Good Faith (34 page)

I turned on my heel and stomped out.

He really was the only one capable of remodeling the clubhouse and making the new work disappear into the old, but I was fed up with him. As I drove back to the office, I tried this idea out in several ways. Fed up. Fed up with Gottfried. Not kidding. Who did he think he was. And so on. Maybe I could get Dale by himself.

Marcus was gone. It was after lunch by now, and when I walked into the office, Jane was just hanging up her coat. I said, “Where did you have lunch?”

“Laguna.”

“Very high class.”

“I just had an appetizer-size plate of tortellini with pesto sauce.”

I went into my office a little abruptly, still annoyed with Gottfried. Jane followed me. She stood in the doorway. She said, “So. Did you find Gottfried?”

“I did, unfortunately.”

“Did you finalize the deal?”

“I did not.”

“You seem—uh, pissed off.”

“I am.”

“I’ve never seen you pissed off before.”

“Frankly, Jane, I think this process is getting to everyone.” I straightened the folders on my desk.

She stood there with her arms crossed over her chest. She said, “It’s taxing, I admit. I mean, for me, the hardest part is that there’s always something more to do. I focus on something, like fitting some investors to a particular deal or putting together loan papers, and it’s a tremendous effort to get that one thing done, and as soon as it’s done, there’s this moment when I realize that that one thing, as hard as it was, wasn’t even the point.”

“Like getting the permits.”

“We haven’t even started building yet. The thought of that terrifies me.”

“Or selling. Try thinking about that. These houses are as expensive as one of Gottfried’s houses. He builds and sells at the most two or three of those a year. I’ve had a couple of his houses on the market for six months or more. Who says there’re buyers for a hundred of those houses?”

“Marcus,” she said.

We stared at each other.

She said, “Don’t listen to me.”

“What?”

“I don’t want to say it.”

“Say what?”

“Say anything negative.”

“Then don’t say anything negative.”

“Okay.”

We looked at each other again, both knowing that she was going to say something negative. She said, “Marcus was a stranger when you all took him in here.”

“Yeah.”

“I mean, think about that.” She looked at me soberly, giving me a moment to think about it.

“I have.”

“I’m going to say something.” She was still looking at me, and without her customary air of faint amusement.

“Say it.”

“Okay, I will. No one who knew Marcus before would have ever taken him in like you all did.”

“Is he a crook? Is there something we should know?”

“Well, it’s not that. It’s more like he’s a crackpot. He’s always had big ideas, but no one ever listened to them before.”

“No one is a hero in his own hometown, Jane. You know that as well as I do. The people who know you are used to pooh-poohing you.”

“Maybe. But I remember when Marcus first met Gordon and everyone. He called me and told me about it, and he was so excited, and I had no idea who anyone was, and I thought, Someone has to warn these people.”

“Of what? Are there things he’s done in the past that I should know?”

“No. But I’ll tell you why. No one ever gave him a chance before.”

Together we let this sink in.

“Are you saying we’re the biggest suckers ever?”

“Maybe. Of course, that makes me a sucker too. I mean, when I told my sister I was working for Marcus and had put some of my assets in, she told me I needed my head examined.”

“Gordon is cross-collateralized up the butt.”

“I know that.”

I sat down in my desk chair. I said, “You’re right. I’m sorry you said anything. I’m sorry I listened.”

“I should tell you something else.”

“What?”

“We haven’t paid your electric bill, and they’re going to cut you off.”

“You mean in the condo?”

She nodded.

“When?”

“Next couple of days.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that until now? Were you going to tell me, or just wait until they cut me off like before?”

“Well, actually, since I haven’t spoke to Marcus in a few days, I don’t know what the plan is now. I got the warning last week, and I told him about it, and he said he was going to negotiate it but then we had that argument so I lost track of what he’s done. It may be okay, but maybe not.”

“Why don’t I just pay it?”

“You could do that.”

“Have we reached some kind of a crisis, Jane? I don’t know what’s going on. Do you? Is there something you argued about that you haven’t told me about?”

She gave me what I would have to say was a calculating stare, went to the door of my office, looked out into the other office, and came back in. I said, “He’s not here.”

“He said not to tell you what we were arguing about because it was too embarrassing. Anyway, how did you know we were arguing?”

“Mike heard you from outside the door and went back out into the parking lot to wait things out. When I pulled in, he told me. What he heard didn’t sound exactly like an argument, Jane, it sounded more like a knock-down drag-out fight.”

She burst into tears. “He’s seeing someone.”

“Who?”

“Someone I know. A friend of mine.”

“Mary King.”

She looked at me in surprise.

“I figured that one out a few weeks ago.”

“I’m not going to say yes and I’m not going to say no.”

I took this as a yes. I said, “But why should that cause a knock-down drag-out fight?”

“I hate it. I’m caught in the middle, for one thing. Linda has no idea. She comes over to my place and she says to me, ‘What’s going on, Jane? Why is he acting so strange? Do you know anything? Does he need to go to a therapist or anything?’ and then—uh, this other person comes over and says, ‘Does he love me? Is he going to leave her?’ And of course he’s stringing both of them along. I’ve been going crazy.”

“What is he going to do?”

“What do you think? What would he do?”

“I have no idea.”

“He’s going to play it by ear. At this point he’s still planning to have it both ways. But this other person, I know she isn’t going to stand for that. She’s not that type. That’s what we were arguing about. He said it was my job to help him keep things going, that that was what the project needed, and if it all blew up right now we’d lose everything we’ve put into it.”

“Why would that happen?”

“It would just fall apart. I know it would. I can’t say why.” She heaved a deep sigh.

I said, “I don’t see how Mary King would jeopardize the whole project, but maybe it’s a psychological thing. She’s not an investor or anything, is she?”

Jane shook her head. After a moment, she said, “Joey, Marcus has a heart about the size of a pea. Once I said to him, ‘Watch out, Marcus, your heart is going to swell to the size of a walnut, and then it will burst,’ and he just laughed. He doesn’t care about anyone else.”

“Oh, Jane.” I thought this was typical of a woman, to realize that a guy wasn’t putting her first and so taking that to mean that he was heartless. My experience of Marcus wasn’t like that at all. I said, “I’m sure it’s not that bad. I’m not saying there’s nothing to worry about, but I think when you don’t talk to someone for a week and you spend that time brooding about the things you hold against them, that makes everything look worse. Make up with him, go along with him for now. What is there to be gained by blowing his cover? Nothing. He could get over Mary King. Does he love her?”

“I don’t know. It’s not—”

“Does he know?”

She shrugged.

“So just go along with him. Make up with him. See what happens.”

She nodded and went out of my office. Marcus came in about ten minutes later, and after five minutes or so, I heard her say something to him, and I heard him reply. Their voices were too low for me to make out, but the conversation went on and seemed amicable. In about five minutes, Jane came in and put an envelope on my desk, addressed to the electric company, bearing a stamp. She said, “You mail it, just so you know it’s paid.”

Later that day I went out to find Gottfried, who was also in a better mood, and he said as I walked up to him on the porch of the house he was building, “All right. Dale and I talked about this. You’re right. You sell these houses and I’ll take that job, and in the spring I start work on that lot I got in Deacon. Wait till you see what I’m planning to build there.”

CHAPTER

24

I
HAD A DATE
with Susan Webster. It was a real date, not a casual getting together. I put on a jacket and a tie, and when I picked her up she had her hair done up on her head with wispy curled tendrils floating down on the sides and the back, and she had a black dress with a wide neckline that showed off her collarbone and a tight-fitting beaded top. When she turned around for a moment, I saw that instead of a zipper up the back there was a row of small buttons, maybe forty of them. I said, “How did you button all those?”

She laughed. “I had my neighbor’s sixteen-year-old daughter come over. I said if she buttoned all these buttons, I would loan her this dress for the prom. It’s an antique.”

I didn’t ask who was going to unbutton her, because I knew.

I took her to the Rochester Hotel, a resort across the river from Roaring Falls, kind of a famous resort from before the Second World War that had revived in the last couple of years and become a luxurious spa and supper club. They had upscale food with a chef from California and a band and dancing. I knew how to dance, though I hadn’t danced since my marriage, but I had come up with this plan when I was looking at my ads for Gottfried’s houses and right on the facing page was a picture of a couple dancing in an ad for the Rochester. Dinner and dancing seemed suddenly exotic and fun and elegant and completely nonlocal.

I liked the way Susan got out of the car and stood looking at the Rochester Hotel while I handed the keys to the parking valet. She was relaxed. She surveyed the façade of the hotel and waited for me; then we ambled up the steps. She smiled at people we passed, in a gracious way, but didn’t look at them as if she were curious about them. When the maître d’ showed us a table not far from the door to the kitchen, she smiled at him and said, easy as you please, “Oh, do you mind? I’d rather sit over there.” She gestured toward a banquette under the windows. He showed us very smoothly to the banquette, and she said, “Thank you. This is much better, don’t you think, Joe?” She paused just for a moment, and the maître d’ pulled out her chair and she sat down. When he spread her napkin over her lap, she had just the proper degree of nonchalance about it. She glanced around the room. She said, “They’ve done a nice job refurbishing the room. Look at the faux marble woodwork. I can do that. Do you like it?”

“This is the first time I’ve seen it.”

“It’s lots of fun. Do you know, I met a woman from New York. They have a big apartment on Park Avenue. She had the whole place marbleized.” She leaned forward. “She paid twenty thousand dollars just for paint.” She laughed merrily. “I mean, it’s time-consuming, but it’s not six months’ work! I did it to my bathroom last weekend. You’ll have to come up and see it. It’s very funny. This tiny bathroom from the thirties, very utilitarian, with faux marble around the doorway and along the baseboards.”

“It sounds great.”

“Well, it is, but don’t tell anyone you caught me being immodest.”

She picked up the menu. I appreciated how seriously she looked at it—not like a person who was hungry but like a person who meant to enjoy herself. The food was Italian, but not the usual sort of Italian you found in our neighborhood, just pasta and plenty of red sauce and sausage.

“I love risotto,” she said. “I thought I would order the saffron risotto with truffles and slivers of fennel, and maybe the salad of greens with olive oil and balsamic vinegar.”

“I eat Italian all the time, and I’ve never heard of half of those things.”

“I make risotto. And gnocchi. I much prefer them to pasta.”

“What do you recommend?”

She looked the menu up and down.

“I would try the bruschetta.” That was pieces of toast with chopped tomatoes on top. “Then the crab tortelloni with the light chanterelle sauce. There’s only three of those, they should be nice. And then, are you hungry?”

I nodded, but really I was horny. She went on. “Hmm. I would have a bite if you tried the chicken, prosciutto, and spinach roulade. I don’t think the chef would put that on the menu if he didn’t enjoy making it. It’s rather delicate.”

“Have you made that too?”

“Something like it, but I like to use chard. It has a brighter flavor, if you’re careful not to cook it too long.”

“I’ll have all those things.”

She smiled and fingered one of the pale tendrils of hair that curled around her ear. Her smile got wider. She said, “Now you have to tell me what’s gotten back to you about me. I mean, about what I’ve said about you.”

“I haven’t heard a thing.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“No.”

“I thought the grapevine was working all the time around here. I mean, they practically promised me that if I liked you and found you attractive, you’d know within days.” She was grinning.

“Who promised?”

“Well, my mother and her sister, but they promised on behalf of all the intermediate contacts.”

“Everyone has been very quiet, so you’ll have to tell me yourself.”

The waiter came and Susan ordered, not forgetting the wine, which was some sort of Italian white. When he was gone, she said, “Well, I am in a spot now.”

“I think you can handle it.”

“Maybe. Let me see. I said you were cute.”

“Everyone thinks I’m cute.”

“Oh. Well, I said you had a very melodious deep voice and that I enjoyed talking to you before bedtime.”

“That’s rather suspicious.”

“Yes, isn’t it? And I said you have very appealing hands.” She reached across the table and took one of my hands. She looked at it for a long moment, then said, “Yes, I was right about that. And grace. You are graceful.”

“
You
are graceful.”

She smiled again. I was enjoying myself very much. There was something about the way she said things that made replies easy. I didn’t have the sense I had often had with Felicity that there was no answer possible because what she said was unexpected and a little challenging. I thought I knew Felicity, but she perplexed me. I didn’t think I knew Susan, but she was comfortable. She took my uneasiness upon herself and made it go away. My mother would have called that
manners
. My mother was going to like her very much, I thought, but for the time being Susan Webster was mine alone.

We talked and then we didn’t talk. The food came, and it was delicious, especially the bruschetta, which for some reason was far more tasty than I expected chopped tomatoes on toast could be. The tortelloni, which were large envelopes of pasta shaped like hats, had a light, delicate filling, and the spinach rolls were a bit more pedestrian but still good. I said, “The only thing is that I’m still hungry.” She looked up and signaled the waiter. When he came over, very eager to serve us—her—she ordered again, this time thin slices of veal in a lemon-artichoke sauce, and we shared that. It was a perfect meal, and as soon as I had finished the last of the bread and the sauce, I moved around the table until I was next to her on the banquette, and I put my hand behind her neck and leaned toward her and kissed her. When her lips softened and she bent into me, I put my arm around her and deepened my kiss and our embrace. She put both her arms around me. We kissed for a long time, and when we opened our eyes, the waiter was standing there with a bottle of champagne. He said, “We have this excellent Chandon. It’s really very very good.”

I said, “Let’s have it.”

Susan said, “Oh, let’s do!”

After the champagne, which the waiter poured with a great flourish and a conspiratorial look at me, we went into the next room and danced. Then we went back to our table and drank more champagne and ate crème brûlée with pears, and then we danced some more. Of course she was a good dancer, and of course I was a good dancer, because that was her great talent, to bring out the talents of those around her. She made requests of the band. The band members said, “Oh! That’s a good one. We know that one,” and then played the numbers perfectly. The waiter set dishes in front of us with pleasure and in anticipation of our pleasure, and after watching us dance, other couples got up and danced, too, and laughed and joked with us. At midnight, we were still dancing, and the band was still playing, and I said, “I don’t think I’ve ever had so much fun.”

She said, “Let’s go back to my place,” and kissed me. I paid the check and we went out to the car. The valet had gone home. The car was far away. I held her tightly under my arm, almost smothering her, but she hung on to me and turned her nose into the wool of my coat, and the air was full of tiny bright prickles of snow that swirled and fluttered in the veranda lights and the lights of the parking lot, and I felt as if Susan Webster had designed this night for this purpose, for my enjoyment, like the meal and the conversation and the dancing.

All of this was joyously expected. I had prolonged our courtship, retarded my wishes and expectations, and now, driving toward her little house, the moments were especially sweet and smooth. I didn’t know how she would be making love, but I did know how she was, and so it was a perfect combination of familiar and exotic, known and new. She seemed to understand this and feel the same way, because she welcomed me into her house with a kind of decorum. She took my coat and hung it in the closet. She offered me something hot to drink. She showed me where to set my shoes and gave me a towel to wipe them off. The place was familiar to me, but I appreciated the way she had left certain lights on and turned off others, to make the progress to the bedroom inviting and easy.

In her bedroom, where one lamp was lit, she sat on the bed. One by one, I undid the forty buttons. Then she went into her closet and, as naturally as you please, took out a pale silk nightgown that looked more like a slip and put it on. I undressed down to my shorts and laid my clothes over the back of a chair. She came over to me and rested her head against my chest. We were quite sober in spite of the champagne, what with the food and the exercise. She sighed, then said, “I’ll be right back,” and went into the bathroom.

I stood at the foot of her bed, looking at a large picture of a tree branch hung with oranges and orange blossoms and shiny green leaves, all very realistic and lacquered-looking but much larger than life. When she came out of the bathroom, I said, “You can almost smell these.”

“Aren’t they great? My friend in Spain painted that. Her name is Lupe. That’s her signature. She doesn’t use her last name. Have you ever tried cocaine?”

I turned to look at her. She was holding a thick greenish piece of glass, about the size of a small windowpane, and on it was a razor blade and a little white hill of what I recognized as cocaine but had never actually seen before. I said, “No.”

“Do you mind?”

“In what sense?”

“Do you mind if we snort some? Or if I snort some? It’s fun.”

“What’s it like?”

“It’s
compelling
. It’s not dangerous. We aren’t going to go anywhere. It’s not like LSD or mescaline or that sort of thing, where something can go wrong unexpectedly.”

“Except a drug bust.”

“Except a drug bust, but there isn’t going to be a drug bust. I don’t sell cocaine. I am not a suspicious character. Am I?”

She smiled winningly, and I said, “Not in that sense, no.”

She sat down on the bed with the pane of glass on her knees and arranged the white powder with her customary grace and ease. In a moment or two, she had set up two lines and pushed the rest off to the side. I had seen it all in the movies, but in the movies there was a charged air about it: danger, anticipation. Here it was very cozy. The room was warmly lit. The bed looked inviting. I had a little buzz from the champagne still. Above our heads, the beautiful branch of orange blossom threw off a glow. She reached into a bedside drawer and took out a short straw. She said, “In the movies they do it with money, like a hundred-dollar bill, but it always seems to me that some of it is going to get caught. Money isn’t smooth, and money has a lot of germs on it, doesn’t it? It’s very show-offy to do it with a hundred-dollar bill.”

“Somehow I think that a hundred has fewer germs on it than a one. Or maybe they are just a better class of germs.”

She leaned forward and drew the line of white powder into her nose, snorted a couple of times, and smiled at me. I said, “Do you do this often?”

“Are we good enough friends for me to answer that question?”

“That would be for you to decide.”

“There we go,” she said, and grinned. She looked at me for a long moment, very friendly and intent, and then she kissed me. There was a faint acrid odor that was more than an odor on her lips. It was almost an electrical sensation. I could not help but notice that her kiss was softer and more intense than her earlier kisses had been. My desire, which had vanished as soon as I said the words
drug bust,
flooded back, and I gently stretched her backward against the pillows. She continued to kiss me. There was something odd about it, as if she was so involved in kissing me that a part of me, the part that wasn’t kissing her but was noticing the bed and the room and her body, was alone. She kissed me and kissed me, and I went in and out of the kiss, alternately absorbed in what my lips and tongue were feeling and what I was thinking, which was that the evening had taken an unexpected turn and I wasn’t sure what I thought about it. She broke away and murmured, “Oh, that was good. You should try it. It can’t hurt to try a line. It’s not like heroin. One line doesn’t make you an addict. I promise.”

I looked at her. She didn’t look odd or overexcited or drugged. She looked like she was having a good time kissing me. So I sat up. She sat up and put the glass on my knees and handed me the straw. I remembered what I had seen in the movies and snorted up the line. It burned and I rubbed my nose; then I looked at Susan’s face. While I was looking at it, it got brighter and bigger, not as if it had changed shape, but as if everything else around her face had dropped away. The only way to describe it is to say that her face got remarkably important. After a moment, she laughed; then she started kissing me again.