Carry Me Home (51 page)

“Mr. Dunmore,” said Peter Wilcox, “this is Ty Dorsey. He’s the man I was telling you about.”

Ty took in all of Lloyd Dunmore’s demeanor as he produced his business card, handed it to Dunmore with his left hand, his pinky flashing the gold-and-diamond ring. Ty smiled, extended his hand, which Dunmore grabbed robustly and held as he read Ty’s card aloud:

“Mr. Dorsey, it’s my pleasure to meet you,” Dunmore said. He was an older man, late fifties, heavyset but hard. “I was telling Peter—I’m going to be very frank with you—I didn’t understand all this civil rights stuff when it started and I don’t understand it all now. I’m a Christian, Mr. Dorsey. I don’t care if you’re black or white or green. But the government cares and I do understand how maybe society has been structured to keep coloreds out. But I don’t care about your color. If you can do the job, if we can work together, that’s all I want.”

“And Mr. Dunmore,” Ty said respectfully, “I don’t care about your color either. If you can do the job, and Peter’s told me of your track record, that’s what I’m concerned with. The bottom line. Hey,” Ty winked, “ya gotta eat. Ya gotta make money.”

Dunmore looked up at Ty, then to Wilcox. “Peter,” he said, “I think I’m going to like this boy.”

For an hour they talked, hammered out the details. “Then it’s set,” Dunmore finally said. “You put up three thousand, take the property in your name. I’ll put up twenty-seven thousand plus closing costs. In two years we’ll sell it. You get your ten percent plus twenty percent of the appreciation minus my carrying costs and the costs of repairs.” Ty nodded his agreement. “Stay with me, son,” Lloyd Dunmore said. “You get me off the hook on this red-lining charge and I’ll send some people your way. I just have the feeling Tyrolian Finance Corp. is maybe a little undercapitalized.”

“Maybe a little, Mr. Dunmore.” Ty leaned back, took a pack of Kools from his pocket. “Maybe a little,” Ty repeated, “but it’s moving in the right direction.” He stood. “By the way,” he said, “when do I see the property?”

“Anytime,” Peter said. “Anytime.”

Neither Peter Wilcox nor Lloyd Dunmore showed. Instead, as a favor to Peter, Lisa Fonari sat in her Capri convertible before the sprawling nineteenth-century Victorian so far out Miwok Road as to be through the pass between North and South peaks, beyond the fields and pastures and low woodland and back into a tight canyon where redwoods grew from the bottom and Miwok Road—here barely a lane wide—twisted and turned between the trunks. The sun was high and strong, the air still. Lisa had parked in a filtered shaft of light, her face tilted up. Birds chirped. Squirrels scurried. She lounged, glanced at her watch, squinched her mouth, huffed to herself, feeling used, laid back to soak up more sun—waiting, attempting to be patient, growing more and more antsy with each passing second, finally thinking, Screw Wilcox! Let him wait for his own clients. I don’t see why Bobby couldn’t know! She huffed again, gathered herself in, grasped the steering wheel, turned the ignition key, began to leave.

A late-model Chrysler sauntering up the canyon blocked her retreat. “Hello.” Ty leaned from the window, waved. “Sorry if I’m late. You’re Lisa, aren’t you?”

She backed up, reparked. He followed her, parked grill-to-grill with her Capri. “You’re Wapinski’s friend, aren’t you?”

“Yes.” Ty smiled broadly, displayed himself before her, before this lovely woman, he in his finery, his expensive if rented car, his muscular six-one frame. They stood downhill from the Victorian. The stairs and walkway were stone, laid perhaps eighty years earlier, not once repaired in all that time. “So this is it, huh?”

“That’s it.” Lisa shrugged. “How come you’re using Wilcox,” she asked, brash, forward, “instead of Bob?”

Ty looked down at her, didn’t answer. “Are you going to take me through?”

Lisa flipped a hand up the walk. Some stones had separated leaving large gaps; some had slipped one atop another; some had slid sideways out of line. The huge veranda matched the stone entry, corners sagging, boards askew, base so eaten by powder-post beetles that crossing to the door was hazardous.

“This is it, huh?” Ty repeated.

“This is it,” Lisa answered again. “She’s got six apartments inside, and the toolshed out back has its own bath and is rented out to a student from College of Marin. How come you’re not using Wapinski?”

Again Ty eyed her. Then he said, “I don’t think he wanted me to buy anything.”

Lisa smirked, thought, I wouldn’t sell this place to a friend either; but for once she held her comment.

“This is a dump,” Ty said. They passed from one room to the next, through makeshift doorways, jerry-rigged halls. The floors tilted as much as those in a fun house, creaked as if splintering under their weight. They climbed the stairs. The banister and balusters were ornate, carved, turned, and built-up, but many of the joints had slipped and even under dozens of layers of paint the gaps were wide. The separate rooms, “apartments,” were without exception messy and filthy. Every tenant was a student or ex-student. Walls had been papered with rock-concert posters or sprayed with fluorescent paint. Windows were covered with sheets or not covered at all. In one room the tenant had half a dozen photos of herself, naked, with half a dozen different partners.

“What are you going to do with it?” Lisa asked.

“With what?” Ty was nauseated. The building that he’d just sunk most of his money into was worse than anything he’d seen in Coal Hill, dirtier than most of the refugee hootches he’d seen in Viet Nam. Yet in every apartment he saw expensive items: stereos, radios, cameras, make-up mirrors, lava lamps, leather pants and jackets, musical instruments, bicycles. All the good items were covered with dirt, stained, thrown in heaps with unwashed clothes, sitting on counters with week-, month-old pots and pans and pizza boxes.

“With this place!” Lisa snapped. “You know the units are illegal. This is single-family zoning out—”

“I know.”

“So?”

“So what?”

“Do you know what you’ve bought?”

“I can see.” They moved outside, strode to the toolshed where Ty looked in, gagged, almost fell through the floor where it had rotted out and where the tenant had lifted a covering strip of plywood so as to use the hole as a garbage chute even though the ground was but two feet below and there was no place for the garbage to chute to.

“Maybe he didn’t show it to you because he didn’t think it was worth it.” Lisa was angry. Her time was being wasted, and she felt her favor was part of an overall sham she hadn’t been told about.

“Maybe he jus don’t believe in me.” Ty too was angry. He needed to justify himself, needed this woman to know that he knew what he was doing, to know he hadn’t been taken, to know he was on the move, advancing. “Look there,” Ty said indicating nothing particular but gesturing toward the house. “Right now she’s making $720 each month. That’ll carry it. More than carry it. And I’ve got a silent partner. In a year we’ll gut it; restore it. This place is going to be a mansion. It’s going to be worth a quarter million dollars. You watch. You’ll see.”

Tuesday, 15 June 1971—He had been winning but now was no longer winning. He was anxious. He did not let it show. Instead he joked, continued to work methodically, drew on his every reserve of patience. His last three transactions had fallen apart in escrow. He had not closed a deal since mid-April. There had been no commissions. He had no sales in escrow, no imminent prospects. The market spurt had soured and the entire office staff was in a slump. And now these reports: one more load of shit dumped on his head, one more load to carry through the day.

Dan Coleman poked his head through the door of the conference room, saw Wapinski with the morning paper, cleared his throat. “Hi.” Wap looked up. “What’s happening?” Coleman said.

“Hey,” Bobby answered. “Didja hear the one about the landlord with two vices?” Coleman began chuckling even before Wapinski delivered the punch line. “He became the lessor of two evils.”

Again Coleman laughed. Then he said, “You get to the local yet?”

“No,” Bobby answered.

“I’ll wait till you read it.”

“Read what? There’s all this stuff ...” He paused, turned back to the front page, read the four-line headline aloud. “‘Viet Nam Archives—I: Pentagon Study Traces Three Decades of Growing US Role in Indochina.’ Did you read this?”

“I only glanced at it. Probably read it later. That’s yesterday’s, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. Listen to this. ‘A vast study of how the United States went to war in Indochina, conducted by the Pentagon three years ago, demonstrates that four administrations progressively developed a sense of commitment to non-Communist Vietnam, a readiness to fight the North to protect the South and an ultimate frustration with this effort—’”

“Yeah,” Coleman interrupted him. “Talk about a sense of commitment, have you met Olivia yet?”

“Who?”

Coleman patted his hand on the air signaling Wapinski to keep it down. “Olivia,” he whispered. “Twenty-seven. I don’t know where Peter finds em. Goddamn, Man, another knockout. Between staring at Sharon and ogling Olivia, I’m never goina get anything done down here.”

“Well”—Bobby stood—“tell me.” For a minute they stood in the doorway peering into the hall, looking like two shy high-school sophomores hoping to catch a glimpse of the senior cheerleaders, Coleman sighing, offering to help Bobby train Olivia.

They realized how silly they were being, chuckled at themselves. Coleman said, “Read the part on The Res. Today’s paper. We’ll talk after the meeting.”

“Good.”

“Why’s it Tuesday this week, anyway?”

“Ah, Peter’s got business in Santa Rosa tomorrow.”

“New office?”

“Hasn’t told me.” Coleman left. Slyly Bobby gazed forward, hoping to catch a glimpse of the new agent.

An hour later all of the salespeople were seated about the table in the conference room. They’d completed old business, new business, introductions to Olivia Taft, Peter’s bottom-line talk. “I expect people to deliver, to produce, to keep their commitments. Maybe that’s hard but I’m not doing anybody a favor here by letting you work if you’re not making money. That’s the bottom line....”

Peter turned the meeting over to Bobby, left for an appointment.

The salespeople began chatting. Al went to the kitchenette for more coffee; Jane Boswell passed around a tray of homemade tea cakes. Bobby turned, waiting for Al, attempting to let his gaze pass nonchalantly over Olivia. He raised his eyes to Sharon, glanced to the other women, trying to hide that he knew they knew he was ogling the new saleswoman.

Olivia Taft was beautiful, another beautiful woman in an office blessed with well-dressed, good-looking women. She had all the perfect visual qualities of Sharon, the best of Jane and of Lisa—yet she looked nothing at all like any of them. Her hair was dark, yet her skin was light, almost ashen—winter colors that she accentuated with black eyeliner, crimson lipstick, a white dress with a high-contrast pattern of small navy roses. Her eyes were blue, her earrings, bracelets, sandals silver.

Bobby’s heart thumped. Somehow, to him, in contrast to his personal life, it did not seem fair. “Respect,” he said quietly. Al Bartecchi poured coffee. “Respect for your clients, for people in general.”

Lisa clicked her tongue, her eyes flashed to the ceiling. Bobby glanced at her. “Only kidding.” She smiled sheepishly. But she was not kidding and everyone knew it, tolerating her as she tolerated Bobby’s pontifications.

“There are three sayings that irritate me in this business and I’m going to ask you to refrain from using them in this office.”

“Is this from Hal and Sal?” Liza Caldicott interrupted.

“No.” Bobby was terse. “It’s from me.”

“Then we don’t ...” Liza began.

“They’re not orders,” Bobby said.

“Then ...” Liza began again.

“Perhaps we should listen first,” Olivia said firmly. Her tone was sweet but she did not smile either with her mouth or her eyes.

“So say it.” Liza fell against the back of her chair, crossed her arms.

“‘Buyers are liars; sellers are story tellers.’” Bobby delivered the real estate salesman’s axiom. “Don’t say it. Don’t think it. It separates you from your clients. And ‘Lookie-loos,’ as a label for potential purchasers, ‘nosy neighbors’ or not ... that’s a slur. The one I dislike most—please, do not refer to a property owner who’s attempting to market his own property as a ‘Friz-bo.’ Do you know the general public rates real estate agents next to used car salesmen? That disrespect and distrust may simply be a reaction to the disrespect the average agent shows the general public. Let’s not do it.”

Without further discussion, without comment, the meeting broke. Only Dan Coleman remained. With his notes he had Tuesday’s paper. “You read it yet?”

“The Pentagon ...”

“The local. Today’s. Look here. Eight hundred and seventy-six units.”

“Eight hundred? Whoa!”

“Up at The Res. It’s already approved. Last night. Some developer from San Diego. God those fuckin idiots want to fuck up northern California just like they’ve done down there.”

“Eight hundred!” Bobby repeated. He took the paper from Dan, laid it open on the conference table. There was a schematic of proposed streets, lots and improvements.