“I hadn’t noticed.”
“Helpful to Marcus. He hasn’t yet generalized his interest to the rest of us.”
“I still don’t know what he does.”
“He gathers information.”
“Excuse me?”
“Well, it started last spring, when he was first coming in. Marcus would get him to gossip about everyone out in Plymouth Township. He knew a lot of gossip. Marcus wanted to know everything: who was sleeping with whom, who was paying their bills and who wasn’t, what properties might come on the market, who was related to whom, all that sort of thing.”
“Why?”
“Just to know. Just because he’s interested. Some fact might turn up. For example, you know the bottled water idea?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, he kind of dropped that with regard to the farm, but it stayed in his mind. You know the place out there; it’s farther back in the county, almost to the state park, what’s the name—oh, the Underwood Farm on May Hill Road.”
“Yeah. I’ve been by there, years ago. My dad knew Frank Underwood.”
“Tremendous spring on that farm. It was famous a hundred years ago. It was called Saint Lucy’s Spring, or something like that. Anyway, Mike knew all about it. Marcus has been out there three or four times. I can’t say the Underwoods are interested in selling it to him, but they don’t mind him coming out there. That was one thing he learned from Mike. And there’s a quarry somewhere out there too, an old slate quarry. Slate roofs all over that area.”
“The clubhouse has a slate roof.”
“Bingo. And the ownership of that quarry is very complex. Lots of heirs who didn’t even know they owned a quarry, things like that. I think Marcus is negotiating with someone in Alaska who’s never even been to this part of the country. But it would be great to have a source of slate just like the slate on the roof of the clubhouse. Not for every house, mind you, but a few.”
“A few expensive ones.” I smiled. Once again, Marcus impressed me. He just didn’t think like everyone else. Once again, I felt lucky he’d come along. “What three things did Marcus teach Mike?”
“So far?” She rolled her eyes discreetly toward the ceiling. “Let’s see. How to dress.” She paused. “Almost. How to read what rich people read rather than what garage mechanics read. It’s kind of a My Fair Lady thing, really. And how to play the commodities market.”
“How to do what?”
“Oh, you know. Pork bellies. Wheat. Soybeans. Mike went out to Chicago a couple of months ago. Didn’t you notice?”
“I noticed he wasn’t around at one point.”
“That’s where he was. He was having a field trip.”
“What do you think about this, Jane?”
“I don’t agree with it. But you know how Marcus takes people up. He gets infatuated. You must have noticed that he fancies himself a great teacher. He told Linda, who told me, that Mike was the perfect sow’s ear. He goes over there all the time. Linda can’t stand him.” Jane shrugged.
“Marcus told me that after the billion comes in, he’s going to quit business and write books.”
“Or endow a business school. Did he mention that?”
“Why doesn’t he teach the guy some manners?”
“Why indeed?” said Jane.
I was on my way out of the office, and what she had said started me ruminating. I wondered how I fit in with Marcus’s idea of himself. Had he just taken me up in order to show me something? Our friendship did have that side. Wasn’t that a side I was grateful for? And hadn’t I agreed when he showed Bobby how to get himself together? Bobby had had a little more on the ball, at least around the office, ever since his dressing-down by Marcus. He looked better, he seemed to be less goofy, and he hadn’t injured himself in months. And he was an even bigger fan of Marcus, though at the same time he more or less stayed out of his way. At the Baldwins’ Labor Day picnic, I’d asked him if he’d ever sorted out his books, and he grinned a big wide grin. He said, “God! Marcus sent in a twenty-five- or thirty-page tax return! You couldn’t understand a thing on it. He said those IRS guys get paid by the unit, so if there’s lots of pages and it doesn’t look like there’s going to be a big payoff, they just ignore it. My personal opinion, Joe, is that this guy is the best thing that ever happened to us, but I’m not saying he isn’t irritable. I’m not saying that at all.” And then I passed Mary King’s office. She wasn’t there, but the light was on. Her office had changed too, in the last year. It was decorated with more taste and comfort. The whole building was full now, no unleased space. Was that owing to Marcus too?
My mother had always said to think about something nice before going to sleep, so that night, on the phone, I told Susan Webster about the old slate quarry. She said, rather sleepily, “Where is that, out past Plymouth Village? Not far from the state park?”
“I’m not sure exactly, but somewhere around there.”
“Who owns that is the Burmeister family. There was this kid in my class in high school, Mickey Burmeister.” She went on. “So, have you and Marcus Burns been friends for a long time?”
“Friends, maybe a year. He only moved into the area about a year and a half ago. I sold him his house.”
“I can’t figure him out.”
“How so?”
“Well, it has to do with that kid of his, Justin. He’s such a fearful kid. If you come up behind him and make a noise, he jumps. I’ve had that happen twice, both times when I thought he knew I was right there. I mean, I wasn’t sneaking up or anything. I thought the kid was going to shriek.”
“What would that have to do with Marcus? Maybe he’s just a fearful kid.”
“Maybe.”
“Or he could take after Linda. She strikes me as kind of on the fearful side.”
“But why should they be fearful? Do they have something to be afraid of?”
“Oh, I doubt it.” But what about Mary King? “He always talks about them with affection and respect. He’s crazy about Justin.” I kept thinking of Mary King. Even a little kid could sense if his home life wasn’t quite as secure as it had been, as he would like it to be. “I’m an only child, so I don’t know much about it, but it’s the sister who strikes me as fearsome. Amanda. Maybe Justin thought you were Amanda and you were going to—”
“Rake my sharpened fingernails down his back?” She laughed. “Actually, I did that once, when I was eleven and my brother John was nine. I got my mother’s nail file and sharpened all my fingernails to points so I could draw blood the next time I caught him in my room.” She laughed again. “If I had to judge by my own experience, it isn’t good to have the girl first.”
That night I woke up for about the tenth time in a couple of weeks, worrying about the unheard-of farm payment. I rolled around for about half an hour, got up and read for a while, then went back to sleep and dreamt I was driving around looking for Felicity. I drove into a long driveway and found Sherry. She was doing some kind of construction—I could see excavations. I explained to her in a panicky way that I was looking for Felicity and drove off. Then it got dark, and I could see Felicity down the street, almost invisible, except that she was wearing a white sweater. When I came up to her, she leaned in the window of my car, smiling and very beautiful, and she put her hand on my face. She was loving and reassuring—not as energetic as the real Felicity, but softer and more soothing. She comforted me, and when I woke up, I felt well and truly comforted, comforted without any resistance, comforted as you could only be comforted in a dream. I turned over and went back to sleep. When I woke up the next morning, it seemed to me that I had experienced some kind of bona fide miracle, a visitation. I remembered that dream for days, a sign of how happy and how reassured it was possible to be.
CHAPTER
23
AFEW DAYS AFTER my conversation with Jane about Mike, I pulled into a parking place at Cheltenham Park, and when I got out of the car I saw that Mike Lovell was leaning against a car—his car, no doubt—
a few spaces down. When he saw me open my door, he came toward me. He said, “Trouble up there.”
“How do you mean?”
“When I got here this morning, the two of them were having a screaming fight. I could hear it all the way down the hallway. When I got to the door, I waited for a couple of minutes, but they were really going at it, so I just turned around and came back out. I been up there one time since, about twenty minutes ago. They were still going at it.”
“Could you make out what it was about?”
“Nope. She was calling him six kinds of a bastard, was all I heard, and he kept saying, ‘Goddammit, Jane! Goddammit, Jane!’ I don’t know if you want to go up there.”
“Well, why not? At least we can maybe see what’s going on. Or pull them apart if we have to.”
But when we got to the office, all was quiet. I opened the door as if I had no idea that there was anything wrong, and there was Jane, sitting at her desk. She caroled, “Good morning, Joey!” No bruises, anyway. Mike and I glanced at each other. The door to Marcus’s office was closed. Mike said, “He got anything for me?”
“You’d have to ask him that. I wouldn’t know,” said Jane.
“Okay,” said Mike. But instead of knocking on Marcus’s door, he went over to the mail basket and picked it up. He said, “I guess I’ll mail these things, since I have to go to the PO, anyway.”
“That’s fine,” said Jane.
Mike departed. I went into my office. I was preparing final instructions for the engineer, which involved writing up some things that we had been talking about—mostly heating and wiring changes in the clubhouse that would bring it up to code. I was also getting ready to call Gottfried and give him the job. We had been leaving each other messages for about two weeks. If we really wanted to talk to one another, we both knew how—I could go to his job site or he could call me at 6 A.M.—but we didn’t really want to talk to each other at this point, so we left messages with each other’s services, saying that we did, during business hours. I put a piece of paper in my typewriter. Everything was quiet. After a bit, I heard the outer office door open and close; then, a moment after that, my office door opened and Marcus came in. He closed the door behind him.
I sat back in my chair. “Was that Jane leaving?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you and Jane having a disagreement?”
“A misunderstanding.”
“Was she leaving for good, by any chance?”
“Oh, God, no. She was going out to get her hair cut. She’ll be back in a hour and a half. What’s that?”
“I had a meeting with Ralph Hokanson yesterday about retrofitting the kitchen area. I’m just writing that up. He and Gottfried are going to meet with Jerry on Monday. Then Gottfried can get started. Say.”
“Say.”
“Say, do we have enough to pay those big payments on the farm that started to be due the first of this month?”
“We don’t have to pay yet.”
“How’d you manage that?”
“Crosbie got Bernie Wrightsman to reappraise the property, and they loaned us more money. They’re covering the payments themselves for an additional six months out of the loan amount. Until we’re in a position to sell some lots.” He said this as if it were routine, but two years before, or even a year, such a thing would have been unheard of. I was relieved, if a little suspicious. But Marcus had said from the beginning that it was a new world, and every time he turned out to be right. I said, “What did they appraise it at?”
“Five.”
“Five what?” I sat back and looked at him. He was smiling.
“Five million.”
“I don’t see how it’s doubled in value in a year, even with what we’ve done. Real estate around here’s only gone up about sixteen–eighteen percent. And that’s close to Deacon. Out by Plymouth—”
“Well, you know, I had a talk with Bernie about that, and he agreed with Crosbie that we’re so close to the permits that it really doesn’t make a lot of difference. A month or two, right?”
“That’s the best case; but, you know, the best case can—”
“Now, Joe. You have to be the positive thinker. You’re the one who meets with these people and does this sort of thing. If you look like you’re willing to wait, they’ll make you wait. I’m not talking about getting angry or irritable. It’s something different. It’s more like pulling them along in your wake. See what I mean?”
But he didn’t have his usual verve and fire. I nodded. I said, “You want to talk about the thing with Jane?”
“Oh, it was nothing, really. Family spat, not business. It’s amazing we haven’t done it before, really. What’s it been, almost a year since she got here? Anyway, we’re older, but we still have to blow off steam once in a while. That’s all.” I nodded. I was relieved about the payment, really relieved. And my relief felt exactly like it had after my dream of Felicity.
It took me about a day to realize that Jane and Marcus weren’t speaking, and by that time it was Friday. But they still weren’t speaking on Monday and on Tuesday. Jane sat at her desk in a state of high chill toward Marcus. When he came in or went out, she turned her back on him but glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. His demeanor was more interesting—he was never smoother, but not in the least abashed or embarrassed. It was impossible to tell from their behavior who owed whom an apology.
On Tuesday, standing in front of Jane’s desk, knowing Marcus was in his office with the door ajar, I said in a somewhat loud voice, “Well, I’m going to go find Gottfried and put him on this job.”
Jane nodded.
I said, “I have to go to his job site. I can’t find him any other way and I’m ready to commit.”
Jane glanced toward Marcus’s office. We waited. Normally, Jane would have called out “Marcus? That all right with you?” or “Marcus, you want to come in here?” but she didn’t say a word. We waited for another moment. I said, “Okay, I’m going. Time and materials. I guess we’re all agreed.” And I thought we were; we’d talked about this several times among the four of us, Marcus, Gordon, Jane, and myself. I looked at Jane. We shrugged and I turned and went out of the office.
As I was unlocking the door of my car, Marcus trotted up behind me. “Hey,” I said.
“Yeah. Everything’s fine about Gottfried. I guess we’ve got to think of something about the office, though, because Jane is really digging her heels in. Frankly, if it weren’t you and Mike, I’d be a little embarrassed, but I figure we’re good enough friends by this time that a little frost in the air isn’t really a problem. I mean, other than practical.”
“No big deal,” I said.
“To tell you the truth, it kind of puts a spoke in my theoretical wheel, because you know I kind of pride myself on making things go, greasing the skids, all that. You’re not supposed to say this, but women in the office can be a problem, just because of the way they do things. Frankly, I didn’t expect this sort of thing from Jane. It’s very capricious, but hell, what can you say?”
“What happened in the first place?”
He glanced at me. “It started with Linda. She said something and then Jane said something and then Linda said something back, and you know how that goes. Linda felt judged by Jane, and Jane felt offended by Linda. Well, that went on for two days. You know how women are. And then I thought I had to get in on it. Really, I was just kind of playing the mediator. But mediation is something I consider myself good at, so I was thinking just how great I was going to do with them, and now neither one of them is speaking to me, because they both think I’m on the other one’s side.”
“It’s been almost a week, Marcus.”
“Is that all? I thought it was three lifetimes. Now my strategy is to just keep my mouth shut.”
“Do you want to go with me to find Gottfried?”
He shook his head. I got in my car and pulled out of my spot.
The weather was dampish and brown. All the leaves were off the t
rees, and the countryside had a look about it that I liked, that made me think of the word Umbria. I’d had been in Italy during November once, with Sherry, and I’d enjoyed it—driving through the small towns, seeing game birds, rabbits, and deer hanging everywhere, along with piles of autumn vegetables and flowers. It had seemed very exotic and alluring to me, the raw materials of savory hot meals, provisions for the winter gathered everywhere. Sherry had liked it too, not being at all squeamish, and we had enjoyed those few days quite a bit. Once in a while, only for a day or two in the year, the color of my plain old American countryside was Umbrian.
I found Gottfried at the site of his second house, the one that was a little less finished. I hadn’t seen it since it was in the framing stage. This one was also in Blue Valley, maybe a mile from Marcus’s house. It was a beautiful place—a rambling American farmhouse style, white with a black peaked roof, with a porch that wrapped around three sides of the one-story section and a taller two-story section, white-accented with black shutters, that rose above that. It was sited on its lot in a very welcoming way. If I’d had the wife and the kids, I would have bought it from him right then. I had a single happy thought of Susan Webster as I turned into the driveway.
Gottfried and Dale were in the kitchen. As soon as Gottfried saw me, he charged. “Have you been up there?”
“Where?”
“To my house I built, the beautiful Queen Anne you sold to that asshole.”
“Marcus?”
“That’s the one.”
“I was there for dinner a few weeks—”
“Did you see what they did?”
I thought of several things but didn’t dare name any one of them. I held my peace.
“Did you?”
“I don’t know.”
“They put up a red roof! Why did they put on a red roof?”
“I think they had some tree damage from a storm—”
“But red! That house had a perfectly good black roof, the absolutely right black roof! They could have repaired it! I would have sent a roofer, but they reroofed the whole thing in this shitty red color.”