"There just happens to be a vacancy in Happy Acres if you are interested." They were.
He reminded them about the cars. They said they'd take care of that matter first thing in the morning.
By supper-time, he'd leased twenty of the houses by making twenty phone calls.
"There's something wrong," Homer said to his wife. "But there's money in it."
"It's just that you don't understand," said Elaine. "There may be a perfectly good reason why Mr. Steen can't explain it all to you."
"But it means we have to give up our trip to Europe. And after we had got our passports and all."
"We can go to Europe later. You'll never get a chance like this again."
"It worries me," said Homer.
"Oh, you're always worried over things that never happen. Mr. Steen is satisfied and the people you have leased to are, so why are you worrying?"
"But where are these people? They aren't living in the houses and yet they talk as if they were. And some of them asked me how I got away with it or words to that effect. They asked it as if they admired me for being slick in some kind of shady deal, and if it turns out that I am smart, I'd like to know just how I managed…"
"Forget it," Elaine said. "You aren't smart and you never were. If I didn't keep behind you, pushing all the time…"
"Yes, dear," said Homer. He'd heard it all before.
"And quit your worrying."
He tried to, but he couldn't.
The next morning, he drove to Happy Acres and parked across the road from the gate. From seven o'clock until nine, he counted forty-three cars coming out of the development. Some of the people in them he recognized as those he had leased the houses to. Many of them waved to him.
At 9:30, he drove in through the gate and went slowly down the road.
The houses still were empty.
When he got back to the office, there were people waiting for him. The block was clogged with cars that gleamed with newness.
He did a rushing business. No one, it turned out, was interested in seeing the houses. Most of them had seen them earlier. All they wanted was a lease. He filled out the forms as rapidly as he could and raked in the cheques and cash.
Some other people showed up. Word had got around, they said, that there were vacancies in the Happy Acres tract. Yes, he said, there were. Just a few of them. He reminded them about the cars.
The last man in line, however, did not want to lease a house.
"My name is Fowler," he said. "I represent the Contractors' and Builders' Association. Maybe you can help me."
"I've got another house, if that is what you want," said Homer.
"I don't need a house. I have one, thanks."
"Pay you to sell it and get in on this deal. The newest thing in housing. A completely new concept."
Fowler shook his head. "All I want to know is, how do I get hold of Steen?"
"No trouble at all," said Homer. "You just go out to Happy Acres. He has an office there."
"I've been out there a dozen times. He is never in. Usually the office is locked."
"I never have any trouble finding him, although I don't see him often. I'm too busy handling the property."
"Can you tell me how he does it, Mr. Jackson?"
"How he does what? How he is always out?"
"No. How he can sell a house for five thousand dollars."
"He doesn't sell. He leases."
"Don't pull that one on me. It's the same as selling. And he can't build for anywhere near that kind of money. He's losing a good twenty thousand or more on every house out there."
"If a man wants to lose his money…"
"Mr. Jackson," said Fowler, "that is not the point at all. The point is that it's unfair competition."
"Not if he leases," Homer pointed out. "If he sold, it might be."
"If this keeps on, it'll put every contractor in the area out of business."
"That," said Homer, "would be no more than simple justice in a lot of cases. They throw up a shack with plenty of glitter and charge a fancy price and…"
"Nevertheless, Mr. Jackson, none of them intend to be put out of business."
"And you're going to sue," guessed Homer.
"We certainly intend to."
"Don't look at me. I only lease the places."
"We intend to get out an injunction against your leasing them."
"You make the second one," Homer informed him, annoyed.
"The second what?"
"The real estate boys sent a guy like you out here several weeks ago. He made a lot of threats and nothing's happened yet. He was bluffing, just like you."
"Let me set your mind at rest," said Fowler. "I'm not doing any bluffing."
He got up from his chair and stalked stiffly out.
Homer looked at his watch. It was long past lunchtime. He went down to the drugstore for a sandwich and a cup of coffee. The place was empty and he had the counter to himself.
He sat hunched over the lunch and thought about it, trying to get all the queer goings-on straightened out into some sort of logic. But the only thing he could think about was that Steen wore his shoes on the wrong feet.
Wearily, still worried, Homer went back to the office. There were people waiting, with their new cars parked outside. He leased houses right and left.
Apparently the word was spreading. The house-seekers drifted in all afternoon. He leased four more houses before it was time to close.
It was funny, he thought, very, very funny how the word had got around. He hadn't advertised in the last three weeks and they still were coming in.
Just as he was getting ready to lock up, Morgan strode in breezily. He had a package underneath his arm.
"Here you are, pal," he said. "I told you I'd bring you something. Caught them just an hour or two ago."
The package was beginning to get soggy. Homer took it gingerly. "Thanks very much," he said in a doubtful voice.
"Think nothing of it. I'll bring you more in a week or two."
As soon as Morgan left, Homer closed the blinds and unwrapped the package warily.
Inside were brook trouttrout fresh-caught, with the ferns in which they had been wrapped not even wilting yet.
And there was no trout stream closer than a couple of hundred miles!
Homer stood and shivered. For there was no point in pretending ignorance, no point in repeating smugly to himself that it was all right. Even at five thousand a deal, there still was something wrongvery badly wrong.
He had to face it. They were beginning to close in on him. Fowler had sounded as if he might mean business and the Real Estate Association undoubtedly was lying in ambush, waiting for him to make one little slip. And when he made that slip, they'd snap the trap shut.
To protect himself, he had to know what was going on. He could no longer go at it blind. Knowing, he might be able to go on. He might know when to quit. And that time, he told himself, might have been as early as this afternoon.
He stood there, with the fish and ferns lying in the wet wrapping paper on the desk, and envisioned a long street of houses, and behind that long street of houses, another identical street of houses, and behind the second street, anotherstreet after street, each behind the other, each exactly like the other, fading out of sight on a flat and level plain.
And that was the way it must beexcept there was no second street of houses. There was just the one, standing lone and empty, and yet, somehow, with people living in them.
Lease them a second time, Steen had said, and a third time and a fourth. Don't you worry about a thing. Let me handle it. Leave the worry all to me. You just keep on leasing houses.
And Homer leased one house and the people moved, not into the house he'd leased them, but into the second identical house immediately behind it, and he leased the first house yet again and the people moved into the third, also identical, also directly behind the first and second house, and that was how it was.