"I ought to sell tickets."
"And the work you do, it's kind of dangerous, isn't it? Like you're tearing up the house."
"It's safe enough." Especially if you stay out of the room while I'm working.
"No, I mean, dangerous to the house. It feels like it's being knackered, you know? Cut up and boiled down for glue and fertilizer."
"I know what knackering is," said Don.
"You're not hurting it?"
"The lath and plaster is nothing. It has to come off so I can bring the house up to code. I'll put new studs in between the timbers to take nails for, like, hanging pictures or whatever. And for outlet and switch boxes and TV cable outlets. Then I'll put on wallboard and it'll be good as new. Better."
"I don't know how it could be better than new," she said. "It was so beautiful then."
"You weren't there," said Don.
"But can't you just feel it, here in the house? How he loved her?"
"Who?"
"Dr. Bellamy. He built this for his bride. I looked it up in the library, back when I was a student here. That's what I majored in, you know. Library science. I was going to take a job in Providence, Rhode Island. I was about to get my master's degree."
"And?"
"Oh, I found all kinds of wonderful things about the Bellamys. They were so much in love, and so much a part of life in Greensboro. Soirees, parties, dances. Not a month went by without some mention of him or his wife or their house in the newspaper."
"Any pictures?" asked Don.
"Some lovely ones. When they were young. And later, too, when they were getting into late middle age. Not a one when they were old. When they died they ran youthful pictures of them. I think that's the way everyone thought of them their whole lives. Forever young."
"I meant, any pictures of the house. To help in my renovation."
"No," she said. "Except the outside, but I don't think that's changed all that much."
"I suppose not. No obvious add-ons, anyway."
"Sorry I couldn't help."
"No, it's fine. I'm not restoring the place anyway, I just thought if there was some special touch or something—doesn't matter."
"There are all kinds of wonderful things in this house," she said. "But the house keeps its secrets." Then her face darkened. "I'm sorry I've been bothering you. I know it drives you crazy, but I just can't seem to stop myself. My old roommate Lissy used to do that to me. Sneak up behind me while I was studying or something. And all of a sudden I'd sense she was there and nearly jump out of my skin."
"Well, you've never done that to me."
"Of course not, but you know, looking over your shoulder—that drives you crazy."
He waved it off as if it were nothing. Then cursed himself silently for being a hammered man. Grow up Southern, and you just can't help but do the polite thing even when you've already decided not to do it.
"Drives everybody crazy," she said. "Lissy was just... difficult."
She had been going to say another word. Something nastier.
"So why did you room with her?" said Don.
"Younger girl, took her under my wing," said Sylvie. "She was a senior, and I don't think she would have graduated."
"Would have?" asked Don.
"She left," said Sylvie. "She was never that serious about school."
"But you didn't finish either?"
Sylvie shook her head.
"So you were close after all? I mean, why else would her leaving cause you not to finish your program and go take that job?"
Sylvie shook her head. "My life story is too boring for anyone to waste a minute on it." She smiled wanly. "I hated her at the time, but you don't know how often I've wished I could just see her again. Now that she's not annoying me, you see. I miss her a little. She was so exuberant. Headstrong. She found this place. The owner was going to close it down, but she was able to talk him into letting us stay here till we both graduated at the end of the next year."
"What did your family think when you dropped out?" asked Don.
"They did what they always do. They stayed dead."
It sounded like a joke, and then it didn't. "Do you mean that?" he asked. "They're dead?"
"I'm an orphan. Put myself through school. I had a scholarship, but housing and books and food and all that, I earned it all. And grad school, I worked for every dime. And I wasn't in debt, either. I paid my way."
Well, not anymore, Don thought churlishly.
"Dr. Bellamy and his wife lived here until they died in the flu epidemic in 1918. But they were so old by then it wasn't sad, really, it was kind of sweet that they went together, so neither one had to stay behind and grieve."
Don had nothing to say to that. How often had he wished he could have died in the same car that killed his baby?
"But how awful of me," said Sylvie. "I was forgetting. Your wife and daughter."
"What do you know about them?" he snapped at once. Then relented: "I'm sorry. I just don't talk about them usually."
"No, I just... your engineer friend told that realtor lady the first day you came here. How your ex-wife got custody of your daughter and then they died in a car accident."
"What the newspaper didn't tell you was that my wife was so drunk and drugged up she didn't even fasten the car seat to the car."
"Was it in the papers?" asked Sylvie. "I don't get a paper."
Don could hardly imagine how isolated her life in this house had been.
"How many years have you been living like this?" he asked.
"I don't know. A long time."
"What happened to you? I mean, you were in grad school, you were going somewhere. You had a job lined up."
"They were expanding the children's section of the city library, starting some new programs with grade school kids. That was my thesis project, kind of. The effects of competitive versus cooperative reading programs for children in community libraries."
"So why didn't you finish your degree and take the job?"
"For a man who lives and works alone, you sure have a lot of questions."
"Look, I didn't start this conversation," said Don.
She glared at him, then turned and stalked upstairs. Don looked at the pizza box on the floor. Keep up your strength, even if you're surrounded by hypersensitive crazy people. He got up and brought it back to the cot and ate another bite. It was cold now and tasted nasty.
Why should he feel bad because he offended Sylvie Delaney? She was the one who kept intruding on him.
Yeah, right, it's always other people's fault, isn't that right, Don.
In frustration he took the biggest surviving piece of pizza and flung it against the wall. He had expected it to stick, at least for a minute. But it didn't even leave a stain, just bounced off and fell down among his tools.
Got to stop throwing things against the wall.
He went over and found the piece of pizza, put it back in the box, and carried the whole thing outside to the garbage can. It was late. He had to get up and pay off an extortionist in the morning.
11
Hot Water
In the event it turned out to be no big deal. The lawyer was in a suit, a youngish guy who looked like his life was full of disappointment. As if his smile had once been eager, but now it was wry, and soon it would be cynical. He wasn't going to live like the dudes in L.A. Law. He was just going to meet working-class guys in parking lots and take their hard-earned money from them as a payoff to ensure they didn't get sued by some faceless jerk in Florida. Not much of a career, really.
The lawyer had the quit-claim. It said the right things. No tricks as far as Don could see. The lawyer didn't even mention cash. Extortionists generally don't want trouble. Nobody knows better than a lawyer how much pain a lawsuit can be. Twenty thousand without a court struggle is better than a hundred thousand with. Such was Don's upbringing that when he handed over the cashier's check, having satisfied himself that the quit-claim was legitimate, he actually said, "Thanks very much," before he could stop himself.