Amber poured me coffee and got milk out of the fridge. “I thought it was supposed to be spring,” she said. “You look like shit, by the way. She wearing you out or something?”
“Something.”
“You should’ve had my morning. I go to brush my teeth and there’s his fucking outfit in the sink. I didn’t even want to handle it.”
“Jesus,” I said. “You didn’t tell me he was slamming. Okay, you need to get out. Like today. Is he selling?”
“Well, it’s not like there’s people coming to the house. Anyways, I decided the place I’m going. Venice, California. It’s right by L.A. and they have the beach there.” She sat back down at the computer. “You want to see pictures?”
“Amber.”
“I know, I know, I know. Everybody says. It’s not going to be all that much longer.”
“You could even—Shit, okay, you’re going to do what you do. Can I get on that for a second?”
I had three messages, a Canadian pharmacy that got through the spam filter, an ad from Lowe’s and an email from a guy I hadn’t been in touch with for years, with the subject line Look at this! Nothing from Kristin. I looked through the headlines in the Times but nobody good had died. I checked Renovator’s Supply for deals, then couldn’t think of where else to go.
“Okay,” I said, “I better roll. I knew that asshole wouldn’t show up. He gets here before nine, give him directions over to Miller Brook, okay? No, actually, tell him fuck it. Nothing from Johnny, huh? We’re in great fucking shape here.”
Over at the site, Myron was back outside with the floorboards, wearing gloves and brown coveralls; the sawhorses were frozen into the mud. Jesse was upstairs hanging drywall and the two kids were in the living room standing around a heater with their thumbs up their asses. I sent the one with the tats up so Jesse could maybe start teaching him and put the bodybuilder to work insulating the rest of the downstairs; the other kid hadn’t made much progress yesterday. We should have had the plumber in already, to run PEX on top of the plywood—Holtzman had decided that while we were at it he wanted radiant heat under the floors—but that couldn’t happen until we got the fucking walls squared away. I never should have said July. This was what my life was.
I’d thought that Dana—the woman I’d been married to—didn’t come into this story, but she saw it all those years ago. Nobody would anymore: the people I deal with now see only what I show them. She and I had a big thing in high school; then I went off to Berklee and she got into RISD. I used to go down to visit her in Providence until she hooked up with somebody there. Which is part of why I went with that stupid band. Then, ten years later, when my mother died, I came down to Darien and she was visiting her parents because it was Christmas. She had a job as a graphic designer in New York, still living with that same guy. But she said he was cheating on her—it actually might’ve gone both ways—and she was talking in terms of just chucking everything, maybe going off somewhere to raise vegetables and write children’s books. Not to suspect her, but she already knew, because my father had been bragging, that I’d bought a big house and my business was making good money. So long story short. I think she was remembering me like I used to be.
Today she’d probably tell you I dragged her up here, but I remember how pumped she was when I had Jesse come over with the tractor to plow out a garden patch and she found an arrowhead; she thought she might write a book about a Mohawk Indian girl. But she couldn’t really talk with the locals—at first I didn’t blame her; it had taken me a while—and she found out the new people and weekenders had their own world that you couldn’t cross into. Jesse had the same problem with his wife—even worse, naturally, because people were always looking at her. Don’t think they didn’t look at Dana too, but for a whole other reason, which also got to be a problem. I was gone all day, and I guess when I got home I didn’t want to talk about much but what we’d done on the job today and what we were going to do tomorrow. She said she couldn’t believe I didn’t care about anything anymore. I said I couldn’t believe she had nothing to do up here—what about this, what about that. It made me sick to hear myself. Maybe she’d be glad now if she knew my little empire was falling to shit. I mean glad for me.
When we broke for lunch, I waited until Myron went into the Portosan, then took Jesse out to my truck and started the engine so we could warm up. He started taking stuff out of a paper bag. A bologna sandwich in waxed paper—like his mother had packed it for him. I bit the wrapper off my PowerBar.
“That’s your lunch?” he said. “Gonna make yourself sick. You want my orange? You better eat it first or it’s going to taste sour.”
“I’m good. How’s he working out?”
“Who, Gene? He’ll learn, he’s a good kid. That other one, though.”
“We might need all the help we can get,” I said.
“I wouldn’t give up on Johnny just yet. He might be trying to figure some stuff out. He needs to.”
“This is a fucking train wreck,” I said.
“Man? No, we got this. You’re tired, is all. Look at you. I tell you what. Me and Myron can hold things together for a week or two. And that girl—don’t sell her short. Why don’t you take your lady someplace warm?” He took a bite of his sandwich.
“I’m in a lot deeper shit than you know,” I said.
“Is it a money thing?”
“Jesse, can I just ask you? How the fuck do you stand it here?”
He put his sandwich down. “You mean as a black man.”
“Yeah, okay, that,” I said. “But Louise is gone, you go to the firehouse one night a week, go to church and that’s your life. Understand, I’m not criticizing you.”
“Black people can’t like peace and quiet? You go live in Hartford for a while. Vietnam. Which is the same goddamn place. How come you’re here? You’re a man with an education. Look, Louise gave me my choice. She was crying when she went out the door.” He picked up his sandwich again. “I better finish up.” He took a bite, swallowed hard. “I’m going to miss Billy, though. He never let on to me, but I know why that girl wouldn’t marry him. You see a lot of things in the military. I know I did. I was eighteen when I went in. Now you probably want the war stories too.”
“Not unless you want to tell me.”
“There’s a reason I don’t go down to the VFW,” he said. “I don’t want to tell anybody shit. That’s how come I’m here. You didn’t say about you.”
“I didn’t go through what you did.”
“Then don’t be a fool. Take your lady someplace nice. You keep her with you. Me and Myron can look after all this.” He took a last bite and unscrewed his thermos. “I ever got to where I couldn’t work anymore—But hey, all of us are going to get there.”
The bodybuilder kid had finished insulating the dining room, so I started with him on the walls; I had him hold up the panels while I drove the screws. I felt so lightheaded that I had to steady the driver with two hands, got a screw started crooked, chewed out the head trying to drive it in and then I couldn’t back it out, so I ended up taking a hammer to it. The mud would cover up the mess, but the kid was watching. “You and your friend can handle the rest of this,” I said. “Now that I showed you how not to do it.”