W: The Planner, The Chosen (21 page)

“In that case, ma’am, I will be forced to close your account. Federal regulations require that if any credit card account is over the limit, the balance must be brought under the limit within ten business days or else the account must be closed. Do you understand?”

“Fine. Yes, I understand,” Kris tried to think quickly what having her last credit card account closed would mean to her life. Actually, probably—nothing. Her parents’ birthdays and anniversary were over with; Karyn’s visit was over with. She would not need to make any other special purchases until Christmas, and by then she could open a new credit card. This was ridiculous, but it did not matter.

The woman read a long disclosure about closing the account and after Kris agreed to it, the call ended.  For the first time since she was twenty, Kris no longer had a credit card.

T
he week before Labor Day Kris found a memo in her company email inbox—an invitation from Director Scott to attend an open house at his new home on Labor Day from 5:00 to 9:00 P.M. Kris was a little surprised that Director Scott had a home—after all didn’t all employees of the Federal Municipal Planning Division live in designated Federal Employee housing?  But this address, 246 Monte Alegre, looked suspiciously as though it belonged to a single family residence. It also looked oddly familiar, as though Kris had some past association with it. She stared at the memo for a long time—she was sure that she knew the address, but she could not remember from where. Her old life had faded from memory so much it almost had taken on the qualities of a dream—perhaps even someone else’s dream.

The party was mandatory for all FMPD employees. Kris liked parties; she hadn’t been to any sort of party since getting her new job. The problem was that she did not like Leonard Scott or Pat or anyone she worked with at FMPD. If she could bring a date it would not be so bad, but she had no one to ask as a date. Since getting her job and moving out of Nick’s townhouse, she had not attempted any new relationships. She now no longer even had people in her life who were just friends that she could ask to go with her. 

For the first time in months, Kris began to consider that maybe she needed to start thinking about the rest of her life. Until now, she had been focused on acclimating to her living conditions and learning her job. Now that she was settled into her new life, it might be time to start thinking about finding someone to share this new life with.

The only man who immediately came to mind was Michael Linton. She had not talked to him since he had given Janine the do-not-call note, but she had seen him a number of times—in the cafeteria and in the community. During the hottest part of the summer several of the residents of FE and nearly all of the residents of W complained of heat exhaustion, so the doctors were very busy. She had no way of knowing whether he was as angry with her as most of the other residents of FE, but she would only be able to find out by talking to him. Maybe the party would provide an opportunity for her to do just that.

Kris made an appointment on Saturday to have her hair done by Rosemarie. She even allowed her to put Henna on it—it would wash out immediately but Kris did not need to wash it between Saturday and Monday, and even though she hated Henna, the deeper color did make her look younger. She was letting her hair grow a little too—now that summer was ending she might be able to style it a little more easily. She even located “Nails” and set up a mani-pedi appointment which she scheduled directly after her hour of volunteer service in the community garden. She still had some nice perfume left over from better days, and her restricted diet and excessive exercise meant that she fit well into her clothes. She was determined that on Monday she was going to look as nice as she could and make an effort to get to know a little about this man who was apparently an enigma to the whole community.

Monday at 4:30 found her standing at the gates of FE with a group of FE residents waiting for the shuttles which Scott had arranged to take everyone to his house.  Michael was not there; Eva Brinks was. Eva and her bunch of comrades stood in a little group, appropriately to the left side of the gates. Kris stood off to the right. She was wearing a lime green silk halter dress and a pair of sand-colored high heeled sandals. Since the shuttle was coming for her, she did not have to worry about walking, so she had allowed herself the luxury of wearing great shoes. Now she realized that she had forgotten how sore great shoes made her feet. 

They waited about fifteen minutes for the shuttle before boarding in silence. Kris was not paying the other women any attention; she was going to a real house with real food and, hopefully, real air conditioning, and she was going to make an earnest effort to make a new friend. Nothing else mattered.

As the shuttle exited the freeway and turned onto Monte Alegre, Kris again thought that this seemed incredibly familiar. She had been on this street before—several years before. She had sold houses on this street. The shuttle climbed to the top of the hill. All of the houses up here were large, stately, elegant homes on view lots.  She had definitely been here before. The shuttle pulled to a stop in front of a two story Mediterranean-style home with a clay tile roof.  The front doors were carved iron with glass—custom imports from Mexico. Now Kris knew why this address had seemed familiar—she had not only been in this house—she had actually represented the buyer who had purchased it years before. The property had originally been a second home for a fledgling starlet from Hollywood, but when her short marriage to another young star ended in scandal, she had listed the house for sale in a private “pocket” listing to be shown only by appointment. Kris knew the agent with the pocket listing; she periodically called him to see if he knew of anything truly special for well-qualified, discerning clients, and he had told her about this house. She had taken the couple she was representing to see it, and they had signed a contract the next week.

As she stepped out of the shuttle she was stunned to see that the property was exactly the way she remembered.  The landscaping was still beautiful; lemon and orange trees hanging with fruit greeted all visitors. The entrance of the home was stunning—it had been a major selling point for her buyers. From inside the front door the visitor looked onto a great expanse of golden cream marble floors with walls painted just one shade deeper. To the right was a graceful staircase with an ornate iron railing; to the left was the entrance to a kitchen that would make a commercial chef proud. Every appliance was commercial grade, from the built-in Viking refrigerator to the enormous built-in freezer to the twelve-burner gas range with a warming oven beneath it. But if the visitor did not turn off in either of these directions, he found himself looking through a floor to ceiling window onto an Olympic-sized crystal blue infinity pool which appeared to drop off into eternity. And if the visitor ventured out onto the veranda to take a closer look at the pool, he would see from this vantage point a clear view of the entire Phoenix/Scottsdale region. At night, without vegetation to obstruct the view, the twinkling city lights appeared to stretch on forever like brightly-colored jewels on a black velvet gown. The pool was lighted at night; if the owner wished he could switch off all other outside lights except those inside the pool. This was the consummate house for entertaining. Every detail was perfect; no luxury had been omitted.

The opulence, and the irony of this home belonging to Leonard Scott, Regional Director of the FMPD, might be lost on most of the employees of the FMPD, but not on Kris.  What was a man who spent his days preaching the necessity of sustainability doing living in such a house? Every inch of it was at odds with the eco-friendly, austere lifestyle that FMPD forced upon its employees and the residents of its senior communities. Perhaps, more importantly, how did a mid-level civil servant such as Scott purchase a house such as this in the first place? This house had sold for $3,000,000 six years before when Kris had handled the buyer’s end of the purchase. Even with the overall declining market, a house of this quality in a neighborhood this exclusive would very likely hold its value. Scott was lucky to make $300,000 a year—the payments on this house would likely nearly equal his entire monthly salary. So how did he happen to be the proud new owner?

Scott’s wife had greeted them at the door; she was the female counterpart of her husband, down to the same hard, cold lashless little eyes. She was proudly showing off her house, and Kris followed her on the tour, mainly so that she could have an opportunity to see it again. Yes, she remembered the upstairs master suite with his and hers bathrooms and the full sitting room with the balcony overlooking a view almost as great as the one from the pool.  Melissa Scott continued to blather on about how wonderful this place was for Leonard’s nerves and how it helped him cope with the stress of his job—Kris gathered that they had moved in about a month before. They had been standing out on the balcony and were just re-entering the bedroom at 6:00 P.M. As they walked through the balcony doors Kris heard a grandfather clock chime in the sitting room adjacent to the bedroom. As the chime for the hour ended the musical strains of Brahms’ Lullaby filled the room. “That’s our new clock,” Melissa explained. “It does that every hour on the hour; I’m still getting used to it.”

“When I was a child, my mother had a clock that had been in her family for generations. It played Brahms’ Lullaby every hour for one full minute. I used to wake up in the middle of the night and listen to the song before I fell asleep again. I thought it was the most beautiful sound I had ever heard.” This was the first comment that Kris had made since Melissa had greeted her at the door.

“How interesting,” replied Melissa, who clearly did not find Kris’ comment interesting at all but was delighted to show off her house and possessions. “Would you like to see our clock?”

“I would love to,” answered Kris.

Melissa opened the door to the sitting room. A sofa and coffee table much too large for the room had been crowded into what was meant to be a small, intimate space.  In one corner of the room stood the stately, ornate clock.  Kris was amazed to see how much it resembled her mother’s clock—the same heavy mahogany wood, the same carefully carved top with tiny smiling baby cherubim flanking the edges—one on each side of the face. The same large brass pendulum swung evenly behind the beveled glass that protected it from the elements—the edges had been meticulously hand-painted with gold. Her mother’s clock had been imported from Germany and had been in her family for generations; how had the Scotts managed to find a clock so similar in Arizona? As she stooped to look at it, she ran her fingers across the base and felt a familiar scratch mark.  She pulled back to study it and saw two letters, “KM”, scratched by a small child’s hand into the base of that clock thirty-five years before—an innocent child’s brand on a prized possession.

As Kris rose she felt a chill run down her spine and encase her entire body. This was not a clock just like hers—it was hers. She had traded away her inheritance in exchange for some security, and now she had found it again in the home of a man she despised. She had never thought about what happened to possessions she inventoried from the houses that were signed over to the FMPD. Armed with her new knowledge she examined the room more closely. The oversized furniture that engulfed this room—did that come out of the living room of some resident of W who was now living with pressed, recycled furniture? Every week she inventoried hundreds of items—cutlery, kitchen items, dishes, furniture, linens. She had assumed that they were stored in warehouses and then sold at some government auction and that the funds were used to pay down the national debt. Now she had the distinct feeling that those warehouses might actually just be the private storage facilities for the Leonard Scotts of the world.

Melissa Scott seemed totally oblivious to the emotions raging inside Kris.  She continued the tour, but Kris was no longer listening to her. Now as she passed each item she asked herself, “Who did that originally belong to?”  She did not particularly recognize anything else, but overall she was deeply aware that there was no way that Leonard Scott could afford this house with these furnishings on his salary.

And that realization brought her back to the house itself.  Was this house signed over to FMPD as part of Smart Seniors? She tried to remember the borrowers she had represented—it was odd that after so many years working in real estate Kris could often remember the properties more easily than the people. She had sold this house to a doctor—she could not remember his name, although she could see his face. He was a tall, broad man with sandy brown hair and a sandy brown mustache. But she did remember his wife—Luisa, a diminutive, pretty blonde woman with bright blue eyes and a foreign accent. Kris tried to remember her country of origin—Croatia…Slovenia…Albania—one of those Balkan countries. But she did remember how much Luisa had loved this house—from the moment Kris had shown it to her and her husband, Luisa had talked endlessly about how she would decorate it and how much she would enjoy entertaining in it. Kris had even attended their open house after they moved in—Luisa’s taste in furniture was decidedly better than Melissa Scott’s, but then again Luisa had the income to actually go shopping at real furniture stores rather than just having to pick through other people’s possessions. 

Luisa and her husband were much too young for the Smart Seniors’ program. He was a successful doctor—Kris recalled that he owned several pieces of real estate and had a growing practice. What had happened? Why had they abandoned a house they had loved so much after only six years? And why had they abandoned it cheaply enough so that Leonard Scott could afford to buy it? Did Leonard Scott buy it? Or was it simply deeded to FMPD and then he merely took it, just as he had taken the clock and probably most of the other possessions showcased here?

Kris could no longer enjoy the party. If Michael were there, she did not notice; she was not aware of any of the other guests. After the rest of the tour had gone downstairs, she stole back up to the sitting room to have another look at her clock. And as she stood looking at it she felt anger and betrayal rising up inside her. Everything had been a lie. Lena was right; FMPD was not about creating a sustainable future—it was only about taking other people’s stuff. Kris must be the biggest fool who had ever lived.

By the time she slipped back downstairs, the first shuttle was waiting out front to transport back to FE those visitors who wished to leave early. Kris said goodbye to Melissa and Leonard and boarded it without another word.