Eric Puchner - Model Home

Warren kept his shirt buttoned after that, avoiding the dock as much as he could. At school that fall he devoted himself to his classes; he knew that his only chance was to work, to take advantage of the ethic he’d inherited from his father — that what ever romantically exotic attraction people felt for poor boys in movies was not to be found in real life. Sure enough, he got a scholarship at the University of Wisconsin, where he worked his ass off and stayed more or less with the other scholarship kids until he met Camille, identifying her immediately as one of the girls with willowy arms. She was as rich as the vacationers in Oconomowoc, the daughter of a businessman. But she was different, too: she blushed easily, she didn’t drink, she was shocked by some of Warren’s language — not like the wild girls he saw at the lake. Even in college, she was always volunteering at soup kitchens and nursing homes around Madison. He didn’t notice at first how beautiful she was, but it revealed itself gradually the more he looked, like one of those pictures that invert mysteriously into something else.

Still, walking across campus sometimes, Warren would think of the boy with his shirt undone, the girls giggling, and his face would flush with shame. He’d hear the bright, piano-y laughter, afraid to look up from the grass. It wasn’t until after he and Camille were married, when they were living on their own and Warren was making more money than his parents — his father — ever dreamed of, that he’d been able to squeeze the memory from his mind.

Now, pulling up to the office in Lyle’s Renault, Warren tried to ignore the Barbie doll beaming at him from her noose. Larry’s Alfa Romeo was parked under the only strip of shade. Larry was his old friend and partner, the man who’d helped spell his ruin. He’d coaxed Warren out to California, seducing him with the promise of “easy millions.” Those were his precise words. He’d shown him the sun-bleached acres of hardpan desert, the forest of contorted Joshua trees, and said, “This is the future of California.” If he hadn’t said that, if he’d said something along the lines of This is the future of toxic waste, Warren wouldn’t have fallen in love with the fucking place and invested his life’s savings in it. He wouldn’t be down to a single credit card, a gravely wounded American Express, the others having been snipped in two by trembly cashiers.

Larry was waiting for him in the receptionist’s chair, one foot propped on the desk. He preferred to work in the lobby, where he could catch the morning rays through the window. (They’d laid off the receptionist weeks ago.) Besides time and energy, he hadn’t invested much in the project — it was Warren’s baby, right down to the name on the deed. Anyway, Larry had two other projects in the works near Palm Springs. Retirement communities, miles away from anything toxic.

“I talked to the bank,” Larry said, fiddling with a Band-Aid on his toe. “The lending officer.” As usual, he was wearing a Hawaiian shirt and flip-flops, his legs brown and muscular below pleated shorts. Mr. California. In college, he’d been pale and sickly, always missing class because of the flu. “They’re going to call the loan at expiration.”

“They’ll foreclose on us.”

“That would be my, um, prognosis.”

Warren’s legs felt unnaturally heavy. He had not told Larry about the direness of his own predicament. “I’ve been stringing the GC along for six months. He’s going to take me to court.”

“Unless we move some of these units.” Larry stood up and walked into Warren’s office without asking, as though they were under surveillance. Warren followed him into the sour-smelling room. His desk, a heap of papers and brochures, seemed living proof of something. “Look,” Larry said, lowering his voice, “there’s no legally binding reason we have to tell them about the dump.”

“Jesus, Larry. Does the word ‘cancer’ mean anything to you?”

“Astrologically?”

Warren put down his briefcase. “Did you lose your conscience, or was it surgically removed?”

“Look, this whole cancer thing’s a racket. Every day it’s something else. Now they’ve got this thing against grilled chicken. The black stuff’s bad for you.” He laughed. “I mean, we’ve been cooking meat since, like, early man. Neanderthals? You don’t think their woolly mammoth was charred at the edges?”

“They weren’t dumping toxic sludge in the Stone Age.”

“True. They were too busy bashing each other’s heads in.”

“Have you ever smelled one of these landfills?”

“Hellacious,” Larry said. “Like rotten eggs.”

Warren sat down. They’d been close in college, but their friendship had long since been whittled away by the stress of Auburn Fields. Warren wondered if Camille was right, if he’d truly lost all his friends. “And you wouldn’t feel guilty?” he asked Larry. “Selling houses nearby?”

“Why? Because the government decides to dump its crap next to our property?”

“I just don’t understand how they could do this to us,” Warren muttered.

“Exactly because it’s just us. We’re the only suckers around. Anyway, they’ve got a PR team that could get the pope to suck his own dick. Industrial sewer sludge, and they’re calling it ‘biocake.’ I mean, you’ve got to hand it to them. Sounds like a granola bar.” Larry actually laughed. “I’m sure the city of Palmdale’s getting kickbacks to beat the band. Ben Blyskal on the planning commission told me they’re donating twenty grand to the school board.”

Larry flip-flopped over to the wall and inspected the bulletin board that said AUBURN FIELDS at the top. There was a brochure thumbtacked to one corner; the cover showed a Latino family opening presents on Christmas, their eyes wide with wonder and delight. Below the picture, in Edwardian-looking font, was a quotation by Henry David Thoreau: Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined. The quote had been Warren’s idea. At the time, before the county announced their plans, it had never occurred to him that building affordable homes in the desert would bankrupt him. It had seemed like a brilliant, even a noble, idea: first homes for Californians squeezed out of the market. The “drive-till-you-qualify” crowd, as Larry put it. Who wouldn’t want his own house? Besides, the market was booming: Japanese investors were foaming at the mouth. Their pals at Sakamoto Investment had jumped at the chance. Even the infrastructure was a relative snap. They’d coaxed the county into declaring it a Mello-Roos District, so they were able to run the sewage and water and electricity out there on a municipal bond. Everything had seemed to fall magically into place.

At least that’s the story Warren told himself. In truth, even before the dump issue, he’d had a chance to pull out. When Larry started to get cold feet after the feasibility study came in — when the estimate was far more than they’d expected — Warren had insisted they go through with it. He could have gone back to Wisconsin, could have eaten the cost of the study and saved his family from impending doom, but he’d convinced the folks at Sakamoto Investment that it was worth the risk. It had been Warren’s idea, too, to build twenty houses before they’d sold the lots. “Create the supply,” David Stockman had told the country, “and the demand will follow.” It was a formula too seductive to resist. He could blame Larry for the mess he was in — he gave in to the temptation more and more — but in truth Warren had brought it on himself.

Now the dump had become the nail in the coffin. You could see the construction crew breaking ground from the Auburn Fields gate: less than a mile away, a cloud of ominous dust blooming from the earth.