Good Faith Read online

  I can’t say that I had ever felt the presence of that kind of money so close to home. Certainly, the word millionaire had never, could have never, occurred in connection with my parents. In the first place, their financial life was entirely bounded by a little display on the kitchen table that I had seen every Saturday night as a child—ones, fives, tens, twenties, so much to the store rent and inventory, so much to the mortgage, so much to the church, and then small amounts to the tangible needs of clothing, food, and transportation for the family. There was another stack—the funeral account—right there on the table with everything else, sometimes getting more and sometimes getting less, depending on the requirements of the other stacks. If there was a surplus, it was divided between savings and church, and if there had been a real surplus, no doubt most of it would have gone to the church, since the church’s state of repair and sightliness was as important to my mother as that of her own house. Nor, for all I knew of Gordon’s way of life—much more lavish than my parents’—had I ever viewed him as a man with money. He was more a man who made use of money as it flowed past, as if he had been born lucky enough to live right beside a sweet and brimming stream. Out of that natural bounty he had made a comfortable life that also was bountiful, but the bounty ebbed and flowed—there was no cistern, only activity and good luck. And then there was Marcus. I had seen his tax returns. By the evidence of those as well as of what he said, he was living on the come more than anything else. Billions there well could be, but he hadn’t actually made contact with them yet. I had more money than he did, and he probably knew it.

  My new status at first only intrigued me. I left the books and papers out on the table for a few days, though neatly stacked, to remind myself that there was something about me—I had made it. I was forty-one now and, by any measure, several of those American words you heard all the time—successful, comfortable, well-off—applied to me. And respected. Marcus had mentioned that one himself. When people heard he was my partner, they breathed a sigh of relief. I was to be trusted. Of course, I was no longer married and I didn’t have any children. I had no family sitting solidly on some square of ground like a pyramid, the way most men my age seemed to have, but I didn’t mind about that really. So many families were odd and suffocating in reality that I wasn’t impressed by either the ideal or my own capacity to realize it. For a couple of days, I wondered whether I should forgo Marcus’s offer to pay my bills—I had already had them all addressed to that office—but upon reflection I decided that there really was no telling when Salt Key Farm would get off the ground, and after all I had put my equity in. The commissions, for one thing, but also those farms I had bought for under fifty and sold for a hundred, those farms I had been making payments on of a couple hundred dollars a month and could never decide what to do with, had been turned into something more elegant and profitable. My other funds, I thought, ought to be held in reserve until we really saw what was in store. And while I wasn’t using them, they would appreciate. So I drove about on my appointed rounds with a greater sense of self-confidence. I was a successful Realtor and small-time developer. That I should build on this solid base wasn’t surprising, it was natural, the almost automatic effect of normal ambition. I had lived, without understanding it, the proper American trajectory, rising and rising, dropping off the first-stage rocket, then the second stage, then shooting into space, destined to orbit the earth for some uncounted number of times before splashing into the ocean off Florida, retired in the far-off twenty-first century.

  A month later, when I went into our conference room, I saw a Xerox machine. It was large—you couldn’t miss it—and it looked brand-new. It didn’t quite fit in with the décor. I hadn’t had one in my real estate office, and it seemed like a luxury. I went out into Jane’s office. I said, “You’ll never guess what’s in the conference room.”

  She grinned. “I haven’t felt this good since I bought my first washer and dryer.”

  “We bought it? They’re awfully expensive, aren’t they?”

  “No. Leased it. Actually, I took over Mary’s lease because she wanted something smaller.”

  “Mary King?”

  “Well, sure.”

  “Are you friends with her?”

  “Sisters in free enterprise. There’s a number of us. We have a lunch group. Every couple of weeks.”

  “What do you talk about?”

  “Xerox machines. IBM typewriters. Whether, if you have daughters, you should let them learn to type.”

  “Is this group based on shared feelings of resentment?”

  “Shared ambition.”

  “Hunh. Whose job do you want?”

  “That’s one of the things we talk about. What to aim for.”

  “Did Marcus tell you about the billion dollars?”

  She laughed happily.

  A few days later, I was making use of the Xerox machine to copy a letter I had written to the Plymouth Township Planning Commission. When I lifted the top lid, I saw that someone had left a sheet of paper facedown underneath it. It was a property description of a thousand-acre ranch in western Kansas. It belonged to Jane. I looked at it for a long moment. I thought she must have gotten it in her divorce settlement and was now selling it. I took the description and put it on her desk. A week or so after that, I got a letter from Bart telling me that the appraisers in Kansas had put the value of the ranch at a million dollars and advising me that my application for an 80 percent loan on the property was approved. I looked again at the top of the letter. It was addressed to Marcus but put into an envelope to me by mistake. I put the letter on Jane’s desk too. Funds were good. I was happy to see funds, and I was happy to see that Jane, who must have been holding off from really committing herself to our project, was committed now.

  An 80 percent loan on collateral of a million dollars was eight hundred thousand dollars. I knew the merger hadn’t gone through yet, so I was especially impressed that Bart and Crosbie were working other options. Whatever their source of income, they seemed to want to throw money at us.

  I ran into the Davids. They were standing next to the weathervane display at the lumberyard and saw me immediately. David John exclaimed, “Ask Joe. I told you he would show up eventually.”

  “He’s definitely going to be in favor of the cock,” said David Pollock.

  “Where are you putting a weathervane?” I said. Their roofline was simple and straight, a gable at each end. “With the pitch you’ve got, it’s hardly worth—”

  “Have you not seen our cupola? It’s the talk of Deacon.”

  “I hate to ask.”

  “It’s got a widow in it,” said David John. “Gazing forlornly out to sea.”

  “Sea is a hundred miles from here.”

  “Oh, God! No wonder she’s so upset!” David John turned to David Pollock. “You never told me that.”

  “Who’s the widow?”

  David Pollock looked right at me. He said, “Well, of course we’ve named her Felicity. But really she’s a mannequin from a Woolworth’s they were tearing down in the city. We found her abandoned on the street, naked as a jaybird. She’s happy, though.” He lifted his arms in a pose of exaggerated delight. “Come over. You can see her carmine lips from the sidewalk. She needs a cock swinging around above her.”

  “I prefer the trotting horse,” said David John.

  “We have this argument every weekend. But do come over and we’ll tell you everything.”

  “About the widow,” said David John.

  “I want to hear. But I have a better idea.”

  “Oh, God, what’s that?”

  “I have to go out to the farm we’re developing, and I think you guys should see it. It’s not something you would pass in the normal course of things. You might want to invest.”

  “We might?”

  “Or you might have friends who would.”

  “We have friends with scads of dough,” said David John.

  “So you’ve said.”

  We
went out to the parking lot without buying anything, and I opened the passenger door to my car. David Pollock said, “Should we drive with you? What about Marlin and Doris?”

  “Bring them along.”

  We piled into my Lincoln and headed out of Deacon. As soon as we were in the country, David Pollock said, “Joey, you notice you haven’t asked us why we named our widow Felicity.”

  “Yes, I noticed that. I suppose you had better tell me.”

  “You’ve been very naughty, we’re told.”

  “I have?”

  “Dropping her like a hot potato and all.”

  Even though I was heading down the road at sixty-five miles an hour, I turned and stared.

  “I think he’s genuinely surprised,” said David John.

  “I tend to agree,” said David Pollock. “Maybe we should hear your side of the story after all. But only if you promise to stay on the road.”

  “We’ve got plenty of time,” said David John.

  My mind had been full of the farm—I had stopped into the hardware store to buy ant traps for my condo, but what I was really doing was wondering what my share of the payment would be when our first payment was due, on the first of October, more than two months away, but still worrying, as I estimated we were a year away from selling off the first lots and getting some income. That was why I had brought up taking them out there—these real estate investment trusts of Jane’s seemed to have appeal for a surprising number of people, but they had to be people with excess tax liability, according to Marcus. Anyway, shifting the farm out of my mind all of a sudden and bringing Felicity in seemed disorienting. I had not asked about the “widow” not because I was afraid to, but because I hadn’t gotten the point of the name.

  I tried to think of something to say about myself, not precisely an excuse or a reason, but something true, something that would originate a way of talking about Felicity, but not only was my mind a blank on that, I was a blank. I had no way of talking about Felicity other than saying I loved her, and I could not say that. I don’t know if I couldn’t say it to them or if I couldn’t say it at all. We kept driving.

  “He’s not answering,” said David John.

  “I was surprised. I guess I don’t have an answer except that. I mean, are you telling me the truth, that Felicity thinks I dropped her like a hot potato? The last time I saw her I had the distinct feeling I had fatally trespassed. And she never called me again or came by.”

  “I told you on the phone that night that there was stepped-up surveillance.”

  “I took that to mean I should be careful.”

  “I meant she was being careful. You were supposed to become assertive, I believe it was.”

  “I guess I didn’t get the hint.”

  “No,” said David Pollock. A silence settled over the car, as of a subject that was closed—only of historical interest now. After a moment, I said, “So, what is she doing lately?”

  “We haven’t seen her in over a month. Hank likes us, you know. He approves of everything we do, because we scavenge and improve and add value, and we are exotic all at the same time. He stares at us. He calls me Dave and him David.” David John, who was speaking, sighed. He said, “Once we got approval, she stopped coming over. Now he comes over.”

  “He’s a very well-meaning person,” said David Pollock.

  “Probably a saint,” said David John.

  We arrived at the gate of the farm. “She’ll never leave him,” said David Pollock.

  “That’s what I thought,” I said. I looked at each of them and each of them looked at me. All three of us nodded slightly. We were agreed, then.

  We had gotten the permit for the golf course, and we were very close to getting the permit for the clubhouse and the waste-treatment facility (pending ironing out some provisions about community access to it after a certain date, or in case certain things did or did not happen—there was a definite feeling that everything had to fall into place in order for anything to fall into place). Most days I put one foot in front of the other and left the larger issues for Marcus and Jane. The farm still looked the same, though, as when the Thorpes had lived there. But it was the wrong time of year to begin contouring the golf course. Marcus had told me that once they came in I would be surprised how quickly it went. I told him I had seen that over and over; it seems like you’re not getting anywhere and then, all of a sudden, there you are. As we drove through the gate and under the overhanging trees, the Davids were quiet, staring out the windows. In midsummer, it was like driving back to the thirties or the twenties, down the green-gold hillside to the creek. The bright flat sky beyond looked eternal. Simultaneously, they opened the windows of the car, and I turned off the air-conditioning. I halted beside the front entry. A grassy fragrance passed through, and the rat terrier stood up, stuck her nose out of the window, and sniffed. Then she jumped out the window onto the driveway.

  We wandered around the grounds. We hadn’t planted any annuals, but the perennials were taken care of by the gardener and his assistant, who were still living on the property, keeping an eye on it. Nothing delicate or springlike, everything happy in the heat, hardy in the breeze. We walked down the slope a ways and looked back at the house, then came up and stood on the porch and looked down the slope. David John said, “I think it’s more than we can take on as a weekend job.” We all laughed.

  “We’re looking for investors. This is going to be the clubhouse; the golf course runs along there. And then we’re going to put up fancy houses.”

  “Whatever happened to buy low, sell high?”

  “Come inside.”

  We wandered through the house without saying anything. The rooms were entirely empty now: hall, library, two sitting rooms, sunroom, formal living room, dining room, kitchen. Up the carved walnut staircase. At the landing, you could turn either way below the bank of windows that looked out on the formal garden; then there were six bedrooms, two of which were suites; and then, above that, storage, servants’ rooms, two more bathrooms. Much woodwork, many windows, many doors. “It’s going to cost a mint to furnish this place,” said David John. “I don’t think a few throw rugs here and there are going to do it, honey.”

  “That’s why we need investors.”

  “You know,” said David Pollock, “we have a friend of a friend who’s got the furniture. You know Martin, with the costumes?”

  “Thank you for that tip.”

  “He knows James, with the furniture.”

  “He knows,” said David John, “Yves, with the money.”

  “Yes, he does,” said David Pollock. “We’ve only met Yves once, but he’s a designer. He’s so hot right now. People bow to him. I’m sure he’s looking for a sinkhole, a very beautiful sinkhole, just like this one, to throw his extra money down.”

  We wandered around for another couple of hours, looking, chatting, naming names. I kept a list. I thought Marcus and Jane would be pleased. When we were driving back to the hardware store in Deacon, I said, “So, what should I do about Felicity?”

  “She’s not going to leave him,” said David John again.

  “Her real problem is that she doesn’t have a vocation. Or even a job,” said David Pollock. “I think she’s stuck here. Her only salvation is to travel back in time and do it all over differently.”

  The three of us nodded together.

  On Monday, I gave Jane the list of names. She looked it over, and then I said, “Do tell me, Jane, what the point of these real estate investment trusts is.”

  “Well, I think the real point is cash flow.”

  “Yes, but, pardon me for asking, what do the investors get for their money?”

  “I’m sure, in the end, some of them hope to profit.”

  “In the end?”

  “Well, think of it as a sort of junk bond. High risk, big payoff. Most people who have plenty of money to invest understand that. Believe me, we are not going after little old ladies on widows’ pensions. That’s a game for the S and Ls.”<
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  “Excuse me?”

  “Oh, you know, bundling passbook savings accounts and selling them to other institutions that are paying a quarter of a point higher interest. Or less than that. I’m sure that’s what Crosbie is doing. That merger hasn’t gone through yet, but they’re rolling in dough. Not just investments, either, but a flood of deposits. I guess they raised payouts by a quarter of a point or something, and some deposit brokers started sending them more deposits than they can have on the books and still look good. Crosbie came to Marcus just the other day and asked if we have any other properties anywhere.” She shrugged. “And what else did he say? Something about how Portsmouth Savings was thinking of getting into T-bill futures or even junk bonds. It’s a new world, that’s for sure.”