Line of Fire (13 page)

21

T
he flat of Diane’s of-the-moment dreams turned out to be a what-the-hell-were-they-thinking thirty-six-hundred-and-change-square-foot two-story renovation of an old commercial building that was less than half a block from Pearl on the other end of the Pearl Street Mall. The neighborhood was a thriving part of downtown with some of the city’s best food and most interesting shopping.

Diane’s estimate of our trip had been four blocks. I was tempted to point out that had we driven only that distance from our office we would have been less than halfway to the flat. I didn’t.

The building that was our destination had been an unremarkable two-story, Depression-era, commercial brick rectangle in a downtown Boulder location that had gentrified in many interesting ways, including a good selection of urban housing. Diane pulled into a reserved parking space from the alley behind the building. I had already made a decision to keep any less-than-exuberant first impressions to myself. Were I to proffer discouraging words I would need to be willing to absorb the consequences. I was tired. I wasn’t willing.

Diane said, “There are three more parking spaces inside that garage door. That one, see?” She pointed to an industrial-size overhead door that faced the alley. “And this guest space outside. So, parking for four cars? Three indoors, and heated? That’s pretty great in this part of town. You have to admit.”

“It is,” I said, seizing the opportunity to be agreeable.

The alley behind the building would be dark at night. I could see no convenient path leading from the guest parking spot around to the front door of the flat. A visitor would be required to make a long walk around the building. Guests might not be thrilled with the access. I kept those thoughts to myself.

A fussy, anachronistic doorway in the middle of a street-level retail façade marked the dwelling’s sidewalk entrance. The door was sandwiched between a showroom for a company that was selling geothermal heat-exchange equipment and a business that appeared to be the eponymous gallery of a local artist I’d never heard of. Her stuff seemed technically proficient but a tad floral for my tastes. Since Diane was more comfortable with floral than I was, I thought she might appraise the gallery space as a distinct neighborly asset.

Diane fumbled with the digital lockbox for a moment. Her first attempt at entry failed. She stomped her foot and cursed. Diane then hummed for a few seconds before she sang a little song—“
Who you gonna tell? Everybody. What you gonna sell? Sell me, baby!
”

The memory cue did the trick for her. She entered another code. The compartment of the device opened, yielding Diane a pair of house keys on a small ring.

Inside the front door was a narrow landing that led to an even narrower staircase that my internal protractor told me was way too steep to meet Boulder County’s exacting building code. For two point seven million dollars, I’d expected to see an elevator.

Diane hiked up her skirt and trudged up the stairs. I followed, counting fourteen treads. It would be a lot of climbing for an elderly guest.

The apartment was big and featured great views of the city and the mountains. The apartment was also—I tried to find another word but couldn’t—garish. The word fit the décor of the apartment the same way that “tawdry” fits the atmosphere in the French Quarter in New Orleans.

What flavor of garish? If I closed my eyes I could imagine a South Beach condo after a redo by a design-challenged second cousin of Gianni Versace.

Diane kicked off her heels. I pulled off my loafers. I stayed close by as Diane played tour guide. The owners had poured a mess of money into a gut renovation of the public rooms on the second floor of the existing structure. Diane explained that the homeowners had managed to exploit planning loopholes by expanding an existing rooftop shed into a copper-clad third story that included dual master suites. They had topped the new addition with an expansive rooftop deck.

She traipsed around the flat at a rapid clip. I trudged behind as my impressions hardened like quick-curing concrete. Diane’s monologue was upbeat and enthusiastic, but I thought she was parroting a sales spiel she’d heard earlier from Kevin. Her enthusiasm was intended to convince me to like the place so that I would do her the deep favor of convincing her to love it.

I could already tell that she would require some convincing. Diane didn’t love the flat. She wanted to, but she didn’t.

We ended the tour back in the long, narrow living room that had a great view of the Flatirons. I waited.

“Is it too much?” she said just a moment before she collapsed beside me onto a tangerine leather sofa that was ten times firmer than it appeared to be. She literally
thunk
ed as her butt hit the cushion. “Did I mention that the furniture is included?”

“Good news, or bad news?” I said with a friendly smile. A fake-fur throw that was draped over the back of the sofa—I hoped it was fake fur—was high on my list of potentially bad news.

She looked around the big space once more, allowing her eyes to settle on a variety of expensive touches that raised questions of taste. Either my taste, or that of the designer responsible for the flair.

“I admit there’s a lot going on in here. Right? Isn’t there?” she said. I was hoping not to be required to provide an answer. Diane and I had a history to consider; we had demonstrated an inability to discuss interior design without clashing. She went on with- out my two cents, as I hoped she would. “I know—there is. And there’s a tad too much . . . bling in here. Shiny, sparkly stuff. It’s not exactly Boulder. But since Kevin showed it to me the first time, I’ve been asking myself if that’s such a bad thing. There’s plenty of Boulder right out there.” She swept an arm toward the windows.

The Boulder that was apparent out the window was a relatively charming, redbrick, late-nineteenth-century pioneer downtown. A few of the old buildings were Victorian treasures. A few of the more recent were architectural travesties.

“There’s a lot of color in here,” I said, leaving it up to Diane to decide whether the bouquet of brilliant hues was a good thing or not. “And tile. Hectares of tile, it seems. You like the tile?”

“With waves,” Diane added as she got swept up in the design-critique momentum. “Right? Blingy, colorful tile with waves. On the walls? The ceiling even. There’s tile on the ceiling, right?” I looked up and nodded. “Did I miss an entire design trend?”

I considered it unlikely that Diane had missed a design trend. But I reminded myself why I’d been dragged along on the errand: to be a friend, not a design
mevin.

“And why did they put the kitchen off by itself like that?” she asked. “It doesn’t relate to anything. Who does that anymore? Resale might be sketchy with that kitchen.”

I didn’t have an answer for the hide-the-kitchen decision. “The place is big, and it is downtown,” I said. “You want big, and I know you want downtown. That rooftop deck? Wow. The views? Think about the parties.”

“But,” Diane said, “there’s no hot tub up there—Raoul wants one—and no shade. The chinooks will probably blow any patio furniture that’s not bolted down all the way to Limón. And why didn’t they run the elevator up there? I don’t understand that—it would be really convenient not to have to carry everything from the kitchen to the roof.”

Diane wasn’t a cook. It had been a long time since she’d carried much. Any concern she was expressing about convenience was for the caterers she would hire to staff the parties. Still, I gave her points for consideration.

I said, “Arriving guests can’t really use the elevator at all, can they? I assume it opens in the garage somewhere. I didn’t see an elevator in the front foyer.”

She rolled her eyes and nodded. “Behind the staircase that leads to the garage from the front, there’s a door. It’s disguised. The elevator is through there. Hardly ideal. But it’s an old building and . . . there were compromises.”

Compromises sounded like it had been one of Kevin’s words.

I was waiting for Diane to acknowledge the reality that this flat would not be her temporary downtown home, though I wasn’t sure she would arrive at that conclusion that evening. I said, “You doing okay, Diane? I’ve been worried about you. You’re working less and less. I don’t see you much.”

She paused and waved her left arm at the wavy tile. “I want this place to be the one that will get me out of the hills. I
need
it to be the one. Raoul’s on the road all the time. I can’t stay up Lee Hill by myself any longer. It’s making me crazy. All alone, with the fire danger? I need to make us a home . . . he wants to come home to.”

Something had been making Diane a little crazy. But it wasn’t just Lee Hill. “You think Raoul is staying away because, what, you’re so unhappy with where you live?”

“No. Because I’m a bitch.” She smiled. But the smile was halfhearted. She said, “I want to be able to walk out my door and be someplace
.
To see some people. Not deer—I am so tired of deer. And that damn fire, Alan? Fourmile. God, it scared me to death. Can I tell you something I haven’t told anyone?”

“Of course.”

“When the fire first blew up, and we got the reverse 911 telling us to prepare to evacuate? I say ‘we’ but it was me. Raoul was in California trying to outbid some ex-Google people for some social networking start-up. When I was ordered to evacuate, I kept going back and forth between how awful it would be to lose our home and”—she shook her head—“thinking how great it would be to just be done with it.” She lowered her voice. “I actually thought about setting the grasses next to the house on fire before I drove away.” She wanted something from me right then. I wasn’t sure what. “Is that awful of me?” she asked.

I was at a loss. Of course it was awful of her.

“No comment?” she said.

“You’re feeling desperate,” I said.

“Was that a question?” She wrinkled her nose at me. “I’m baring my soul here.”

“I know how desperate you are. How strong was the urge?”

“To become an arsonist? Meh. I’ve had stronger. But who knows about the next fire? Who knows then? Now I’ve had time to think about it. To actually plan my arson, buy a half-decent flamethrower at Army Navy Surplus.”

I checked her face to be certain she was kidding.

She said, “Do you think the
Daily Camera
site is ever going to get redeveloped? Be honest with me.”

The
Camera
site was the primest of prime blocks in downtown Boulder. Raoul was part of an investment group that had purchased the land with plans to redevelop it into a mixed-use bonanza. Lauren and I had tentatively agreed to buy one of the condominiums in the new building. The idea was for Diane and Raoul to live somewhere above us in a hyper-luxe penthouse.

“Of course it’ll get done. Soon? You know how soft the real estate market is now. Financing a project that size has to be almost impossible in this environment. Raoul knows all this better than I do. Ask him.”

“What Raoul knows is that I’m a mess. Fragile. I don’t think he’s being honest with me about the prospects for the new building, but he’s saying basically what you’re saying, what everybody says. It’s all about the market and the financing, and that kind of sucks now. You and Lauren are still going to move there? Right?” Diane offered a hopeful smile that almost instantly deteriorated into something fearful. “And don’t even think about lying to me. You are going to be my new neighbors, right? I need to count on that.”

I finessed a reply. “The economics are much more precarious for us than they are for you and Raoul. Lauren and I will reexamine the moving decision once we get an idea about a timeline and firm numbers about cost. We want to move, but it’s going to be a close decision, one way or the other.”

Diane leaned into me. “I need this . . . whatever this is . . . to be the place, Alan. This flat has to be my transition. I need today to be the day I begin to find my way out of the damn mountains.” I felt a shiver move through her. “But here I am sitting in this expensive fruit-salad-in-a-metallic-bowl apartment. And I don’t know.”

Diane’s hope was in pieces. But she was desperately trying to hold on to it. To me, it was as though she were trying to embrace an armful of packaging peanuts. I placed my arm around her shoulder and squeezed her. “There will be another something to look at soon, Diane. You’ll see.”

She shook her head. “No!” she barked. “There won’t. There isn’t anything else. I’ve looked. I know.”

My truism had been intentionally banal, not the kind of reassuring, hopeful appraisal that I thought would be vulnerable to argument. I was taken aback by her vehemence.

• • •

After a stop at Zoe Ma Ma to grab takeout for the family, I sped toward home. The flashing lights that distracted me in my mirror as I cut south on the Foothills Parkway pretty much guaranteed that we’d be eating cold food for dinner.

I’d been going fifty-three in a forty-five zone in a location that I knew drew rush-hour traffic patrols like free beer draws college students. I knew better.

My phone rang as I was turning off South Boulder Road onto the winding lane that was the last leg on the way to our Spanish Hills home. Even though the odds of any traffic on the lane were low, I pulled over. The speeding ticket was still sizzling in my pocket.

The call was from Diane. I tried to be upbeat. “Change your mind about the flat? Convince yourself that all that bling is you after all? And this time you want me to talk you out of it? Am I right?”

She said, “Alan, I need your advice.”

“Don’t buy it, Diane. It will be a bitch to unload when you’re ready to move again. Other than the view, and the fact that it’s within spitting distance of Frasca and Cured and Snooze, it doesn’t have a lot of charm. People are not going to line up to take it off your hands. Don’t forget that kitchen that’s off by its lonesome.”

“I know. It’s not about the flat.” I heard something somber accompanying her words. I wondered if it had been there earlier and I had missed it. “Sorry,” I said. “What can I do?”

On a rushed exhale, she said, “I think Raoul is . . . involved with someone.”