HardScape (5 page)

“Nine dollars?”

I said, “We need a plan. Rick, I'll bet you've got real control of your heat with that baby.”

“Believe it.”

“Why don't you toast rolls and cook the dogs. Scooter and me'll do the burgers.”

“Hey, this thing's great on burgers.”

“We'll do the burgers,” said Scooter. He's an excellent newspaper publisher, but too free with the Weber's dome, so I said, “I'll do rare, you do medium and well.”

At noon Vicky mounted the new pumper to give her speech. Quite a crowd had gathered by then, and the first selectman didn't disappoint. She lionized our brave volunteer firefighters and suggested that when we make our contribution we compare the ease of check writing to the discomforts of waking up in the middle of the night to fight a neighbor's fire. She got a beautiful swipe in at her Republican opposition, likening their control of the state budget to the rabies epidemic, and wound up with a fierce call to every school-girl on the lawn that one of them had darned well better become president of the United States.

She ended it on “Let's eat,” which swelled the drift toward the grills to a floodtide.

The next hour was a blur of hands thrusting open buns in my direction. I was just holding my own, rare but not raw, with the lines in order. Beside me, Scooter was smoking them medium, raising his dome with billowy flourishes to general applause. Poor Rick started some sort of grease fire that brought the firemen running with a high-pressure hose. Then I had a little fire, which I was knocking down with a water spray bottle, when I heard a harried Scooter say, “Rare? See my colleague at the nine-dollar grill.”

I heard Pinkerton Chevalley, Renny's big brother, snicker, “She can have mine rare anytime,” and I looked up into the smiling face of Rita Long, who said, “They tell me you're a rare man.”

Chapter 5

Hard to tell how long I stood staring at her.

She asked, “Wha'd I say?” and the fire I'd just put out flared up between us, prompting shouts from Scooter and Rick—who were still downwind—and a threatening advance by the high-pressure hose men, who had apparently found some beer someplace.

“Rare,” I said, spatula-ing my best burger onto her bun with my left hand while extending my right to introduce myself. “Ben Abbott. I don't believe we've met.”

She had a diet Pepsi in her other hand, but she extended an elbow with a grin, saying, “Rita Long. We're new in town.”

“Oh, yes. Fred Gleason found your property.”

“Are you a realtor, too? Right, right. I've seen your sign. You have that lovely Georgian house near the flagpole.”

I like newcomers. They don't say hello thinking, Bertram Abbott's kid. The one who…She just took me as the guy who lived in the Georgian house near the flagpole. God, she was beautiful, lovely as I had seen last night, but now—dressed in pleated khaki pants and a faded workshirt—very much the married lady, friendly, but not flirting. Had I met her this way for the first time I'd have thought, Gorgeous, pleasant, and totally unavailable. Knowing what I did know, I thought, Loyal to her boyfriend, gorgeous, pleasant, and totally unavailable, a woman not about to run around on more than one man.

She asked, “Do you do appraisals?”

“Same as Fred. We're not bank appraisers, but we can certainly recommend a price range. Do you have a friend looking?”

Before she could answer, a greasy hand thrust a hamburger bun between us—Pinkerton Chevalley, availing himself of thirds, and a look down Mrs. Long's shirt. I dripped hot grease on his thumb, but it apparently didn't penetrate the calluses. Mrs. Long had backed away, and now she wandered toward the ketchup table. Pink demolished his third and reached for fourths.

I saw Rita Long look across the lawn with a secret smile, followed her gaze, and there was the boyfriend, munching a hot dog. He flashed a grin and circled through the crowd, pausing to investigate the new pumper, glancing repeatedly in her direction as she moseyed about. I decided they were recent lovers, deep in the eros stage, where every utterance was eloquent, and every motion erotic. And, just as last night, I admired their fun. They must have laughed themselves silly in bed.

He looked maybe a little older than he had in the buff. He wore chinos and a pinstriped shirt with the sleeves rolled up and had an air of being very much in charge of something. He reminded me of a type I'd met when I was working the Street—guys who started a medium-sized business and were looking to raise money to expand; or hotshot managers working a buyout. Only this one was smiling, like he'd already closed his deal. Once when he looked across the lawn at her she was watching some kids, and his face practically melted. In fact a video of his expression would have doomed them worse than last night's. He was nuts for the woman, which I found understandable. She seemed nuts for him too, which meant they had problems. I wondered if they had any inkling that her husband knew.

Mrs. Long came back.

“Another?”

“No thanks, that was great. Listen, do you have time to come out and give me an appraisal?”

“
Your
house?”

She glanced to either side. “Would you?”

I had more time than a retiree, but fair was fair and friends were friends. “Well, Fred Gleason is—”

“I'd like a private opinion.”

“Ah.”

“Ah?”

I decided that the only way to talk to this woman was to talk as if I had not seen her making love to her boyfriend the night before. Which meant I had to be my totally nonjudgmental realtor self. What was a private opinion? Well, it was not the first time I'd been asked by one side of a marriage to appraise the honeymoon cottage.

I said, “You know, of course, this is a hard time to sell, even a unique house like yours.”

“But I would still like an appraisal. I'll pay the going rate.”

“No, no, no. I don't work that way. I'll come out and have a look.”

“How about after the cookout?”

“I can make it out there by five.”

“Perfect. I have to run down to the mall. I'll make it back by five. After you look, it'll be time for a drink.”

***

As I've said, there was nothing flirtatious about Rita Long. Even so, I felt that drinks at the Castle was the best offer I'd had in a week. Vicky McLachlan approached while I was packing up my grill: A bunch were drifting over to the Yankee Drover for post-picnic beers. I said maybe later, but I had to work. I got a look, and a question: “Who's the lady with the black hair?”

“Mrs. Long. She and her husband built the Castle.”

That got me another look, and “Nice work if you can get it”—a reminder, not that I needed one, that the future governor of Connecticut had not been elected first selectman at age twenty-six on chestnut curls and smile alone.

I showered the smoke out of my hair and put on my uniform, tweed jacket over my arm in the warm afternoon. I was about to get into the Oldsmobile when I thought, What the hell, last warm day for a while. I stashed the Olds in the barn and pulled the cover off the Fiat. It was a '79 Spyder 2000 roadster, British racing green, that my father had bought new for my mother's sixtieth birthday. It had less than twenty thousand miles on it because my mother felt it was too flashy, no matter how often the old man told her how pretty she looked in it. She did, in fact; but when she moved back to Frenchtown she left it for me.

By daylight the grounds of the Long Castle were something to behold. The driveway paralleled a serpentine pond, complete with snowy egret, which would have done Regent Park proud. The hardscape surrounding the house was splendidly conceived and brilliantly executed.

“Hardscape” isn't in Webster's. It's a word coined by landscape designers to distinguish elements constructed from those that are grown—masonry from nursery, cobblestones from coreopsis. (The designers are divided on the corresponding use of “softscape” for gardens, grass, and trees. The better ones I've known would cross a swamp at night to avoid even hearing the word.) Hardscape is what you see in winter when the flowers are dead and branches bare. It forms the character of a house, like the bones behind a face.

I had heard that the Castle's granite walls and flagstone terraces, the cobblestone motor court, the sweeping drives and the paths that meandered among the as-yet-unplanted garden beds had been built by Italian stonemasons, who usually worked down in Greenwich and Cos Cob. It showed. We've got a few good local masons around Newbury, but there was a finished polish to this work rarely seen north of Long Island Sound. Walls that looked like dry stone had been cemented by an artful hidden-mortar technique; while I could not have slipped my business card between the slates of the front walk.

“I love your car,” Rita Long greeted me. She had changed out of her workshirt into a snug cotton sweater. “What is it?”

I told her how I'd gotten it from my mother, and complimented her landscaping and the quality of the stonework. She explained that they had owned a big place in Greenwich. “When we decided to build here, Jack said we should use the workmen we knew. I felt a little funny cutting out the local guys.”

“Tough call,” I agreed. “Plenty of good mechanics up here, but it's nice to go with people you like. Who's the architect?”

“It was Jack's plan. I drew it, and then we paid an architect to work out the structural details.”

“Nice. Who did the outside?”

“I did.”

“Really?” I looked again. I don't care how talented an artist is, or how stylish an interior decorator, only one in a million retain their sense of scale outdoors. The sky is simply not a ceiling. I see magnificent houses every day with dinky steps, postage-stamp terraces, misplaced swimming pools, and tennis courts fenced like zoos.

She hurried to explain. “I had wonderful help. The masons saved me from a million mistakes.”

I had no trouble imagining a mason making an extra effort for Rita Long. Her smile, the breeze in her hair: “Move this wall? No problem,
Signora
, it is only granite. Guido,
per favore
, the jackhammer.”

I glanced up at the turret. The archers' slits were authentically narrow. A few sturdy yeomen could hold off anything up to tanks. “There's a rumor around town that you shoot deer from your turret.”

“Oh, God. Jack did. Once last year, during hunting season. I told him I'd shoot
him
if he did it again.”

“So the deer are safe.”

“From Jack,” she laughed. “Guaranteed. Are you ready to see the inside?”

We went in and wandered the many rooms, most of which were still unfurnished. A central staircase lit by skylights was magnificently paneled in rosewood. “Who's the cabinetmaker?”

“It's old. When Jack's mother died, we ransacked her apartment. She had it done in the Nineteen-Twenties or 'Thirties. It was so gloomy there, but here the light makes it work, doesn't it?”

“Sure does.”

The kitchen was the sort you find in houses owned by people with endless bucks—the latest everything, the air vibrating with the ceaseless hum of electric motors. It was spotless, with takeout menus from Church Hill Road Shanghai Cafe and our matchless Lorenzo's Pizza Palace on the refrigerator.

The house did not have quite the rumored thirty-seven rooms, but there were three beautiful guest-room suites upstairs and a spectacular master bedroom with a fireplace and his and her bathrooms and his and her walk-in closets and a little attached sitting room-television room also with a fireplace. The bed was magnificent, with French-Canadian antique ironwork at the head and foot, and it would have taken a better man than I not to imagine the matchless Mrs. Long sprawled upon it, smiling through a veil of raven hair.

I could not resist asking, “What's down that hall?”

“Just my studio.”

“Do you want me to look at it?”

She hesitated. “Sure. Just a second.” She ran ahead, and when she called, “Okay, now,” I walked into the white studio and saw she had draped the smaller easel as well as the big one.

“Works in progress?”

“Progressing slowly…So? What do you think?”

“I think you have a lovely house. And I'm sure I'm not telling you anything you don't know when I say there are a limited number of buyers for such a place.”

“If you were handling the sale, what price would you ask?”

“Well, I'm not handling the sale, but if I were…four million.”

“And what would you advise me to take?”

I hesitated. Then I asked, “Are you in business? Or are you a painter?”

“I'm not a painter.”

“This looks like a painter's studio,” I said.

“I play when I get time. No—to answer your question—I work closely with Jack. I know about business.”

“So I'm not talking to a babe in the woods.”

She still didn't flirt, but she did smile. “That depends on whose woods.”

“We're just talking—just us—but you ought to know that the lowest number you allow to be mentioned in a conversation with your realtor is very likely the number he'll bring you in the end.”

“Okay.”

“I wouldn't take a penny under three million. And I'd fight like hell for three-five.”

“Even in this climate?”

“Especially in this climate. You'll get some sharpy out here figuring to pin you to the wall—but he'll have the bucks, and if his wife gets a load of this place he'll pay you three-five or she'll stop sleeping with the louse.”

Mrs. Long laughed. “I get it. Thanks. Come on, we'll have that drink.”

We got down to the kitchen and she said, “Any objections to champagne?”

“None.” I smiled back, thinking I couldn't imagine a lovelier end of the day, or beginning of the evening.

She filled a silver icebucket and dunked the bottle. Then she got a pair of flutes and said, “Grab that, if you don't mind. We've got a great place to drink it.” She led me down a hall through a massive oak door to the foot of a narrow spiral stair that led up into the turret.

I smelled gunsmoke.

I said, “Your husband been shooting deer again?”

“No, he set up some targets last weekend. Deer size and shape but only paper.”

It smelled more recent, to me.

I followed her pretty bottom up the stairs, flirting with a fantasy that she had broken up with her boyfriend after Trooper Moody and the burglar people left, sent him back to New York, and now felt the need of being consoled. This fantasy worked best when I ignored the fact that they had been playing hide and seek at the Newbury Cookout four hours ago.

Up and up we went, round and round, our footsteps on the metal steps echoing off the stone walls. Higher and higher, until right under the conical roof we came to a little round platform just big enough for a couple of small chairs and a table for our glasses. I put the bucket on the floor and sat down when she did.

“Would you open it?” she asked.

I peeled the foil and the muzzle, freed the cork with a modest pop, and filled our glasses. She touched hers to mine and met my eye. Her expression was clear, open and content. “Isn't this great?” she asked, and I knew in that moment that she was simply happy to have me as a guest in her house.

Directly in front of us was an opening wider than the bowmen's windows. Through it we could see for miles, a view like a Dutch or Hudson River School landscape, hills and trees and meadows, all in the fading light of a September evening.

That part of me that won't let things be asked, “How could you sell it?”

She drank deep, and I regretted asking, because quite suddenly she was not content. The idiot she had treated so hospitably had just reminded her of a conflict tearing her life apart. At least that's how I interpreted the pain that shadowed her eyes. She looked down, stared into her glass, and said, “Everything's a tradeoff.”