“But my land has already been designated wetland.”
“Yes, and that makes it possible for us to bid on it, when it comes up for sale, because of funds allocated in previous budgets and held in escrow. But the designation is wide open to challenge if someone wants to take our bid out of the running. Somewhere along the line, someone is bound to have broken some of the regulations, which means the designation can be thrown out. And right now the city doesn’t have the money to spend on resurveying. Even if it did, it would take a couple of years.”
“So getting the warehouse and adjacent land rezoned wouldn’t be hard.”
“No.”
“What would you do with the land if you wanted to make a big profit?”
“Mixed light commercial and residential. A marina, a restaurant, condos. ”
“In the middle of an industrial area?” But that was European thinking.
“There’s already a park.” He pointed more or less at my warehouse. “It’s a pocket park. Here, between your land and the Federal Center. On the water, opposite Kellogg Island.”
Kellogg Island was a tiny lump of land in the middle of the river that I hadn’t known was there. “It’s not marked.”
“It’s too new. But I opened it eight months ago. It’s a very sexy combination of industrial district surrounded by nature. Someone willing to drop seven figures on a pied-à-terre would buy one in a heartbeat.”
I wouldn’t have understood that a month ago, but I was beginning to. I studied the map. Gary had said that Corning had been talking about four adjacent plots of land. “Is the Federal Center up for sale?”
He paused, consulted some interior ethics monitor, and nodded. “They’re moving to facilities in Renton, though that’s not general knowledge.”
“Show me what’s their land.” He did. “And if you included my land, and the park, and, say, the two plots north of that, how much would it cost to develop as the kind of place you were thinking of?”
“Hard to say. Mid-eight figures.”
“Easy to get investors?”
“Very. With that park as the natural centerpiece, profit could be forty percent.”
“If the zoning were changed,” I said.
“If the zoning were changed.”
I WALKED along 34th, and between the bricks and mortar of the software industry, Getty Images, Adobe, Visio, I caught glimpses of the ship canal. I stopped and leaned against a low wall. A dilapidated fishing boat chugged by. I watched it as I called Gary. “Get me everything you can on those plots Corning was looking at. Get me estimates of value. Find out who the owners are, and if Corning has been in touch with any of them.”
At the corner of 34th and Fremont I passed a sculpture, of five people and a dog at a bus stop. Someone had recently added balloons and blinding green wigs, and signs around their necks saying Happy Birthday, Alyssa!! The sculpture was called Waiting for the Interurban. A hundred years ago the Interurban had been an electrified rail line running from Renton to Everett, cutting through the warehouse district. Not a bus stop. A commuter light-rail stop. Pity it had closed. I couldn’t remember when. Kick might know.
We had a perfectly lovely evening.
I drove back to the warehouse. I wanted to hear what Kick thought.
IN ATLANTA, the afternoon sky would be bluer, the sun yellower, the trees and grass more green, and the pause before rush hour would have sweltered, sticky with sap and insect song, only lightly sheened with hydrocarbon. Here, rush hour had already started. The Alaskan Way viaduct poured as slow and thick with cars as a carbon dioxide-laden pulmonary vein. I kept pace like a good little molecule, let myself be funneled in due order onto Diagonal Avenue, noting unmarked turnoffs, rail spurs, then the Federal Center, and pulling eventually into the half-full lot of the warehouse. I parked next to Kick’s van, but didn’t get out of the car.
I called Dornan. He answered on the second ring.
“It’s me. Is she there?”
“Where are you?”
“In the parking lot. Is she there?”
“She is not. But stay there. Please. I’m coming out. I want to talk.”
I got out of the car and leaned against the hood. The air was slithery with diesel but now that I was hunting for it, I also smelled the unmistakable rolling underscent of estuarine river. I closed my eyes and visualized the map in Hardy’s office. Very close.
Dornan emerged, holding two cups of coffee. He held one out wordlessly.
I took it. It had cream in it. “I can’t drink this.”
“Why not?”
“It has cream in it.”
“Ah. Not because you’re pissed off at me? You were pretty pissed off earlier. And you pissed me off, actually, which is why, well, why I might have let you take away a false impression.”
“False?”
“You pissed me off. You’re always—Well. There it is, yes: false. Though we did go for a walk, and we did talk a lot, and I do like her very much. But it’ll never go further than friendship. Though friendship, I’ve heard, can go a long way, with the right wind.”
False.
“Do you want to know what we talked about half the bloody night, with the sea soughing gently and the moon out almost full?”
“I don’t know.”
“You.” He sighed. “Move up a bit.” He leaned back against the hood, too, and sipped his coffee. We both turned our faces to the sun. “She’s a fine woman.”
“She is.”
“And she’s very—Oh, stop clutching that coffee as though it’s your long-lost puppy. Looking pathetic doesn’t suit you. If you’re not going to drink it, put it down, for heaven’s sake.”
I set it carefully on the gravel. “You talked about me?”
“Among other things.” His eyes were distant for a moment. “She’s very fond of you.”
“Me, too, her.”
“I’m glad to hear it. She’s not… That is, she needs… Ah, well. What she needs is her business.”
“Yes.” Hers and mine. He wasn’t the one she had fed. He wasn’t the one who had seen her eyes go black and run a hand down her naked spine. I started to smile.
“You look particularly fatuous when you do that.”
He sounded petulant and it suddenly occurred to me how he might be feeling. “Are you all right?”
“All right? Why wouldn’t I be?”
I didn’t say anything.
He sighed. “I like her, and I think it could have been fine between us, but… Well, just but. It’s like a jigsaw piece that doesn’t quite fit. We could hammer it in and call it good, but the pattern would be wrong. I live in Atlanta, for one thing.”
“As do I.”
“So you do.” He could sound very much like my mother sometimes when he used that I know things you don’t tone. “But, Aud, the pattern is very nearly right, very nearly. She means a lot to me. Don’t toy with her.”
Silence. “So. Is she in there?”
“No. But—”
“Do you have her cell phone number?”
“She doesn’t carry one—” He knew so much more about her than I did. Because I asked nicely. “…me finish, she’s not on the set, but she is here.”
“Where?”
He nodded at the second Hippoworks trailer, just as the door banged open and she jumped down. She wore jeans and work boots and a salmon tank top. The arms of a cardigan were tied around her waist. Her skin was golden. From here you couldn’t see the freckles on her shoulders. She said to Dornan, “Floozy and the Winkle aren’t—” And then saw me. “Aud.”