He did. It was. He switched on one of the floor lamps. Again, there were two spreading spots on the ceiling, both dripping at a constant rate onto the coffee table and the couch. She came up behind him. “We need to get this fixed!” she shouted over a peal of thunder. “It’s going to ruin all the furniture!”
“We will.”
“Now!”
“Well, we can’t call someone right now!” he snapped at her. “It’s the middle of the night! We have to wait for morning.”
She was already pushing past him. “I know that, asshole. But we need to move things around, put pots under the leaks. We can’t just go back to sleep and let everything get washed away.”
“You said we need to fix it right now.”
She pushed the coffee table away from the leak. “Sorry I didn’t speak as precisely as I should have. I guess I was more concerned about my furniture being ruined than finding exactly the right words.”
They glared at each other for a brief second, then both hurried to opposite ends of the couch and dragged/lifted it out of harm’s way. Together, they headed into the kitchen to look for containers to catch the water. It was their first fight as a married couple, and Hunt could tell by the expression on Beth’s face that she felt as bad about it as he did. Before she bent down to dig through the pots-and-pans cupboard, he gave her a quick hug. “Sorry,” he said.
“Me, too.”
She found a stew pot and an aluminum turkey pan, and from under the sink he grabbed the plastic bucket she used when mopping the floor. That still left one leak with nothing to catch the water, so Hunt ran back into their bedroom, put the bucket where the chair had been, then got the wastepaper basket from the bathroom and set it on the floor next to his side of the bed.
They met back in the living room. Neither the kitchen nor the master bathroom had leaks, and no water was seeping through the hallway roof. Likewise, the laundry room, study and small bathroom were dry. That left only…
Beth said it aloud. “What about the guest room?”
“We’d better check,” he said, though it was the last thing he felt like doing. Outside the storm still raged, and the hallway suddenly seemed darker than it had a moment before. Thunder and lightning could make any house seem haunted, and they certainly accentuated the spookiness of the guest room.
The door was open—
hadn’t it been left closed?
—and he could see even from this angle that the bed was unmade again. The bedspread and sheets were crumpled at the foot of the mattress, and there was something unpleasant about the shape they formed, something about the wrinkles and overlaps and the peaked center of the disordered linen that reminded him of a figure he could not quite place but knew he did not like. Beth’s hand closed around his, and he could feel fear in the tightness of her muscles.
Lightning flashed, and he stopped, waited, realizing that he was afraid to see that dresser mirror illuminated by lightning. He did not even want to look in the mirror’s direction until an electric light in the room was turned on.
The lightning stopped, the thunder followed, and between episodes, he dashed in turn on the desk lamp. His first instinct was to simply flip the wall switch—going into a dark guest room was not something he wanted to do—but for all he knew rainwater was puddled in the attic directly above the overhead light, seeping down its wires, so he stumbled through the unlit room to the writing desk.
There was another flash of lightning, a bolt so jagged and strong that its outline burned through the curtains. He was already looking toward the dresser, and in the split-second before the bulb came on, he saw in the mirror exactly what Beth had described: a hulking man with stooped shoulders and a broad-brimmed hat. She saw it too, and she screamed next to him, a piercing cry that made him jump and practically knock the lamp off the desk.
Then the room was awash in electric light, the mirror reflected back only the furnishings of the room and themselves, and whatever had been there was gone. Beth’s scream cut off abruptly, and she looked frantically behind her to verify that they were alone, that the figure they’d seen in the mirror was nowhere around. She turned to him, eyes wide. “You saw it, didn’t you? In the mirror?”
He nodded, not trusting himself to speak.
“A man in a hat.”
“Yeah.”
Thunder cracked hard, this time unaccompanied by lightning. Rain splattered loudly against the window. Emboldened by Hunt’s presence and the light from the lamp, Beth walked over to the dresser and looked closely at the mirror. He took the opportunity to go over to the bed and throw the covers back over the mattress, messing up that disturbing shape.
Both of them walked slowly around the room in opposite directions. There was no leak, and for that they were grateful, but…
But there was still… something.
A noise, Hunt thought. Kind of a whistle.
“Listen,” he said. “Is that what you said you heard? That whistling sound?”
“I don’t—” An expression of horrified recognition came over her face: “Yes! Only it was louder last time.”
Lightning flashed, thunder clapping instantly on its heels.
And the whistling was gone.
They waited but it didn’t return, and they searched through the room for another five minutes, checking the closet, opening the dresser drawers, looking in the desk, peeking under the bed. They didn’t want to find anything, were afraid to find anything, but somehow the rational mechanics of a methodical search served to demystify the room, weakening its power over them at least on an emotional level.
Beth quickly made the bed, they shut off the lamp and closed the door, then went to mop up the floors and check on the pots and pans and buckets to make sure they weren’t being filled up too fast. Either the rain had slowed or the leaks were not as bad as they’d originally seemed, because the drips were slow and infrequent, and it was clear that unless things worsened appreciably between now and dawn, the existing containers would be more than able to handle the problem.
“Maybe we should stay awake,” Beth said. “Watch a movie or something. Make sure that no other leaks spring up.”
“It’s three o’clock! We’ll be dead in the morning with only three hours of sleep.”
“What if the couch gets ruined?”
“What are you going to do? Stare at the ceiling all night long? That’ll put you to sleep quicker than anything else. Besides, I think the worst of the storm’s over.”
He was right. The rain appeared to have tapered off, and the last peal of thunder had seemed farther away.
“I don’t know.” Beth yawned.
“See?” Hunt said. “Let’s go back to bed.”
But he could sleep only fitfully, tossing and turning, waking up every twenty minutes or so, and in the one dream he remembered upon awaking, a large stoop-shouldered man in a hat that shadowed his face looked at his watch and said in a sing-songy Southern accent, “It’s half past a monkey’s ass, a quarter to his ba-wuls.”
2
Ordinarily, Steve slept through everything. Nina was a light sleeper, but she’d long ago learned that it was better to just lie awake by herself than to wake him up. He’d taught her that much.
Something had changed, though. Either the stress was getting to him or this storm was a hell of a lot louder than most, because he jerked awake to the sound of hard thunder, heart pounding in his chest. Rain splattered furiously in haillike strikes against the window, creating a muffled roar on the roof.
The addition!
He sat bolt upright in bed. As always, Nina was wide awake next to him. “Why didn’t you wake me up?” he demanded.
“I—” she began, but he didn’t wait for her simpering answer. Swearing, he threw off the covers, slipped on his pants, shirt, and slippers, and sped down the hall. He’d tarped the new room when he’d finished work this evening the way he always did, but he hadn’t heard the weather forecast tonight and had made no effort to tie the tarps down
or weatherize the addition against a possible storm. The tarps could have all blown away by now, and the wind and rain could be battering his new plaster job on the west wall. He’d left exposed wires out there, too. The water could cause plenty of damage.
Not to mention the lightning.
There was a sustained flash, an almost simultaneous crack of thunder.
He was such an asshole, such a stupid stubborn asshole. If something happened, it was his own fault. That insurance salesman had come by again today at lunch, offering homeowner’s coverage, and Steve had turned him down flat. It was a dumb move, and he’d known it even at the time, was aware he was slitting his own throat even as he did it. He had no insurance to speak of, only a simple policy from a fly-by-night company he’d gotten out of the yellow pages after those bastards at All Homes had dropped him. And the policy the salesman offered seemed legit, seemed good. But the man’s dogged persistence seemed annoying rather than admirable, and Steve had almost physically thrown him off county property, telling him to leave him the fuck alone.
Now he wished he had purchased that insurance. The addition was supposed to be covered by his new policy—at least partially—but there were so many exception clauses that if the addition did sustain some damage, he didn’t know if the company would pay out at all.
He reached the end of the hall, quickly unlocked and opened the door, and for a brief second saw three of those big behatted men: one standing in the center of the addition, one on the lawn next to the sycamore tree, and one in the tree itself, standing on the trunk at the fork of the branches.
Then the thunder hit with the sound of a rocket explosion, and the tree split in half. The improbability of the men and their positions was lost in the panicked realization that a large section of the tree was falling on the frame of his rumpus room and about to crush it. He ran forward blindly, stupidly, thinking he could save his roof, wall and frame by somehow diverting the falling sycamore, but at the last minute a stronger survival instinct made him swerve away from the toppling tree and take refuge back in the house.
Lightning had not touched the tree, he realized. The section of the tree had broken off while the thunder sounded.
Thunder couldn’t splinter a tree, he thought. Only lightning could do that.
Then that idea, too, was lost, as the heavy branches smashed through the lone section of completed roof, bringing water and leaves and plywood and two-by-fours down on the rumpus room. A buttressing wall collapsed, taking wiring with it, and sparks flew for a few brief seconds as his electrical work was demolished before his eyes. A broken spiky branch landed at the exact spot where he’d been headed before turning around.
Steve held the doorjamb for support. Gone. Weeks—no, months—of work demolished in seconds.
Lightning flashed again, and he remembered to look for the men in hats.
But they were not there—if they ever had been.
They were gone.
3
Hunt called their homeowner’s insurance company first thing in the morning, but there was already a telephone queue, and he had to wait forty minutes until a real person came on the line, listening to endless Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, and Celine Dion songs in the interim, putting up with annoyingly regular “Your call is important to us, thanks for waiting” messages.
Finally, a customer service representative broke in during the middle of a Kenny G solo with “This is Carole. May I have your policy number?”
He gave it, and, after a pause, she said, “How may I help you?”
Hunt described the leaking roof and said that they needed someone to come out immediately and fix it before the next rainstorm hit.
“There are several homeowners in your area with nearly identical situations who have called in this morning to file claims,” Carole said. “And I’m sure there are a lot of others who are with other insurance carriers and need similar assistance. So it may be a while before we’re able to send someone out to assess the damage. There are only a limited number of qualified professionals we work with in your area.”
“I understand,” Hunt told her, trying to ingratiate himself with the woman and resenting the fact that he had to do so. He added, as if an afterthought, “You don’t by any chance prioritize these things according to need, do you? Or severity? Because our roof seems to be in pretty bad shape. This isn’t just a minor leak here. We have multiple leaks throughout the house. I’m just afraid the roof might be so compromised that it’s dangerous.”
“I’ll note that, sir, and I promise we’ll have someone out there as soon as possible.”
No one came or called that day, or the next. On the third day, Wednesday, they were working in Flowing Wells, taking care of a tree that had fallen over a sidewalk during the storm, when he got a call that someone would be out to inspect the roof within an hour.
“We’re almost done here,” Edward told him when he explained the situation. “Go ahead. I’ll cover for you.” He grinned. “And when I happen to be MIA on the first day of deer hunting season, you’ll do the same.”
Hunt laughed. “Deal.”
The man who came out to inspect the roof was sullen and surly. Hunt’s original plan was to bond with the man, schmooze him, and maybe get bumped up a little higher on the to-do list, but the two of them just didn’t connect. He was a tree trimmer, this guy was a roofer, they were both men who worked outside with their hands, but when push came to shove, he was a slumming computer operator, a white-collar worker pretending to be a blue-collar man, and the difference between them was glaring and obvious.
His name was Gary Donnell, the name of the company was Donnell Roofing, and Hunt had the feeling that he was the owner and sole employee. Dutifully, he followed the roofer around, pretending he knew what the man was doing when he scrutinized the now-dry spots on the ceiling, peered into the attic crawl space with a flashlight, or examined the top of the flat Santa Fe–style roof. Donnell did not speak much, and when Hunt tried to engage the man in conversation, he received only annoyed monosyllabic answers.
Finally, the inspection was done. “You need a whole new roof,” Donnell said, writing out an estimate. “That’s what I’m going to recommend, but I don’t know if your insurance company’s going to go for it. So they’ll get back to you, and you get back to me.”
“About how long do you think it’ll be before everything’s fixed?”
The roofer shrugged disinterestedly. “I don’t know.”
“What’s your guess?”
“Don’t have one.” Donnell tore off a copy of the estimate and handed it to him. “Here. I’ll fax a copy to your insurance company.”
He’d been told that someone from his insurance company would contact him, but when a day passed and he still hadn’t heard back, he called. He spent his entire lunch break on the phone, only to discover that no decision had yet been made. Yes, the roofer had faxed over the estimate, and, yes, the case had been assigned to a representative, but there were just too many claims to process. They would get back to him as soon as possible.
He called again the next day.
Then it was the weekend, and while he tried to call again on Saturday, a prerecorded voice informed him that the offices were closed. If it was an emergency, he could leave a message after the beep and someone would get back to him.
He left a message.
No one got back to him.
Someone finally did call on Monday to inform him that the request for a new roof had been turned down. The insurance company was willing to pay to have the leaks patched, but that was it.
“It’s going to leak again the next time it rains,” he told the woman. “The roof is shot. It would be a lot smarter and more cost effective if you redid the whole thing now instead of waiting for this to happen again.”
“I’m sorry, sir. We pay for legitimate repairs to sustained damage. We do not pay for repairs to damage that has not yet occurred.”
“It’s called preventative maintenance.”
“As I said, we take care of damage that actually occurs. It is up to you to maintain your own residence. We do not do that for you.” Before he could argue further, she said, “We will contact the roofing company, let them know you are approved, and they will be out to repair the damage to your home as soon as possible. Thank you for choosing AHI.” The line went dead.
Hunt was livid, and he was tempted to call back again, talk to the woman’s supervisor and file a complaint, but under the circumstances he figured he’d better wait until all of the repairs were done and all of the bills were paid. Just in case.
Luckily, there was no rain for the next two weeks, because that’s how long it took for Gary Donnell to return. As Hunt had suspected, Donnell Roofing was a one-man operation, and it took the roofer two days to finish what should have taken him only a few hours. When he was through, he left a big mess outside: nails on the lawn, scraps of tar paper on Beth’s garden, black splatters on the back stoop and the front walkway.
Joel, Stacy, and Lilly came over for dinner that evening, and before the sun went down, he took Joel up on the roof to survey the job. It looked amateurish even by Hunt’s low standards. A sloppy border of pitch ringed a square of tar paper that had been affixed over each leaking section of roof. Joel bent down and examined the first patch skeptically. “You actually think this is going to hold?”
“I hope so.”
“After the first two rains, this is going to be leaking again. That’s my prediction.”
“Thanks.”
“Did you or the roofer even test it? Spray some water up here with the hose or something?”
“To be honest,” Hunt said, “I was afraid to. I know this is a supremely crappy job, but it’s all I’ve got, and I don’t want to put any unnecessary wear and tear on it. I want it to last as long as possible.”
“Rots a ruck.”
“Scooby-Doo!” Hunt exclaimed, pointing at him in the exaggerated manner they’d used as children.
“Close, but no cigar. Astro.”
THE POLICY Page 12
