Homebody: A Novel (3 page)

As she got into her Sable—ostentatiously modest among the BMWs and Lexuses—she noticed that while his truck looked like it had been used for real work, the engine started smoothly and quietly. It reaffirmed her impression of him: Doesn't care how his tools look, but makes sure they work perfectly. And for the first time it crossed her mind: He can't possibly be married if he doesn't have a phone.

Inspection

Cindy had driven by the Bellamy house on her way back from the library, but she hadn't had time to stop. Now as she drove up, she tried to see it the way a man like Don Lark would. He'd ignore the shaggy yard. The peeling paint and boarded-up windows and clumsy graffiti would mean nothing to him. Beyond that, the house actually looked pretty good. Nothing sagged. The trim was mostly intact. The roof was old but not a ruin. Don Lark had an eye that could see a good house beneath a faded exterior. A middle-aged divorced woman could get naked with a man like Don Lark.

Don't think like that, she told herself sternly.

By the time she got out of her car, Don was already talking to a man on the front lawn.

"Cindy Claybourne, this is Jay Placer. He's an engineer who looks over houses for me."

Cindy smiled and shook Jay's hand. He was a little younger than Don, and his soft hands and body showed that he had an indoor job and didn't do anything in his free time that would toughen him up. That was fine—Cindy kept a clear distinction in her mind between men who were tough because they had real jobs and men who were tough because they had the money and the ego need to spend many hours doing expensive manly activities. Cindy's father was a fireman who hung wallpaper on his free days. She respected a man like Don whose rough hands were earned by hard work. She also respected a man like Jay, whose soft body also came from hard work at a different kind of job. Respected him, but unfortunately was never attracted to his type. It was the tragedy underlying the Dilbert cartoons, which made it so she couldn't really enjoy them. She always wanted to scream at Dilbert: Get out of the office and pour some concrete somewhere!

Cindy led the way to the front door. The lock-box wasn't too rusted—a surprise, considering how many years the thing had been out in Greensboro's weather, which ranged from intense rain to oppressive humidity, but always involved corrosive amounts of moisture. And the key she found went right into the lockbox and opened it.

"Well," she said. "Success."

From the lockbox she took the key that hung there and then discovered that it didn't fit the heavy Yale padlock that hung from a hasp on the front door. She was baffled.

Don reached for the key. She handed it to him. He bent and inserted it into the deadbolt keyhole on the door itself. It fit perfectly and the lock clicked open. Unfortunately, that did nothing for the massive padlock.

"I can't believe they'd put the key to the door in the lockbox but not the key to that padlock."

"Seems obvious the padlock went on after people stopped using that lockbox," said Jay. "Probably the owner had it put up to keep vagrants and vandals out."

Don was already heading for his truck. He came back with a wicked-looking wrecking bar, whose bladed end he slipped under the edge of the hasp on the door. He rocked it back once and got one side up; he slid the blade farther under the hasp and levered it off in one move. The screws tore chunks of wood out of the door coming out.

"So much for the locksmith," said Cindy.

"I'll fix it whether I buy the place or not," said Don. "Wasn't a very secure lock anyway."

He put his hand on the door and pushed it open easily.

"Is that the same technique you use with women, Don?" asked Jay. "Show 'em the wrecking bar and they open right up?"

So Jay was the kind of man who felt the need to make macho dirty comments in front of women. Too bad for you, Dilbert, thought Cindy. Not that Cindy was actually that bothered by the joke, but in this era of political correctness a man who talked like that in front of women was either deliberately trying to give offense or so oblivious to the culture around him that he should be checked for brain activity.

The entry hall was dingy, with a door on either side leading into the two ground-floor apartments. The whole back of the entry hall was filled with a wide stairway, forbiddingly high, that swept straight upward to the second story. The carpet on the stairway was worn to the underlying fabric in the middle.

Jay turned around and around, sizing up the layout. He patted the wall on the right of the stairway, the north side. "With the door off-center the way it is, this has to be the load-bearing wall cause it runs close to the center of the house. The other one was added in to divide off the other apartment, probably back in the thirties, judging from the transom over the door."

"Original stairs?" asked Don.

"Got to be," said Jay. He jumped up onto the first step, the second step, the third step, landing hard each time. "No way would some cheapjack landlord put in a stairway this wide or this solid. The thing's still like a rock! Somebody knew how to build back when this house went up."

"Dr. Bellamy was an amateur architect," said Cindy.

"Who?" asked Jay.

"Calhoun Bellamy, the man who built the house. He designed the place himself for his new bride. It was ready just in time for him to carry her across the threshold in 1874. I imagine he kept a close eye on the contractors as they built the place."

"If he had to," said Jay. "Back then people took pride in their work. Didn't have to watch 'em all the time to keep them from cheating or skimping. A man would be ashamed to put up a staircase that creaked or sagged."

"Still had to put the money in it," said Don. "What do you think, three carriages or four?"

"My money's on four," said Jay. "Or three really thick ones. Nowadays you put up a stairway that heavy, you get accused of gouging the customer by putting in needlessly expensive materials. So you put in a light one and they complain that the stairway bounces when they run up and down it. Go figure."

The apartment doors were not locked, and the apartments behind them were just what Cindy had expected. Ancient shabby furniture that had obviously been used by vagrants or small animals—or both—probably leading to the installation of the padlock on the front door. Faded rectangles on the walls showed where paintings or posters had been. The paint had been lazily applied over wallpaper, which had been applied over even older wallpaper, all of it put up with overlapping edges so that ugly seams ran up the walls under the ugly paint.

"Was this place remodeled by a blind person?" asked Cindy.

"Paint wasn't this color when it first went up," said Don. "It's cheap stuff that fades so fast you have to finish painting it in one day or you can see the dividing line."

"What color was it when it was first painted?" she asked.

"Even uglier," said Jay. "I'm betting it was painted in the seventies. We're just lucky the owner was too cheap to recarpet, or we'd be looking at green or orange shag."

"Is that mildew I smell or a dead animal?" asked Cindy.

"Just the smell of bad taste liberally applied," said Jay.

So maybe he wasn't a macho pig. Maybe he was just a guy who liked making jokes.

They were in the north apartment, which Jay decided must have been the original parlor, while the front room on the other side might have been a consulting office or a library or a study or even a groundfloor bedroom if there was a mother-in-law or a nephew or something. Don led the way through the door leading into a dark, cramped hallway. Small narrow bedrooms opened off the hall.

"The hall and the bedrooms aren't original, of course," said Jay. "This must have been the dining room. Kind of a grand one, too—four windows, no less!" And at the back of the apartment, a large old-fashioned kitchen with a massive table dominating the center of it. A bathroom had been carved out of the back inside corner of it, and beside the bathroom was the stairway leading down into the cellar. Don and Jay started down the stairs immediately.

"Don't you want to look at the kitchen cabinets?" asked Cindy.

"They're all cheap ones anyway," said Don. "I'll be building nice ones when the time comes."

Well now. That sounded like a man who had already decided to buy. Cindy refrained from comment as she followed them into the dark cellar.

Naturally, both Jay and Don had tiny flashlights with them. No doubt they could come up with any tool or small appliance by searching in one pocket or another. Her grandfather had been like that, and Cindy always thought of a working-man's pockets as a kind of treasure hunt. You never knew what you might stumble across. They trained their flashlights on the unfinished ceiling of the cellar. Here was where the house would reveal its secrets.

The wiring was ancient knob-and-tube, and Jay chipped away the insulation from some of it with his fingernails. "Don't run power through this, not even temporarily," said Jay.

"Don't have to tell me twice on that one," said Don.

"Miracle this place didn't catch fire and burn down when it was still occupied." Jay looked at Cindy. "When did it go vacant?"

"It was last occupied in the spring of '86," she told him. "It was rented by students, so I guess it was a miracle there wasn't a fire. What with hair dryers and curling irons left plugged in."

They found the fusebox. Jay gave a little laugh and closed the door immediately. "Give this one to a museum," he said. "A toy museum."

The plumbing, though, was surprisingly good. Jay and Don went on and on about how the cast-iron drainpipes and copper supply pipes were the golden age of plumbing and the workmen who installed it had done a decent job. Only the pipes leading to a couple of the added-on bathrooms were galvanized steel. Jay shone his tiny flashlight on a large patch of rust on the outside of one of the pipes. "Don't touch it," he said. "It's only rust holding it together." Jay sighed. "I guess we'd better figure out where these pipes lead."

"Doesn't matter much," said Don. "Half the bathrooms were added when the house was cut up into apartments, so I'll have to relocate everything anyway."

"Aren't some of these pipes the original plumbing?" asked Cindy.

They looked at her like she was insane. "This place was built in 1874," Don said finally. "The original plumbing was a hole in the backyard."

"And this copper pipe didn't even come into use till the 1930s," added Jay.

"Oh," said Cindy, feeling as though she had failed a test. Or, worse yet, passed one.

Upstairs, in the fading light from the evening windows, the dismalness of the abandoned house became sad and wistful. "This place used to be so beautiful," said Cindy. "Look at the crown moldings, the base moldings."

"Even a picture molding," said Jay. "Took a lot of care with the place. But it's a real fixer-upper now."

They were doing a bathroom-by-bathroom check for old leaks and fixture damage. Soon they were upstairs in the bathroom at the front of the house. "Well, the toilet here is dead," said Don. "But there's a shower and it even has a curtain, if you can believe it."

"The only watertight toilet is that one on the main floor," said Jay. "And the other two bathrooms have those rustomatic pipes, so I guess you'll have to shower up here and use the toilet down there."

"Convenient," said Don.

"You're going to live here?" asked Cindy.

"It's what he does," said Jay. "Lives in the house while he's working on it."

"You're going to move in here
before
it's renovated?"

"Saves on rent," said Don. "And that's
if
I take the place."

"Of course," said Cindy. But she knew he was going to offer on the house.

"Time for the acid test," said Jay. "On to the attic."

If you could call it an attic. True, there was a lumber room with unfinished walls, but the other rooms were all finished, with interesting sloping ceilings and large windows bringing in plenty of light. Jay and Don seemed to go over every inch of the ceiling, looking for stains. "I can't believe it," said Jay, over and over. "This place has been empty for a decade and the roof hasn't leaked
any
where."

"Still got to replace it," said Don. "Nobody's going to take the place if I can't tell them it's got a new roof."

Again, the assumption that he was going to be selling the place later. And since she controlled the purchase price, it was going to work. Why, then, did she feel more anxiety than ever? It wasn't about the sale. It was Don Lark. Something about him. And not just the fact that he was her type. Her type usually ended up drinking beer and running to the john to pee every few minutes. She didn't really like her type that much. Nor did she find anything romantic about a guy who had no phone and lived out of his truck when he was between jobs. She was flat-out puzzled about why she couldn't take her eyes off him.

In the lumber room, Jay looked at the exposed joists and whistled. "Man, they knew how to build in those days. This is one strong house."

Cindy tried to see what was so unusual about the joists. "Is it just that they're thicker?"

"And closer together," said Don.

"So everything is stronger," said Cindy.

"Stronger but heavier," said Don. "A lot of weight up here, with this roof. Attic floor's bound to be extra heavy, too. The bearing walls on the first floor and the lally columns in the cellar are under an unusual amount of strain."

"It's kind of circular," Jay added. "The stronger you make it, the stronger you have to make it. Add strength up here, you have to add more strength down below to hold it up. After a while, it gets so the ground can't support it."

"Really?" asked Cindy.

Don shook his head. "We're talking skyscraper levels of weight now. You'll never find a house too heavy for the ground here."

"He says that because he's not an engineer," said Jay. "I could tell you stories."

"He could but don't let him," said Don. "Unless you have a sleep disorder."

Jay went into a lame Groucho imitation. "I like to consider
myself
a sleep disorder." He leered at Cindy.

Backing toward the door of the lumber room, Cindy stumbled over a trunk. It must have been empty, because it moved easily across the floor, raising a cloud of dust. Immediately she began sneezing.

"Are you all right?" asked Don.

"Bless you. Bless you. Bless you," said Jay. Cindy hated that custom. Maybe after somebody threw up a "bless you" might be appropriate, but to invoke the powers of the universe because of a sneeze?