Jonathan Franzen - The Twenty-Seventh City - A Novel

“Mrs. Probst?”

A pair of light brown eyes was appraising her figure unashamedly. She was too surprised to do anything but stare back.

“I’m John Nissing.”

She knew, she knew. She took his hand. He nodded at the van in the driveway, where the two photographers who’d come in October were unloading aluminum cases. He let go of her hand. “We have a lot of equipment to bring in.”

He strode back down the front walk, his overcoat billowing and coasting, his tweed pants wrapping muscles in his calves and thighs. Barbara had just finished her coffee. Her face looked bad, but she hadn’t expected it to matter. She always held her own. She had nothing to prove, and no one to prove it to, or slay. It was too cruel, after a week of ugly strife with Martin, to meet John Nissing. Her resentment steadied her. She inhaled the sweet, dishonest air.

A case in each hand, Nissing hastened up the walk. She observed how carefully he wiped his shoes at the door. “This will take a fair portion of the day,” he said, setting down his equipment. “I assume we aren’t disrupting anything.” He had a faint accent to match his Arab looks.

“No.”

“Outstanding.”

“You’re not American?” she said curiously.

“Yes I am!” He swung his head and raised his eyebrows. She staggered back. “Oh yes I am! I am red, white and blue!” he said, without a trace of accent. His face relaxed again, and with a twist of each shoulder he removed his coat. “But I wasn’t born here.”

Barbara took the warm coat and held it.

“You’ve met Vince and Joshua,” Nissing reminded her as Vince and Joshua marched in with more cases. “Vince, are you going to say hello?”

“Hello,” said the Latin Vince.

“Nice to see you again, Mrs. Probst,” said the youthful Joshua.

Nissing beamed. “Vince informs me that the kitchen gets the afternoon light.”

“If it stays clear, it will,” Barbara said.

“And if it gets cloudy it won’t matter anyway. Perfect. Ideal. We’ll begin with the living room.” He leaned into the living room but didn’t enter. He frowned at Barbara. “Dark!”

“Yes, it’s not a light room,” she said.

“Dark!” He snagged Vince, who was on his way back out. “Change the bulbs. Red wine, red roses. They’ve built a fire. You’ll want to light it.” Vince left, and Nissing addressed Barbara. “Have you had the house photographed before?”

“Just for insurance.”

“We have to change the time of day. I hadn’t realized the room was dark.” He could have been discussing human handicaps. I hadn’t realized the girl was lame. “If you’re busy…” he said.

She shrugged and bounced on her heels. “I — no.” She made an empty gesture with her hands, yielding to an impulse to cover her sense of physical inferiority with a show of youth, to act like the disconcertable girl she never was. “This is interesting. I’ll enjoy watching.”

“May I see the kitchen?” he said.

“Sure. You can see the whole house.”

“I’d relish that.”

In the dining room, where she and Martin had eaten a birthday dinner in two shifts, Nissing commented on the splendid walnut moldings, and she apologetically explained that the best woodwork on the property was in Mohnwirbel’s rooms, above the garage. In the kitchen, where the radio was silent, the counters unpopulated and the windows crystalline, he described a mousse he’d prepared the night before, which caused her to shift him towards the more modern end of the sexist spectrum. In the breakfast room they watched Mohnwirbel grinding the blades of shears on a carborundum wheel at the bench he’d set up in the driveway; she pointed out the Tudor arches of his rooms. Passing the rear bathroom, the window of which Luisa had jumped from, they came to the den and cut white morning sunbeams, cast shadows on the faded-looking covers of her books. Nissing explained that his family was Iranian. In the sunroom, the repository for most of her Christmas presents, wrapped and otherwise, she took a good look at his face and decided he was significantly younger than she, possibly as young as thirty. They returned through the living room. Joshua was on his knees, blowing at a recalcitrant fire, and Vince was on a stepladder, increasing the wattage of the track lighting. Barbara’s circuit with Nissing seemed to have cleansed the house, taken it off her hands. They went upstairs.

Nissing stopped to admire the guest bedroom, where Barbara had been sleeping since Tuesday (it didn’t show), and promptly asked if they’d recently had guests.

“No.”

“Funny. I can usually smell if a room has been used.”

She showed him Luisa’s supernaturally neat bedroom, and was glad he wouldn’t go in. He did go into Martin’s study, taking slow steps, as if in a gallery. He asked what she did all day. She mentioned her job at the library and added, with a defensiveness ripened by time into glibness, “I read a lot. I see friends. I take care of my family.”

He was staring at her. “That’s nice.”

“It has its drawbacks,” she said.

His eyebrows were raised and his face lit up as if he expected her to say more, or as if there were a major joke in the air that he was waiting for her to get.

“Is something wrong?” she said, wishing, too late, that she’d just ignored him.

“Nope!” Suddenly his face had filled her vision. “Nothing!” He backed away, and again seemed to shake the bizarreness out of his frame. “I’ve just heard a lot about you.” He walked into the hall and rested his hands on the stairwell railing. His skin was golden, not tanned, the native color revealed in the redness of his broad knuckles. Dark hair grew evenly on the back of his hands and fingers.

Downstairs, Vince squealed.

“This here is the master bedroom,” Barbara said, nodding Nissing into it. Martin hadn’t made the bed very well. Nissing went and sat on it. “Colossal bed,” he said, thumping the mattress. She was now sure he knew where she and Martin had been sleeping.

“Where have you heard about me?” she said.

“I think we picked the right rooms to photograph, where have I heard about you? Well, from a woman named Binky Doolittle, and one named Bunny Hutchinson,” he was counting them off on his fingers, “and one named Bea Meisner, and — hey! You’re Barbara. All these B’s! Is this something you’ve noticed? Was there some sort of advance planning involved?”

“No. Actually. Where have you been meeting these women?”

“In their homes, of course. In the homes we will feature in a sumptuous article in May. The homes of the filthy filthy rich in St. Louis. Homes like yours. I’m grateful for tips. Your home received many mentions, from these women and from others.”

“Is that so?”

“It’s very so. It’s remarkably so. The name Probst was on the tip of everyone’s tongue, at least in October.”

“I had no idea our house—”

“Oh, not the house. No. That was not my impression. Or not just the house. It was the home . I was told that if I was in St. Louis I simply must see the Probsts’ home.” From the bed he glared at her. “So we added you to the list.”

“Do you sleep with a lot of your subjects?” she said.

“Most of my subjects are architectural.”

“But Binky? Bunny? I bet they love you.”

“Possibly. But I have a living to make.”

Downstairs, she watched the three of them doctor the front room. She was asked not to smoke. In a notebook Nissing took down data on the room for captions and copy. Once they started working the cameras, it was over very quickly, and she was surprised to find it noon already. Vince and Joshua began to walk tripods and cables into the kitchen. Nissing moved Barbara farther into the living room. On the spruced-up table stood a vase of roses, an open bottle of Beaujolais and two long-stemmed glasses. The vase and glasses were hers, the wine his. He poured liberally. “I’m not really a photographer,” he said. “I teamed up with Vince on a freelance job, and one thing has led to another. It’s easy money. I suppose I ought to have more ambition, but I’ve appreciated having extra time to spend with my son.”