Part IV
Fifteen
Over the subsequent days the field metamorphosed into something else entirely. He had only been visiting the vacant lot for four weeks but even that short time had left him with a feeling of nostalgia. Now that time was over. It had become the standard endpoint of his day and very nearly the only thing he had come to look forward to, not only Peter’s company but the ceremony of it: the telescope providing the justification for being in the dark field and the drinking and smoking providing the impetus to relax into that moment. Certainly there were other empty fields somewhere in the vicinity but it would not be the same as simply walking out the front door to the end of the cul-de-sac. The ease of it was gone and any other solution would be complicated, not only by distance but by effort. He would walk from his house to the empty lot and would sit on the sofa and would drink and would talk to his neighbor idly about whatever came to mind. But would he drive somewhere to do that? He thought it unlikely.
That evening, he stood at the edge of the cul-de-sac in the early hours of the night and stared into the darkness beyond the reach of the streetlamps. The lot was perfectly flat now and completely bare of any vegetation and it occurred to him that previous to the arrival of the tractors the field must have been leveled in preparation to build on and then the economy had crashed and all plans had been abandoned to grass and thistle and weeds. Weirdly, the sofa remained in the same location where he and Peter had first positioned it: in the relative center of the lot, the tractors flanking it like guards. Above flooded the black sky: Cassiopeia’s flattened W tilting on end as Earth rotated around its axis and Polaris unmoving as if it were the pin upon which the planet was affixed to the universe itself.
So it had begun and so would it end. He could not fathom who would have the wherewithal to actually build a house now, given the economic situation that was, according to the newspaper he occasionally read at Starbucks, the worst since the Great Depression, but there was no other explanation for it: the two tractors were there and the plot had been scraped clean and soon there would be gravel and forms for concrete and then the concrete itself and the thing would start to take shape. It was engineering elemental and basic and he could see it all in his mind even in the dark. Perhaps the entire house would be built around the sofa and it would ever remain in its geographic center.
He might have imagined the telescope there between the giant machines but instead there was only a dark shadow between the hulking silhouettes, the tractor windows reflecting the streetlight that glowed just behind him, his own shadow stretching out over the bare moonscape like an arrow pointing toward the impenetrable darkness beyond.
Sally Erler called him late the following day while he was once again at Starbucks. He thought at first that the vibrating phone indicated that Barb had found his new phone number and he very nearly did not even look at the screen, doing so only after a long pause in which he hoped to silence it by sheer force of will, as if by ignoring the sound and concentrating instead on his coffee he might somehow erase the marriage. But of course such things do not happen at Starbucks. Indeed such things do not happen at all, and at last he glanced down at the screen and then flipped the phone open and answered.
“Hello, Sally,” he said.
“Keith, it’s Sally Erler,” she said, her standard response to anything he could open with.
“Yes, I know.” He was smiling. At least there was that.
“We have a little glitch. Maybe nothing but it’s a glitch.”
“OK.”
“Well, it’s about the termite inspection. Have you seen the results?”
“Oh,” he said. Had he? “I don’t think so.”
“Well, they probably mailed you a copy so it will be there soon. It’s not good news.”
“No?”
“No, it’s bad news,” Sally said.
“Oh,” he said, his syntax devolving to single words. “What? Termites?”
“Yes, the report says there might be significant damage.”
“Significant damage?”
“Yes, significant damage.”
“I’m sorry. That’s surprising. It’s a new house.”
“Yes, it’s surprising but it’s on the report and that’s a big problem. It needs to be addressed before we can move on with the sale.”
“Addressed how?”
“Repaired.”
“Really? Christ,” he said. It was not the first expletive that came to mind. “How much does this kind of thing cost?”
“Well, I have to tell you that it can be quite expensive.”
“Expensive like what?”
“I don’t know. I’ve seen them tent houses though. Drill into foundations. That kind of thing. It can … kill a sale.” These last words weak, as if she was on the verge of tears. And indeed it could be that she was.
“Kill the sale?” he repeated.
“Let’s look on the bright side. We don’t know much yet so call the termite inspection company and talk to them and we’ll find out how extensive the damage is and they can come and give you a pest eradication bid and then you should call a contractor to come out to see what kind of repairs need to be done. Maybe it won’t end up costing very much. I don’t know.”
“Come on, Sally,” he said. “This is a deal breaker, right?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say that.” These were her words but her tone said otherwise. “I still want to sell the house for you.”
“Don’t they leave holes or sawdust or something? I haven’t seen anything.”
“They said it was in the garage. Maybe you didn’t notice.”
“The garage?”
“That’s what it says.”
They exchanged a few more sentences and then the conversation ended and he clicked the phone closed. His coffee cooling toward room temperature. The newspaper unfolded on the table. The cruelty of the joke was that he had finally accepted the notion that the house would be sold and that he would move somewhere else, would have a different life in some other place, and then this. There was no accounting for anything, as if all had become enslaved to a center of gravity around which he spun without cease. He found himself wondering what Hoffmann would say about this. He had told him that the goal was for him to move through his experiences and yet every experience continued to appear as another full and complete stop, a wall, an impasse.
He set the cup on the counter and Audrey said, “How’s Peter?” and he mumbled something neutral in response. She might have said something else as he passed but if so he did not hear her.
. . .
When he arrived home he entered through the front door and set his keys on the counter and moved through the kitchen and into the laundry room. He had no explanation for why he had not yet opened the door there, the door that led into the garage, and now the fact that he had not done so struck him as feeble and strange.
And so standing before the thin white door that connected the garage to the house like a priest preparing to enter the vestibule of some spiritual mystery and even hesitating for a moment upon that glorious threshold before grasping the yellow faux-brass handle and, at long last, pulling open the door.
And of course the garage was empty. How else could it be?
He looked for a long time without entering, his eyes blinking in the blazing heat of the room, light leaking through the metal roll-up door, the air inside smelling of paint and sawdust and not unlike a tomb or an oven, the space a collection of hard angles and concrete and unfinished drywall with the tape and texture still visible. Not even a single cabinet to hide a box in. Not even that. Bare walls and concrete floor and a lightbulb screwed into the ceiling socket. The steel bar of the garage door opener across the ceiling. A few thin wires poorly plastered into a hole there.