Christian Kiefer - The Infinite Tides

The contractor whistled through his teeth. “You have got yourself an infestation,” he said. “Look here.”

Keith did so and again saw the thin drilled lines that indicated termites. “Shit,” he said.

“Yep. That’s a good word to use now.”

At Keith’s insistence, the contractor cut three more holes in the walls of the downstairs and two of the three revealed additional damage. There was a secret disaster occurring just beyond the plaster and drywall, a disaster that Keith had known nothing about, had not even suspected, the engineering of the house itself weakened, the equations shifting in value and importance until he was left with a calculus of weakness and financial ruin that was so painful that it actually made him laugh.

“Doesn’t seem so funny to me,” the contractor said.

“Oh, it’s not,” Keith said, still chuckling. “It’s definitely not funny.”

“Listen, I’m going to let the pest inspectors cover the rest of it. They’re probably gonna want to tent the whole house. Pump the whole thing full of poison. Kill every damn thing in here. Probably ought to have that done first and then we’ll talk about what to do about the termites. Otherwise, I’m just cutting a bunch of holes in your house for no good reason.”

“What about the mouse?”

“What about it?”

“The mouse probably did some damage too?”

“Hell, you’ve got bigger problems than that.”

Indeed.

“This place isn’t in escrow or anything, is it?”

“It is, actually,” Keith said. “I mean it was before this. I don’t know what the status is now.”

“Damn, that Sally Erler is selling houses even in this economy? She’s a spitfire. Anyway, if that’s the case you’re gonna want the pest company to get it tented up quick, like in the next week or two. Once that’s done we can get working. Sally can crack the whip some but the stuff I’m gonna have to do to get it to pass code is still gonna take a while.”

The contractor departed soon thereafter and Keith was left in a home cut with holes. The slash in the wall of the garage was ten feet long, as if some gargantuan termite had torn into that same space with wild, insatiable hunger, the contractor doing more visible damage than the termites ever had and so it would go. At least the contractor had moved on to chew on some other house. He wished he could say the same about the termites. Maybe they could be lured to Jennifer’s house across the street. Some Pied Piper of termites. But he thought it unlikely.

So the house was secretly falling apart all around him. How he longed to be in orbit once more, to feel that sense of weightlessness, as if the dense matter of his body had become a gas, a vapor, the ether itself. But there was no return. And as if to underscore this simple fact, he looked up to find Jennifer walking across the street toward him. She was not in her workout clothes this time, instead in jeans and a tight white T-shirt, her hair pulled into a rough ponytail. He wondered if he should retreat into the house but then continued to stand there, framed by the open door of the empty garage. “Hey,” he said.

“Hi.”

He stood there in silence, looking at her. “What?” he said at last.

“I just wanted to know what you thought.”

“Of?”

“Our construction project.” She nodded in the direction of the vacant lot, of the tractors, the freshly cleared earth there.

He looked at the lot and then back at her again. “What I think?” he said.

“Walt and I decided to forge ahead,” she said, as if not hearing him. “It’s just been sitting there and we’re getting a great deal on the contractor.”

“You’re telling me you own that lot?”

“We bought that lot with this one. And one other on Creekside but that one got built and rented out.”

“OK.”

She smiled. Her teeth a perfect white arc. “Anyway, sorry you won’t be able to sit out there and do whatever it is you do with your friend. Don’t ask; don’t tell. That’s my policy. Anyway, it’s an investment and the time is now.” Her eyes flicked from his face to the construction site and back again. Bright and wide as if crazed. No, not crazed. Not that. Triumphant. “Just wanted to let you know,” she said.

“That you’re building a house?”

“Yep.”

“OK. You’re building a house.” He looked down the cul-de-sac to the field. The earth flat and dead and empty apart from the two tractors.

“This could have worked out differently, you know,” she said.

“How so?”

“You know.”

He looked at her again. “I don’t know what you’re saying.”

“Really? You really can’t figure this out?”

It was quiet. Then he said: “You’re doing this as some kind of punishment?”

“Oh, come on, neighbor. You’re not that important.”

“The house is sold, Jennifer. I’m moving anyway.”

“Good for you.”

He threw up his hands. “Well, OK,” he said. “Good for me. Good for you. Good for everyone.”

She stared at him in silence, her eyes slowly brimming with tears. “Asshole,” she said at last. She swiveled around and began to walk back across the street quickly. Halfway across she turned back toward him and shouted, “You’re such an asshole,” and then swiveled back again and continued until she reached the door of her house, wrenching the door handle, and then stepping back to pound that flat surface with her clenched fist. Even from across the street, he could hear her words clearly: “Nicole, you unlock this goddamned door right now, young lady. Unlock the door this instant or you will be grounded! Do you hear me? Grounded!” She continued to bang on the door, a dull thunking sound that reverberated and echoed through the subdivision, each report met and repeated by a second and third so that the sound of it seemed a poorly executed drum roll, Keith watching her all the while from the frame of the empty garage. Incredulous. Dumbfounded.

Work on the vacant lot continued all the next day and the day after, the earthmovers replaced with backhoes to dig out the foundation area. Gravel trucks arrived to dump their loads and workmen began putting together the forms for the foundation. The basic footprint of the house was already roughed out with stacks of boards ready to be propped and staked into the various shapes necessary for the pouring of concrete. After that, the solidity of the structure would begin to rise.

In the early evening he opened the garage door and stepped through it and looked out at that scene. The area where the sofa had once rested now carried the rudiments of a foundation and there was a layer of gravel extending across it. He supposed they could walk the telescope over the various impediments and could stand out there or could even bring some metal lawn chairs to sit upon but such an attempt would be a weak substitute. What once had been was already gone and it was likely best to accept that and move on, a lesson he knew to be one he was loath to learn but which kept arriving at his doorstep like a dead bird delivered by a pet cat. Here it was again. He found himself wondering if he could find information on the Internet on hot-wiring a tractor. Perhaps the termites had weakened the structure of his house enough that he could push the whole thing over. That would be something, indeed.

Sally Erler called him in the early afternoon, clearly relieved that he had agreed to the tenting of the house and telling him that the young couple who were buying the place remained interested, assuming the termite damage was dealt with. An hour later, Sally Erler herself arrived with some documents for him to sign, indicating that the sale would continue pending the repairs. The escrow closed in just over a month, which meant the contractor would have to work quickly to finish during that window. Keith knew he was agreeing to pour a substantial amount of money into the house and that it was money he would be essentially throwing away. He would have had to have split any profits with Barb, had there been any, but he had no doubt that the losses would be solely his to bear. Somehow he would have to pay.