent breakfast and lunch.” Certainly she hadn’t meant that they served dinner, but only breakfast and lunch were good.

  “Here?” Nita asked, her voice dripping with judgment.

  Roseanna knew she shouldn’t be surprised by Nita’s reaction. It was the same attitude she would have had herself a couple of days earlier.

  “Yeah. Here. Okay, I get it, we’re spoiled by great New York restaurants. But I ate here yesterday morning. Yesterday? Yeah. I think it was just yesterday, but that seems strange. Feels like a year ago. Anyway, I just had a classic American breakfast, and it was good. Not fancy, but good. So I guess I thought—”

  “You totally don’t get it, do you?” Nita asked, stopping Roseanna’s diner talk in its tracks. “I thought of you . . . like . . . like you were almost . . .”