Good Faith (36 page)

“What?”

“Staying power. That’s all. They aren’t smarter or even better organized or morally superior or more ruthless or whatever. They just have the wherewithal to last longer.”

“How do you get that?”

“I was going to say luck, but really it’s just recognizing that that’s what you need. And I recognize that.” He sighed.

I admit that all through this conversation I had been thinking of my own savings account and my net worth. Did I have any “poker money”? Did I care that George Sloan and Mike Lovell, two guys I had no respect for, were busy making money hand over fist while I was playing it safe? I didn’t know, and since I didn’t know I didn’t say anything about my funds, but the temptation was full and pressing. Some natural caution held me back, but its hold on my tongue was slight, and driving through the countryside with Marcus came suddenly to seem like an unexpected dilemma or test. I knew this was true: that if I said anything at all, made even the slightest or most distant reference to my reserve funds, Marcus would have them out of me as he had had everything out of Gordon, out of Bobby, out of Jane. I was the only holdout.

The landscape was bare and cold. Even the entrance to the farm was uninviting—a chilly wall and an icy gate, a leaf-strewn driveway and all the trees bare and the vegetation dead. It was therefore especially nice to drive up to the house, see the lights on and the big doors cozily shut, and hear the sounds of hammering and drilling coming from within. Gottfried had gotten things set up and gotten to work. I said, “Gottfried is completely reliable and completely competent. He’s an asshole, but he’s an oasis of know-how in a world of idiots, and when he’s finished in the spring we’ll be on our way.”

“Do you think so?”

“You know what? I do, I really do. The worst is over—or at least it will be over by early next year, when the permitting process is complete, the golf course is showable, and the clubhouse is done.”

“That
is
something, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Yes, it is. Let’s go find something to eat.”

“Don’t you want to go in?” I was pulled up in front of the door.

“Nah. The sound of hammering is enough for me.”

After our amazing date, it seemed obvious that I would take Susan to a big party that a developer we knew was giving to show off the house he had built for himself about ten miles south of Portsmouth—not exactly in our area, but worth seeing nonetheless. The guy’s name was Mack Morton. He had worked for a long time for the local branch of a big national outfit from Atlanta, then taken his crew and gone out on his own. He put up subdivisions of houses on the south side of Portsmouth that were fancier and bigger than Gordon’s, but not one of a kind, like Gottfried’s houses. I had had some good luck selling the Morton properties, but he had never used me as a listing agent and we weren’t particular friends. Nevertheless, I usually got invited to big Morton Land Company parties, and sometimes I went. This time the invitation said to bring swimming suits. I thought this was interesting. Not many people in our area had indoor pools.

Marcus had been hot to go. “If he wants to show off the house,” he pointed out, “and he’s inviting all his builder friends, it must be something special and we can get some ideas. Even if we can’t get any ideas, everyone will be there, and I for one am keeping my eye out for ways to put our crew together.” It did seem that we were going to have to raid other local contractors for building crews if we were going to put up a hundred houses, or four hundred, or six hundred, or however many.

The house must have been six thousand square feet. It was built on top of a hill, and you couldn’t help staring at it from at least half a mile away. Susan, sitting beside me, said, “Do you really think that’s it?”

I really did. The style was French country provincial, but expanded, as if built for exceptionally large people. It was basically L-shaped from the front, with a steeply pitched red-tile roof and stonework all along the façade to about five feet. Also leaded windows (which I later found out had come from a house in the Hudson Valley that was being torn down). The most charming or most ridiculous element, depending on your taste, was the three-story round tower that nestled into the crook of the L and formed the entry and the stairwell to the upper floors. We drove up the circular drive, and Mack’s sixteen-year-old son slouched over and stood outside my window. I rolled it down. He said, “I’m supposed to park all the cars? I’m being real careful, sir.” I handed him my keys.

The wind was pouring over the top of the hillside like a waterfall, and I realized as soon as I got out of the car why the kid looked blue. “My God!” said Susan, and huddled up against me. But the view was miles and miles in all directions. I had wondered why the party was starting so early, but now I could understand. Off to the northwest, you could see where the Nut River met the Blue. Off to the northeast, Portsmouth was just beginning to light up for the evening, and off to the south, the interstate came out of our hilly, woodsy region and entered a wider, more open landscape.

I said, “I wonder if you could see the farm on a clear day.”

“You can see where the mountains get higher. The farm is before that. But jeez. You need a lot of body fat to enjoy the view.”

“Got your suit?”

She nodded. Her hair was up, wrapped around what looked like a pair of elegant chopsticks, and I knew from when I picked her up that she was wearing a green silk dress with a vaguely oriental style to it—not like anything I had seen lately, but very chic. I was proud to be seen with her. She said, “I can’t believe we could swim!”

But the house and the pool room—with a full view of Portsmouth, which looked terrific from a distance—were plenty warm and, judging by the lighting and the trays of food and the buckets of wine and beer and the twenty or thirty people jumping around in the water, the conspicuous consumption on display was just exactly to the taste of everyone there, including Marcus and Linda, Bobby and Fern, Gordon and Betty (who I saw was diving off the high dive as soon as I came in), Jim Crosbie, Bart and his wife, and everyone else I knew, slightly or well. Laughter and shouting and splashing filled the space, bouncing off the surface of the pool and the windows and the tile pool deck. A few teenagers were standing by, rather quizzically gazing at the grown-ups’ antics.

“It’s a nice facility,” said Susan, with a smile.

I thought how cool she was, not cool in the popular sense, but in the sense of temperate, smooth, agreeable. I gave her a squeeze around the shoulders and we walked into the pool area. Mack Morton came up to me immediately and handed me a beer. He had a beaming smile on his face. I slapped him on the back. I said, “Hey, you’re supposed to sell this one, not keep it for yourself.”

“Shit, man,” he said. “Look at this fucking tile. It’s slate. See how it isn’t slippery? You can get a grip when it’s wet. I got these tiles from a place out in California! In spring and fall, they soak up the sunshine and heat the place up, but in the summer, the sun’s too far to the west to shine in here. And anyway”—he gestured over his head—“we put the skylights on electric openers and closers”—Susan and I looked up at the bank of skylights—“and when we open them up, they suck hot air out of
here
and bring in a northerly breeze from over
there
. It’s like a fucking flue!”

I sensed that Mack had had a few. “It’s a fabulous place, Mack, it really is!” I exclaimed.

“I never fucking imagined—”

His wife, Jolene, came up with an apologetic smile, and said, “Sorry, Joe. Say, honey—” and led him away.

As he went, he shouted over his shoulder, “I’m going to show you around myself later! Don’t forget!”

I waved him off in a friendly way. Susan said, “I guess he’s kind of excited, huh?”

“I guess.” I kissed her on the hair. She was so unfrumpy.

I began to feel warm and damp in my clothes, and Susan reached up and pulled the sticks out of her hair. It fell down over her coat in a shining stream. A couple came out of a sliding glass door into the pool area, wearing suits and carrying towels, and I steered her in that direction.

I never thought you should have your own swimming pool—too much work after the novelty wore off—but it was tremendous fun to run out of Mack’s office, throw down our towels, and jump into the water with the other swimmers. It was not lost on me that Susan was the youngest woman there and was unconsciously and naturally beautiful in her bikini, whereas the other women were a little defiant in their rather more sedate swimwear. Here, as in every other facet of her personality, was just that touch of the exotic that thrilled me—her bikini was an old one but that meant she had bought it in Europe, and it was cut just a little more stylishly than everyone else’s Cole of California bathing suits. I leapt into the pool with a shout, cannonballing off the low dive, and as soon as I came up out of the water and looked around, Betty was on me, smiling, kissing my cheek, and holding my shoulder. She said, “You seem very excited, Joey.”

“I am. Look at this place.”

“So deluxe. I love it. I’ve been diving for an hour. I can’t get enough. The pool is so warm.”

“Did you see Susan?”

“She looks lovely, dear. Are you progressing?”

“Well, yes.”

She kissed me again on the cheek and patted me on the head before swimming off. When she got out of the pool, it was obvious that she was sixty, but she was laughing and she carried herself with such athletic grace that I couldn’t help watching her climb the ladder and dive again, a perfect jackknife that bent the board nearly in two and made a big booming sound in the space of the pool room. Then I watched Susan dive off the low board, a nice swan dive, neat and clean. I treaded water, and she swam over to me underwater, grabbed my leg, and came up and kissed me smack on the lips.

The party went on like this, people in and out of the water, drinking beers and eating hors d’oeuvres and talking talking talking about money.

The guests were divided about equally between developers and bankers, and everyone was turned on by the grandeur of the setting. Once it was fully dark, Mack turned down the lights and his wife and the caterer lit candles on the food tables, so that we swam by dim and flickering light, which seemed sybaritic. Or you could walk to the expanse of window glass and wipe away the steam, and see the light and glow of Portsmouth spread before you, a wide lake of yellow against the dark backdrop of the hills beyond, and then, above that natural darkness, the constellations spread out and returning light back to you. It was intimidating and delightful to see all that and to be inside this warmth with all this money talk. Mack had this place, but we had the farm, and once the potential of the farm was realized, we would all have something like this, not like this exactly but something equally wonderful, to be created later. Dripping, holding canapés and glasses of wine, I listened in on conversations between virtually naked men I usually didn’t ever see in anything but suits and work clothes. And every naked man was excited.

I heard Crosbie say, “We are so close! This outfit from Texas sends more money out every night, looking for a few extra basis points, than most S and Ls send out in a year. They’ve got the whole place computerized, up and running, and they can really handle it. You know, that’s our next project, get a computer expert in, or ten of them, whatever it takes, make everything so much more efficient. No more paper, nothing but big numbers!” He guffawed in delight.

I heard Marcus say, “He tells me that
Golf Digest
contacted him about a piece on up-and-coming designers and he’s getting three pages, and he’s going to put our spread first—”

I heard Gordon say, “Yes, Gottfried Nuelle is doing the clubhouse. Have you seen this kid he has doing the detail work? No one else like him around here that I’ve ever seen. They offered him I don’t know what kind of money to come up to New York and do some repairs at the Morgan Library, but he said he didn’t like cities—”

I heard Bart say, “The whole business is changing so fast my head is spinning. But with these new investment advisors we’ve got, we’re right on top of it. Those kids, they’re maybe twenty-eight and they look twenty-two, but that’s the wave of the future. You ask me where the money’s coming from, and frankly I don’t know, but hey! Who’s asking?” And he grinned right at me.

And I kept diving in and swimming around and kissing Susan and admiring her.

At eight or so, Jolene came to the doorway of the pool area and called out, “Dinner in twenty minutes!” and it seemed impossible that there could be more of everything that was so luxuriant already.

In groups of twos and threes, people got out of the pool, took their towels, and went into Mack’s office to change. He had set up a clothing rack in there where we had hung our clothes, so well-dressed folks emerged rather quickly, their hair still damp but nicely put together again, smiling the way kids do when they’ve been in the water and forgotten all about whatever was bothering them before submersion. Susan and I had been last in, so we waited until everyone else was dressed and heading for the dining room before leaving the pool.

Mack’s office was large, with sliding doors on two sides—one set opened into the pool area and the other set to the outdoor patio. There was a French door into the kitchen and another door, too, probably into a corridor or the foyer. I could hear guests on the other side of the French door, but its blinds were closed for privacy, as were the drapes between the office and the pool area. The slider to the outside was uncovered, but there was nothing out there but space and stars. The furnishings were spare, either for the party or because they hadn’t completely moved in—only a bare desk, a big leather chair on casters, and the clothing rack. I said, “I guess we should hurry if we want to get some food,” but Susan pulled off her bikini and dropped it to the floor, sat down in the leather chair, smiled at me, and turned it away from the desk. Then she lay back in it and lifted her hair out from behind herself, so that it draped over her shoulder and covered her right breast. Her nipples were erect and her skin was flushed. I walked around the desk and took hold of the brown arms of the chair and begin kissing her. She turned her face up to meet mine. As we kissed the chair reclined suddenly, so that I stumbled and found myself nearly on top of her, so the obvious thing seemed to be that we would make love, and I was certainly ready. I yanked off my trunks. She laughed. On the first thrust, the chair rolled backward and hit the wall with a thud. We laughed, but it wasn’t easy to get leverage on her, and the chair kept rolling around. I would pull it toward me, thrust into her, the chair would rebound, and the next thing we knew, we were running into something and laughing. I was drunk enough so that I thought this was a very intriguing way to be making love, and anyway, we had waited long enough, and it did seem imperative, no matter what the deal with the chair was, to keep at it. Finally, we were laughing so hard that I pulled out of her, picked her up out of the chair, and laid her out on the carpet. I went down on top of her, then into her, and she lifted her legs and folded them around my waist. She was little and athletic and there was a startling wildness about her, quite in contrast to how I had come to think of her. I kept having to tell myself that she was thirty and had been married. It was like making love to a very wild and willful and you might say naughty kid. When we were done, I fell back on the carpet, but she jumped up laughing, grabbed her towel off the floor, and ran out of the slider toward the pool. By the time I was on my feet, I heard the splash she made as she jumped into the pool. I wrapped my towel around my waist.