Authors: Jane Smiley
“Homeowners’ insurance,” I said.
“Deductible,” he said. “Anyway, we’ll get it fixed. I think I’m just afraid of the idea that Gottfried would find out that something has been damaged and take the house away from me. But I didn’t mean to get off on that track. What I’m saying is, indirection and all of that has led to a little meandering here. That’s what I feel. We aren’t progressing. We can’t let things develop because we can’t afford to let things develop. We have to develop them. This brings me to a touchy point.” He glanced at Gordon. Gordon met his gaze, and Marcus looked back at the pad in front of him, on which he had written a couple of things, and then he looked at Gordon again. This time their gaze held. He said, “The fact is, we need more funds to tide us over, and I know there is a source of income, and I know it is producing right now, and I would like to tap that source of income for some of the funds we need.”
Bobby said, “You mean the gravel?”
Gordon winced and said, “It’s not that much money.” Then there was silence.
Finally, Marcus turned to Bobby and said, in a mild, instructive voice, “Now, see, that’s just what I mean. Do you realize that it was indiscreet of you to blurt that out? You should have learned years ago just to keep quiet and wait to see what I was getting at. What if that isn’t what I meant? What if that were a secret?” He glanced at me with a grin and said, “Though it’s a pretty noisy secret. But why should you reveal what you know before the other guy reveals what he knows? Right, Gordon? Gordon knows how to bluff, how to keep quiet. Your mom, too. I’ve watched her. She never lets out any information that she doesn’t want to let out.”
At last Bobby looked abashed.
“I mean, it’s a kindness to lay this stuff on the line for you. You can’t go on for your whole life playing the fool.”
Jane was really squirming by now. She muttered, “Marcus—” and suddenly he turned right toward her. “Jane, what? Do you disagree with anything I’ve said? In twenty years of banking, haven’t you learned the same lessons? Why should everyone know how to grow up except Bob here?”
Jane nodded.
Bobby said, in a guilty voice, “I know you’re right. Fern says the same thing. She says I never should have talked to you in that bar in the first place.”
“Well”—Marcus leaned across the table—“she’s right.”
“It seemed like an opportunity at the time.”
“It did to me too. But I’m sure everyone in the entire world would tell you to be more cautious, don’t you think, Gordon?”
Gordon nodded, but he didn’t say that he’d been telling Bobby to pay more attention for thirty years without effect.
Marcus went on. “I guess that’s really the point of this whole meeting. We have to keep our mouths shut. Joe, I trust. Gordon, I trust for a different reason, just because Gordon always keeps his mouth shut. Jane knows what there is to be gained and lost from information management. I trust myself most of all. But you, Bobby, you I don’t trust, because you are not trustworthy. And I don’t think your dad trusts you, either, do you, Gordon?”
Gordon said, “Depends.” I considered that reply pretty loyal, actually.
“Okay,” said Marcus. “Enough of that. Here’s what we all know, here’s what we all can talk about.” He named the names of the architects and designers and where they were from. Further information about their credentials was to be had from him. Several firms were interested in bidding on the waste plant. Those names were confidential until we had decided on one. I didn’t point out that we hadn’t decided on the architects and designers as a group. Certain bills had priority. We would all have input on which those would be, especially me, since I would be at the office and working with him on a daily basis as of—? He looked at me.
I shrugged and said, “June first?” This was two and a half weeks away. He nodded. After that, I didn’t remember the rest. I didn’t plan to talk about anything anyway. I was musing about how quickly I had come around to the idea of closing my business and devoting myself to this project, when I had always thought I would keep my business as my ace in the hole. I had planned every day to be cautious, to make sure I knew what I was doing, to reserve something, to be smart. . . .
Marcus broke in on my reverie. He was looking at me and talking. He said, “Every guy I ever met who made a million bucks only did it by going for broke.” I nodded. It was exciting, going for broke. After a while, the meeting broke up. As we stood up from the table, Marcus turned to me and said, “How about lunch?”
We passed up the Italian place and the French place. Instead, we walked across the parking lot and across the street, then walked down a block and turned the corner. Lo and behold, here was the Portsmouth I remembered, a little run-down. Halfway down the block was a café.
Marcus said, “You won’t believe the onion rings.” In his linen slacks and his open-collared shirt with a subtle windowpane check, he was the best-dressed guy in the place, but in fact they all greeted him when he came in—the two waitresses and the busboy, even the cook behind the barrier. He sat down in what appeared to be an accustomed place. All the smiles and waves gave way to a big sigh. He rubbed his face in his hands and looked across the table at me. He said, “So tell me something.”
“What sort of thing?”
“Something not about the project or the business. Just something interesting.”
“I heard a joke at the Realtors’ weekly lunch the other day.”
“All right.”
“One of those thirty-five-year-old women—you know, the ones who are less likely to get married than to be killed in a terrorist attack—is sitting in a bar. A guy comes in and sits next to her. He orders a beer. He’s looking around furtively, won’t make eye contact with the bartender. When he glances at her he immediately looks away. She goes to the john and comes back, orders herself another drink. She sees that everyone else who was sitting even remotely close to the guy has moved away. She glances at him. He finishes his drink and orders another one, but now he looks really scared. She happens to catch his eye. He looks away, then looks back. Finally, he moves over into the seat next to her and sits there for a second. She takes a sip of her drink. He leans toward her and says, ‘I just did a terrible thing.’
“‘What’s that?’
“‘I killed my wife and children.’
“She looks at him for a moment, then says, ‘So you’re single?’”
Marcus smiled. The waitress brought a plate of onion rings. Marcus pushed a five toward her, gave her a smile, then waved her off. I said, “What’s up? Or maybe I should say, what’s the matter?”
“What would you say if I told you all of this is too much for me? I’m in over my head.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Does Gordon sleep?”
“Well, sure. I mean, they’re all night owls and they play poker all night from time to time, though not as much anymore as they used to—”
“I admire that. That’s cold-blooded. You know, I think I’ve underestimated him. When you see a guy who owes that much in back taxes and has never dealt with it at all, you think he’s kind of a schlemiel, but now I see it differently. I mean, when I first met him and talked to him, I really liked Betty more than Gordon. I thought it was Betty who kept things going over the years, who was putting out fires all the time while Gordon fucked up this and fucked up that.”
“You saw them like that? I always saw Betty as kind of a jewel in a box. The box is a little beat-up, but the jewel sits in its little nest, safe as can be.”
“I see that now. I see that Gordon really has kind of an outlaw mentality. When I was first talking to him about his tax problem, it seemed like he just didn’t understand it, and if he were to understand it, then he would be amazed and terrified. But now I think he did understand it all along. He was just playing out his hand. What I thought was lack of understanding was really nerve.”
“Maybe.”
“That’s what I feel like I don’t have.”
“Let me close down my business, then, and put all my eggs in your basket.”
“Well—”
“When is it you feel this nerve is missing?”
“In the middle of the night, mostly.”
“It didn’t sound like you were missing any nerve during the meeting.”
“What’s the difference between nerve and desperation?”
“Probably nothing. I don’t know. My small-time life hasn’t exposed me to any risks, remember?”
He laughed louder this time, but then he took an onion ring and ate it thoughtfully. Another. At last, he said, “You know, I used to sit around the office and look at my co-workers and wonder what working for the IRS was doing to us. I don’t know what it’s like. Maybe being a doctor in the sense that lots of people’s lives pass across your desk in the course of a week, so no one seems unique or special. Everyone falls into a category. And you also have the power of life and death. I’m sure when people come in for an audit, they are just like guys going into the doctor’s office after a test and getting the bad news, except they know that the agent has discretion, and so they are always polite, always trying to please. I liked that part. At first, I was just interested in it—I used to go home and tell Linda and we would laugh—but then I got to like it. You’d have to be a saint not to. Some guys’ whole personalities would change for an audit. Somebody would be standing around the office, telling a fart joke, and then he’d go have a meeting with a taxpayer and he was the pope.” He shook his head.
I was eating onion rings too. They were definitely good. I said, “One thing I like about you, Marcus, is that you not only always want the best, you actually find it. Everyone wants the best, but not everyone knows what it is even after they’ve found it.”
He ignored me. “Anyway, it’s easy to have a very high opinion of yourself if you work for the IRS. Talk about a rising tide lifting all boats. The tide of ego in an IRS office is very high. And outside the office—well. Just try going to a party where everyone is having a great time, and mentioning that you work for the IRS. It’s a social death knell. I’m sure you’ve been warned, yourself.”
“By Norton, yes. He thinks you’re doing an undercover investigation and that you will eventually bust everyone for tax fraud.”
Marcus rolled his eyes and ate a french fry. I agreed that Norton didn’t bear further discussion. He said, “Yeah, well, the other thing is, you can see the mistakes people are making, right there, written down in black and white. You start to think if you had that kind of money to invest, you wouldn’t make the same kinds of mistakes. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve lain awake at night, concocting some plan. No capital! That was my only problem. But now there’s the capital and there’s the project and there’s the vision, and hey! I’m still lying awake at night, only now it’s a cold sweat. I never thought I would lack nerve! I was a tough kid from a tough neighborhood. And I was the
smart
tough kid, not like the dumb fucks I grew up with. You want me to inventory my talents? I do it every night. I know the numbers, not like Gordon. I have the taste and sense of style, not like most people, say Donald Trump. I have a sense of the big picture—”
“Not like me.”
He shrugged, nodded. “I have a perfect knowledge not only of the theory of the tax code but of the actuality of the IRS structure. I have the contacts now. If there’s one thing I really have, it’s the persuasive ability. That goes with the contacts.”
“So what
don’t
you have?”
He put his hands around his neck, and made a wide, silent face like he was choking himself to death. “So many contacts! So much persuading! And then they get right to the verge and walk away!”
I laughed. “That’s the Realtor experience. Or the missionary experience. When I was a kid, the missionaries always complained when they visited that everyone was ready to come to dinner, but no one was ready to come to Jesus.” I took another onion ring and said, “I’m not worried.”
And I wasn’t.
We talked and ate. Marcus said, after a while, “Did I tell you about the woman I met on the plane a couple of weeks ago?”
“I didn’t realize you were out of town.”
“Just for a few days. Anyway, I was sitting next to this beautiful chick, tall and very elegant. Dark hair. Designer clothes. Every time she would sneeze, she would open her handbag, take out a tissue, and fold it neatly, then she would discreetly put her hand under her skirt. Then she would fold up the tissue and put it in the air-sickness bag. I didn’t think she realized I was watching her, but I couldn’t help myself; it was driving me crazy. So anyway, after I watched her do this—oh, I don’t know—half a dozen times, I finally said, ‘Excuse me, ma’am, I don’t mean to be watching you, but I can’t help it. This is really awkward, but I have to know. How come every time you sneeze, you fold up a tissue and put it under your skirt?’ She blushed, and she leaned toward me and whispered, ‘I have this very strange condition. Every time I sneeze I—um, have an orgasm.’ I guess I wasn’t really surprised, but I wanted to keep the conversational ball rolling, you know, so I said, ‘Do you take anything for it?’ She looked at me, and then she whispered, ‘Pepper.’”
We roared. I thought how much I liked Marcus.
When we got back to the office, Jane said, “Well, aren’t you two thick as thieves.”
CHAPTER
19
I
T WAS A LONGER DRIVE
to the new office, but I didn’t go there every day. Some days I went out to the farm, some days I went to the township or the county, some days I went to engineers of one sort or another. I was called upon to make various arguments and promote various plans, so I did. I just opened my mouth and out it came. Afterward I hardly remembered what I had said, only what to report to Marcus, more success or less success. Every report was greeted with a grin. He was always happy to see me, and I enjoyed going there. Always I had this sense of the money draining away, sometimes more slowly, sometimes more quickly, but inexorably nonetheless. That’s what motivated me. It was like a constant tickle, and it worked more to jazz me up than to frighten me.
As for my business, it was easy enough to get rid of. I called the Realtors I liked the most from the Tuesday lunch crowd and made introductions. Only Gottfried Nuelle was different. Fortunately, he was between sales. I told him I was moving his business into the Salt Key Corporation and closing up shop on everything else. He stared at me, not in disbelief but because he wanted to figure out exactly what I meant and what it meant to him. I didn’t say anything, just let his mind work on its own. Finally, he said, “I’m not going to have anything on the market for at least another five months.”
Now he expected me to tell him that after that he would be at the farm. I gave him a friendly smile because I wanted him to think that. And after all the years I had spent listening to the ranting and raving, I didn’t mind reading his mind one bit and knowing that I was misleading him. I said, “This place is nice.”
“Dale wanted to try a California-style bungalow: you know, that front-to-back roofline, lots of woodwork, and sort of Art Deco feel. Mullioned windows, the whole deal. He wanted to get into the twentieth century for a while. Nothing boxy, though. I hate that boxy shit. Metal window frames.” He spat out the words. Things were okay with Gottfried.
When I asked Marcus what to say to engineers, supervisors, secretaries, Bart, Jim Crosbie, the stray investor or two, inspectors, and bureaucrats, he told me to try and figure out what they needed to know, what they were looking for, and then tell them that. The overall plan, he said, was a kind of beautiful dream—a vision of a place not to buy a house but to live in a certain way, a better way than most people were used to but a way that everyone understood without even trying. The immediate objective was only a step to the overall plan. Each person I talked to was to be a stepping-stone to the overall plan. It was my job to educate them so they would take their natural places in the plan. I should consider myself a kind of fortune-teller. Had I ever been to a fortune-teller? If I ever had, I would notice that the fortune-teller always looks you right in the face, looks at you in a searching and interested way that no one else ever does. While you are having your fortune told, you think that the fortune-teller is fascinated by you and your fate, and maybe he is, but he is also watching the feelings and thoughts pass across your face, and that is how he knows your fortune. Your fortune, said Marcus, is what you
want
to happen, and if you go to the fortune-teller and he divines what you want to happen and agrees with you that it will happen, then it will.
You
will make it happen because the fortune-teller told you it would. It was this sort of influence I was to exert over everyone—even receptionists, even the women at the board of records whose only job was to retrieve surveys and plats. It was global.
That was why, I realized, I wasn’t allowed to be a Realtor any longer. A Realtor finds people more or less the house they want, then does the paperwork so they can get it but leaves the decision to the people themselves. I was no longer in the business of leaving the choice to others. I was in the business of inspiring them.
I would come home and watch a little TV or read a magazine and laugh at this bullshit idea, and then I would go out the next day and inspire people. One by one, all that summer and into the fall, everyone I dealt with got very enthusiastic.
Marcus called me and asked me to take some clients out to Salt Key Farm and show them around because he had to go to the doctor.
The three investors were two brothers and their cousin. They didn’t precisely have the look of investors, if you thought of investors as dark-suited older men with ties. These guys were about my age, and shortly after I met them at the property and buzzed in their new black Caddy, they let me know that they were close to Donald Trump. After that, I recognized them, because they dressed in that Trumpish style and bragged in that Trumpish manner. They had made their money in meat distribution—sausages, salamis, sliced Italian beef, pastrami, corned beef. They supplied every deli chain on the whole East Coast and down to Florida with slicing meats.
Marcus had told me not to talk about money, either expenses or expectations. Earnings were for Jane and costs were for Marcus. My job was class. And the place looked great. It was June and summer was right on time. We had retained a couple of the Thorpes’ gardeners, who had duly fertilized the shrubs and the roses and raked back the mulch so the flowers could come up. The color of the grass was blinding, the first rosebuds were opening, and it was still cool under the spreading, leafy maples. It wasn’t hard at all to produce class for these guys. All I had to do was walk behind them with my hands clasped behind my back and speak when spoken to. They more or less sold themselves. Their names were Terry, Tommy, and Donnie. Inside the house they kept their hands in their pockets as if they had no right to touch anything. They stood back in the center of the rooms and cocked their heads and said, “Hey, look at this. This is nice. Real nice. Look at these floors, man. You don’t see floors like this every day. It won’t be hard to turn this place into a club, it’s made for it. Can you believe one family lived in this place all those years? How many kids did you say these folks had?”
“Two.”
“Shit, man.”
And then we went outside.
Even though Marcus had called them investors, we quickly fell into a Realtor/buyer mode. I showed them where the golf course designer (who had been there once by that point) had tentatively located the golf course, and I speculated knowledgeably about where the houses would go and what they would look like, three to five bedrooms, four to six baths, of course a few special houses might be a little bigger, depending on special needs, but we all agreed that families were smaller now, and that what people really wanted were amenities. It turned out that Terry grew up in Chicago, the sixth of ten children, and the house he grew up in had three bedrooms, one for the parents, one for the girls, and one for the boys. Two bathrooms. I expressed appreciation. All the men agreed that when they had lived like that as a kid, no one had known any better and it hadn’t really mattered. Tommy said, “I had three sisters, and you know, every night they’d stand in front of the same little bathroom mirror, rolling up their hair for school and fighting over bobby pins. My sister Mary used to wait until the other two were asleep and then take all the bobby pins she could reach out of their rollers.”
“Did she grow up to be a pickpocket?” I asked. There was a laugh.
“Nah. But she doesn’t have seven kids, like my mother did. She stopped at two.”
The meat business was unbelievable, according to them. “You don’t have to run the delis themselves, that’s a nightmare with all the health regulations; you just make sure there’s lots of variety and that it’s real authentic, and you paint the delivery trucks so they make people hungry.” Tommy looked at me. “It’s like stealing money,” he said. The three of them confided that they liked a certain lifestyle—they themselves would never live all the way out in the sticks like this—but none of their wives really liked urban life, and that was the way with most wives, when you came down to it. So even though it was doubtful they would ever live in a place like this, in their considered opinion, this was the wave of the future, because this was what women wanted.
I was smooth. “We do think the club will be a social center, with debuts and parties and weddings for the members and the residents.”
“Yeah. That’s a good idea. My opinion is, hotels are out, clubs are in. This place is perfect for that.”
All in all, everyone was satisfied.
Jane called me the next day and thanked me; the showing was just right. I said, “Should I plan for more of that sort of thing?”
“Not really. Showing the place off is Marcus’s favorite part. These guys, frankly, have been investing most of their excess funds in sports bets. I suggested that a steadier return from a legitimate enterprise might persuade the IRS not to scrutinize them so frequently.” She laughed.
“Do they really know Donald Trump?”
“Not through developing. Maybe through boxing or something like that.”
“You’re a bold woman, Jane.”
“Some of our investors are the height of respectability.”
“I’m not objecting.”
“I know.”
Jane was friendly to me. Over the years she had perfected a way of getting on with men at the office that was comfortable, circumspect, and teasing, absolutely guaranteed to disarm any and every personal thought. Every time I came into the office, she said, “Oh, Joey! How are you today? What have you been doing?” She would push her chair back from whatever she was doing and turn right to me and give me a big smile. If she had a pencil in her hand, she set it down. If she was typing something or calculating something, she stopped what she was doing. If she was on the phone, she waved at me and gave me a big grin. I began to feel that she liked me. If I asked where Marcus was, she always said, “Making mischief,” then grinned and rolled her eyes. Other times, she would say, “Joe! I am getting! Are you spending?”
“Always!”
“Spend more!”
“Can’t help that!”
When I expressed admiration and friendship toward Marcus, Jane would always grin, as if this were especially amusing, but when he was in the office and telling her what he wanted her to do, she was serious and attentive, eager to please him. Her manner toward him was a combination of secretary, older sister, ally, and tease. Finally one day I said to her, “Jane, who’s the boss around here, you or him?”
“I thought you were the boss, Joe.”
“No, really.”
“Marcus and I have a strange relationship.”
“Because—”
“Because I have a hard time taking him seriously, whereas he listens to everything I say. On the other hand, he never does anything I tell him he should, and I do everything he tells me in spite of myself. I’m starting to think it’s a kind of enchantment.”
“Sounds like my marriage.”
“Really? My marriage was not enchanting at all. We were best friends. It wasn’t till the end that I found out he had a romantic side. Now he has a baby. I can’t imagine it.”
“Why not?”
“I could swear I never saw him look at a baby in twenty years. Not once. But he would swear that he was obsessed with babies. So it was like we didn’t live the same life after all. But at least splitting the property wasn’t hard. He had his, I had mine. We never even had a joint checking account. Each of us was very self-sufficient. I thought that was our strength. But then it turned out he didn’t even like the dog. I thought he loved the dog, and I thought the dog was impossible not to love, so I’m not quite sure what to make of that.” She shrugged.
“Marcus thinks my former wife was a little on the commanding side. He went to her restaurant, and she forced him to eat his salad. I just saw her as more firm in her desires than I was.”
“But Joey, you don’t mind being commanded, do you?” She picked up a pencil and tapped it on her desk. She was smiling, though.
“Am I being insulted, Jane?”
“That’s what he’s going to kill us with, you know.” She set the pencil down.
“Who?”
“Marcus. He doesn’t mind conflict and we do, so in the end he’s going to win.”
I didn’t know what she was getting at.
Although I was unattached and Jane was unattached, there seemed to be no possibility that we would connect away from the office, so we got to be something like friends, but always between us there was Marcus, with whom we both were allied, but whom we did not seem to see in the same way. I finally decided that working with a brother and sister was almost like hanging out with some married couple. In the end, your best bet is to stop noticing their relationship altogether.
We were happy as could be, it seemed. One day, I saw a check on Jane’s desk from Gordon, for twenty thousand dollars. The gravel, I thought, an interesting and amazing turn of events, in its way, and the next day Gordon called me and told me that Marlborough County, where Portsmouth was, had decided that the project was amazing in its way, also, because they had sent him a letter telling him that he was required to get a mining permit, and that the removal of county soils had to cease immediately, pending the implementation of required permitting procedures.
“When is the letter dated?”
“Well, let me put on my glasses here. Let’s see, May tenth.”
“Gordon, that’s over a month ago. Was it lost in the mail?”
“It got into the seat of Betty’s car and we didn’t find it until she was cleaning up a Popsicle that one of the kids had that melted in there yesterday.”
“A mining permit? That could be expensive.”
“I’m thinking the state and the township are going to want to get in on this too, but really, you better meet me out there and take a look, because things have changed since you were out there before.” I took this as an emergency request.
The earthmoving machine and the line of dump trucks were now considerably closer to the old farmhouse. In fact, the house, which must have still been inhabited because an old pickup was parked beside the door, now sat on what looked like a mushroom. They had dug away the former hillside for about 300 degrees around the house. As I pulled my car up next to Gordon’s, I saw the door of the house open and something fly out. I said to Gordon a moment later, “Is someone still living there?”